Horror Movie Review: Plankenstein: A Killer Surf Movie (2025)

Written and directed by Diq Diamond, and starring Leilani Ramos, Shane Chisum, Stuart Featheran, Robert Maclean, and Alex Dayuha, Plankenstein: A Killer Surf Movie is not a film to take seriously.

In fact, even a traditional review feels a bit pointless. Why bother analysing a story and its characters, the cast, the visuals, effects, sound, and overall entertainment value of a film about a killer surfboard? Even before you hit play, you should know exactly what you’re in for.

The story is going to be trash. The characters, non-existent, and the cast that play them, all over the place. It’s going to look bad, sound bad, and either have awkward practical effects or ugly CGI for its gore. If we’re lucky, it will be short and silly, meaning if you unchain your brain, you can find some entertainment value.

That there, is the summation of Plankenstein: A Killer Surf Movie and I won’t lie, it was better than expected. In fact, I thought it was pretty darn entertaining.

The story is super simple, if you have a mind like Diq Diamond, and centres around a demonic surfboard which looks like it was stitched together (ala Frankenstein) and is hungry for souls. It’s up to a Kailua police captain, her daughter, and some other Hawaiian locals to put a stop to it before it ruins surfing season completely. There’s a few subplots, but nobody is going to remember any of them, not when a killer surfboard is lopping off heads left and right.

It’s absurd, but in an effort to give it more meaning, Diamond has based it in Hawaiian culture and put a lot of effort in to make the location and characters authentic. It feels every bit a Hawaiian horror film and that makes it a more compelling watch.

It probably won’t come as too much of a surprise for anyone to learn that it is a very campy film, and a lot of the humour is cringe-inducing at best. In most circumstances this would be another negative aspect, but the entire make up of Plankenstein: A Killer Surf Movie makes it so much more forgivable. Its campiness is charming, its braindead humour is likable, and if all of that wasn’t enough, it’s an unashamedly gory flick.

I’m making it sound pretty good, right?

It is, provided you can see it for what it is and nothing more. If you go in expecting gold, you’re going to hate it. Unchain your brain, expect nothing but absurdity, and chances are that you’ll be as entertained as I was.