We get a more modern movie this week. I had actually planned on reviewing it last summer, but couldn’t find it anywhere to stream. The premise had intrigued me, but I also doubted that it would be exploited to its fullest potential.
And yeah, I was right. It’s a shame, because there is a lot that is done well. None of the dialogue made me cringe, and there are some pretty good performances. I particularly enjoyed Nana (played by Phyllis Logan) and her relationships both with her husband and with her granddaughter.
It was very sweet and actually lent some serious pathos to a couple of different scenes. I didn’t expect to be affected emotionally, but it’s amazing what the retrieval of a hat can do.
The opening plane crash was well done. There was a solid level of carnage, complete with people getting torn out of an opening. It’s cliché, sure, but still a crowd pleaser.
The sequence of the plane slowly filling up with water and sinking under the waves was also nicely done. It didn’t give the characters any time to figure out what was happening. There was no time to even think about escaping. We were promised people trapped in a plane on the bottom of the ocean surrounded by sharks, and that’s what we got.
And yet, I still can’t fully praise the movie. There were enough missteps and strange decisions that it took it from Decent Enough to a very solid Shrug and Forget.
The structure is a little odd. The movie opens with Brandon, played by Miles O’Brien himself, Colm Meaney. We see his nightmare involving his greatest failure. We see his emotional trauma and weariness. We’re invited directly into his interior life. These are all signs that he’s going to be our protagonist moving forward. We get to see where he begins so that we can track the inevitable transformation that the events of the plot are going to have on him.
Brandon is not our protagonist.
Our protagonist is his charge, Ava, the daughter of the woman he had a nightmare about. Once that opening scene ends, we’re abruptly thrust into Ava’s point of view. She’s the emotional center, the one making connections with the random strangers in the airport that will round out the rest of our cast once things really get going.
She’s the one with the complicated home life, caught between an overly protective, politician father, her own trauma from her mom’s death, and her opinionated boyfriend, Jed. Honestly, if you just cut out the first three minutes of the movie, it’s a very normal and traditional opening with Brandon very clearly slotting into the role of “Older, Competent Mentor Figure Destined to Die First.”
Because that is who he is. Don’t watch this solely for Meaney. He may as well have walked on to the plane with a red shirt.
Luckily, Ava is a likable enough protagonist. Sophie McIntosh did a good job at making her feel both reasonably competent and reasonably freaked out by the situation. It’s a messed up situation to be in, after all.
Plane crashes are terrifying to begin with, but crashing in the middle of the ocean? And then sinking down to the ocean floor? And just being trapped there as the water slowly rises around you and oxygen runs out? Yeah, no thanks. I’d rather die on impact.
Unfortunately, the plot falls apart at even the slightest hint of logic. Like, sure, they’re in a desperate situation and can’t observe proper diving protocol. I get that. But also all of the survivors are definitely getting a fatal case of decompression sickness.
Secondly, their big plan is to scare away sharks with bubbles. This part is fine. Much like Rosa, I also remember learning that sharks are frightened by bubbles. It felt reasonable enough that my suspension of disbelief was still firmly intact.
But then two rescue divers show up, both of whom are making a copious amount of bubbles. Both of whom are also swiftly eaten. (The scene where everyone is desperately trying to warn one of the divers is actually rather tense and enjoyable. I think he might also have been wearing a red diving suit.) So, okay, that means that the bubble thing doesn’t work. Right?
No, it does. But only for the main characters, and that is when I just get annoyed by the movie instead of accepting what is happening. It makes me focus on other things, like how long these people are holding their breath for. (Answer: way too long, they all should have drowned.)
The third act as a whole runs into the same issue that so many horror movies do: you have six characters and less than thirty minutes to kill most of them. There’s no time for an emotional reaction lasting longer than a few seconds. There’s no time to reasonably set up why characters might die, so they instead do some of the most nonsensical things in order to put themselves in the line of fire.
It muddies things. It becomes less about tense survival and more just a series of increasingly silly events that happen to move the plot forward. It's kinda boring. It becomes a shrug and easy to forget.
Random Thoughts
The grandparents met while serving together in Iraq. I get that the Gulf War was in 1991, but the timeline still doesn’t seem like it matches up? That’s still only 34 years?
I did appreciate the explicit explanation on why the cast was so small: the plane was barely booked to begin with due to being an early flight.
While not necessarily the focus, there really are some really cool practical gore effects. The fractured arm in particular looked good.
The sharks were tiger sharks this time around. Bonus points for an uncommon species!
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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally watches far too many shark movies.
So, Airport '77 with sharks, then. And no Christopher Lee.
ReplyDeleteSir Christopher Lee, that is!
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