Sharks On a Plane

We've talked about this before. 

Nobody wants to watch an obnoxious film character mistreat a flight crew. 

I don't care if said awful passenger and exhausted flight attendant become friends after working together to survive a plane crash and several shark attacks. We. Don't. Want. This.

But a plane crash + shark attack movie? I'll allow it.

Quick Plot: Ava, the college-aged daughter of a governor, is heading to Cabo with boyfriend Jed, insufferable pal Kyle, and bodyguard Brandon (I can't explain why, but "bodyguard Brandon" sounds incredibly off to my ears). Also on their half-full flight is a happily married couple escorting their grandaughter Rosa and her teddy bear Mr. Tibbs, and the aforementioned putupon flight attendant Danilo.

Yes, there are others in the air, but they're all going to die very quickly in a plane crash that feels very indebted to Alive. 

The plane lands deep in the ocean but follows the The Concord...Airport '79. science of positioning itself in an air pocket. The survivors are temporarily relieved at their luck, but know their oxygen supply is limited, their structural integrity questionable, and most upsetting, some shark attacks imminent. 

That's a great idea for a movie. The final product doesn't quite deserve it, but 90 minutes of being trapped underwater with broken limbs and hungry tiger sharks can't not be entertaining enough.

Written by Andy Mayson (he of many financial officer credits before shifting to producer credits for the related 47 Meters Down) and directed by Hollow Man II's Claudio Fah, No Way Up seems to also follow the Airport school of near incompetence in its first act--ALWAYS SET IN AN AIRPORT--before finding its feet once the plane gets moving. The first twenty minutes saw my finger hover over the 'stop' button on my remote thinking, "I have better things to do with my life than watch mediocre actors deliver genuinely bad dialogue." 

Thankfully, No Way Up improves immensely once its action kicks in. The plane crash is brutal, the looming sharks cheekily intimidating, and the constant threat of suffocation (more in theory than onscreen). Its (unfortunate) central trio of young characters range from bland to irritating, but Phyllis Logan, Grace Nettle, and Manuel Pacific give sympathetic performances that helped keep me somewhat emotionally invested, even if I was still mostly on the side of the tiger sharks. 

High Points

With its brisk running time, No Way Up wisely keeps itself moving. For that we should all be thankful

Low Points

I understand it's a rule of movie young people that every friend group includes one obnoxious asshole, but that doesn't ever mean it's needed or entertaining

Lessons Learned

Never have breakfast at a burger joint with a fitness-obsessed coworker

Sharks hate nothing more than bubbles

Extra fries and exercise are not interchangeable

Rent/Bury/Buy

No Way Up isn't a very good movie, but once it gets going, it mostly delivers exactly what you need from this genre (plane crash + shark, obviously). It's currently on Shudder.

Flying Economy

 

A few months back, I watched the first three entries in the Airport series over the course of a few days. The experience was, well, weird. 

Have you seen these movies? They're insane, in both terrible and wonderful ways. Each one comes loaded with gender politics that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush. Every flight attendant (well, in these cases, stewardesses) is having an affair with a much older married superior. Old ladies scam their way through security. Suicidal bombers cheat the insurance industry. The third installment sees the plane buried at the bottom of the ocean. Everyone from Christopher Lee to Gloria Swanson shows up. This series is madness!

Anyway, for someone whose reference to Airport was always just Airplane! (which, it turns out, isn't THAT much zanier than Airport), this was a wild ride that no colors every other piece of culture I consume set on commercial aircraft. 

Quick Plot: The worst people imaginable board a flight headed to Tokyo. Among them are a new racist bride, a soon-to-be-divorced-but-faking-it-for-their-friends couple, a sad pregnant girl not in love with her partner, a racist petty thief, and a few portly men who dare to EAT on a plane (we can assume at least two of them are also racist). We know this is a crime because the attractive and trim flight attendants make jokes about it. I should also mention that the head of the crew is hoping that this is the trip that will finally convince her captain boyfriend to leave his wife and kids. 

A reminder: this is a 12-hour flight. We're going to be with these jerks for a while.

Up in the air, oddness ensues. A passenger guarding a mysterious coffin-like box has some kind of a seizure, dying instantly and causing some mild panic just as weather conditions jostle the plane. Air masks drop down, luggage descends from the upper storage, and a corpse goes missing. The only thing worse? First class passengers are forced to move down to economy. The horror!

Flight 7500 is directed by Takashi Shimizu, best known for both the original and surprisingly good American remake of The Grudge. This film definitely shares some of The Grudge's style, albeit in diluted form. It doesn't help that Craig Rosenberg's script is filled with so many awful characters, though most are thankfully played by good actors who manage to make them pop onscreen. 

Look, when I queue up a genre movie I've never heard of on Amazon Prime, my expectations are in a specifically low place. As soon as actual actors like Amy Smart and Johnathon Schaech show up, my brain has to do some recalculating. Where is the bar? 

The easy answer could be at 20,000 feet. Dad jokes aside, Flight 7500 is kind of like a junk drawer that has a few pleasant objects messily tucked inside. Based on the haircuts and fashion, Flight 7500 feels like it couldn't have been filmed after 2008, though it's currently on Amazon Prime with a 2014 date. The way these people speak to one another comes from another world.

And yet, I was kind of into Flight 7500's story? Even if it didn't line up in any logical way? There's a twist that hits at the 3/4 mark that isn't very satisfying in a narrative sense, but then you land on a good actor's face as they react and you walk away feeling like these 90 minutes had some value. 

And then you end on a very dumb jump scare and become even more convinced that the 2014 date is a lie. 

High Points

Genuine standing applause to much of the cast of Flight 7500, most of whom are overqualified for this kind of movie. Leslie Bibb is, for all intents and purposes, playing a woman whose primary motivation is to pull a cad away from his family, but we're able to forget that because she's also quite good as an actual flight attendant. Even Nicky Whalen, last seen by me as a shark hunter in Maneater, makes her terrible human being of a character, actually fun to watch

Low Points

If you start thinking about the details in Flight 7500, you will very quickly find that you have watched a movie that makes very little sense

Lessons Learned

The longer the flight, the more racists onboard

It's bad luck to board a flight without saying I love you

Screenwriting 101, courtesy of The Darkest Hour: if you need to establish a character as being unlikable, the easiest bit of dialogue is to have him rant against the 'no electronics during takeoff' rule

Rent/Bury/Buy

I think of Flight 7500 along the same lines as The Asylum's Flight of the Living Dead. These are not, by traditional definition, 'good' movies, but they're both far better than their poster art and pedigree would suggest. If hearing something described as "The Grudge on a plane" lends any interest, this is a fun watch.