Movies: Red Eye

I've seen a lot of Wes Craven's work, from the early stuff like "The Last House on the Left" right up to today's entry, "Red Eye," starring Rachel McAdams. What strikes me most about Craven's movies is the perfection of the early acts and setup. Other horror directors are better at all-out carnage, gore, or even pitched scenes of suspense, but Craven can "set up" a movie with the best of them (actually, come to think of it, Hitchcock was superb at that, too - look at the first ten minutes of "Lifeboat").

Unfortunately, "Red Eye" is mostly great setup without actual payoff. The beginning scenes, with Cillian Murphy playing a strange, intense, but appealing stranger, are easily the best part of the movie. You sense an uneasiness behind Murphy's eyes and mannerisms, which makes the eventual revealing of the thriller/suspense plot easy to swallow. The plot itself, at least in the beginning, exploits the confines of the plane and the irony of being all alone in a crowded airliner.

But the movie doesn't do much with this material. The body count is low, and the killer's menace is ultimately deflated early in the movie's third act. If you're going to make a movie about a stranger on a plane, you better keep the action on the plane for as long as possible. And that's why "Red Eye" is a commercially successful but ultimately hollow entry in Craven's career.

Rating: 5/10

Here's a funny recut trailer - the movie would've worked as a straight romance, crazily enough: