In my mind there is a special category for the well-made B-picture that cuts itself no slack, doesn’t indulge in airs and graces, and doesn’t spend valuable screen time pontificating on the world’s woes or weighing the picture down with romance or some mawkish drama. Little time is wasted here, either, on providing characters with any depth, in fact we don’t even find out what’s bugging First Officer Ben (Aaron Eckhart) till literally the final scene of the movie. And as you know I’m pretty keen on sharks or any other ferocious beast from the deep sea, so my tendency is always to err on the side of praise.
But for a B-picture this goes three ways. First we’re in disaster movie territory with an incredible airplane crash, then we’re in survival mode as the disparate group of passengers are adrift in the ocean, buoyed up by what remains of the sinking plane, and finally you realize this has all just been bait-and-switch because actually what we’re headed for is a shark movie.
This is not just in very safe hands, director Renny Harlin having been here before (terrors of the deep wise) in Deep Blue Sea (1999) and he’s no stranger to racking the tension up to 11 what with Die Hard 2 (1990) and Cliffhanger (1993) in his locker. And it’s a pretty confident director who uses elegiac music to undercut the scenes of horror on a plane falling out of the sky, with passengers battered by all sorts of missiles, not to mention a plane on fire, and huge holes being torn through the fuselage and people being sucked out.
It’s not a hijack thank goodness and the plane doesn’t land in a country riven with civil war or endangered by terrorists. Instead, calamity is caused by a faulty mobile phone that sets fire to a piece of luggage in the cargo hold which subsequently engulfs the plane. Karaoke king Rich (Ben Kingsley) is the captain, but he doesn’t last long, trapped in the cockpit after the crash and waiting with stiff upper lip for death.
There’s nothing original about the passengers and there’s no actor in a breakout role here. There’s a small child (Molly Belle Wright) who’s obnoxious to her brother, their parents caught in the middle of a conjugal exercise in the toilet when the plane goes down, a couple of odious characters – one a bully, the other just the kind of rude entitled guy (Angus Sampson) always stirring up trouble – and a younger couple struggling to commit. And then it’s just perm a dozen hazardous situations from the aftermath of the crash, whether it’s the bits of the plane that are still afloat beginning to be swallowed up by the sea, or those trapped in the part that’s stuck upside down on the seabed, or those being picked off by a posse of sharks, plus the usual tension between the survivors.
There’s a nod to The Italian Job (1969) when to keep the plane wreck on an even keel some passengers have to go into watery back. And while you can’t get away from Jaws (1975) or the wild Under Paris (2024), the sharks here don’t need much of an ominous introduction, either via musical motif or scientific mumjo-jumbo explaining their unlikely presence (hardly required since they’re just where you’d expect to find them). No sooner has the first fin appeared than they’re lopping off body parts. They’re more athletic than I’ve seen from the breed, liable to heave themselves out of the water onto a life raft and even capable of downing a helicopter.
And our Ben isn’t the commanding hero one usually requires in a movie like this. He’s clearly as traumatized as the rest of them, and getting a sock in the mouth (literally) from passengers slagging him off for crash-landing in the first place. It does play kinda safe where the death toll is concerned. The two kids ain’t going to be anybody’s lunch any time soon and the commitment-phobic couple are too sweet to knock off. But after that any one is game for death.
Some excellent twists including a rescue boat that can’t come close enough to rescue the survivors because the water is too shallow around a dangerous reef.
The scenes on board the aircraft as it starts to come apart, engines falling off, the shell of the plane sprung loose, and passengers killed by falling luggage or anything else loose in the air, are just horrific.
This was actually a movie that flopped so badly on U.S. release that it didn’t make it to our shores and while it’s a good fit for Amazon as a streamer, it’s had more thought put into the production than is normal for the streamers.
Hugely enjoyable.
