there's always a vengeful mother

I caught an advance screening of Red Eye tonight, which is Wes (Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street, People Under the Stairs) Craven's new alleged thriller. It's a pretty straightforward movie set against the realities of a post-9/11 terrorst-threat-level world. Rachel McAdams stars.



Not a bad movie overall, but I found I was expecting something more from the man who deconstructed both the monster movie and teenage slasher genres. This was dead straight ahead, and the thrills were alright, but not excessively thrilling. I expected an ending befitting, say, Scream 2 or A New Nightmare. It didn't happen. (In fact, at the end I turned to Eric, who got the passes, and said "And then...?" Eric's comment: "It'll be perfect on TBS!")

Unsurprisingly, because it's a Craven flick you get the 20-comething brunette heroine who partially strips off in the first 15 minutes. Also unsurprisingly, you get the well-spoken, vaguely charming 20-something psychopath male lead who – say it with me now – unsurprisingly chases the female lead around with a long, sharp knife.

Some of the settings weren't bad. Most of the film takes place on an airplane, and it does a decent job of making you think how helpless you are, in a sense, on a plane. As far as gripping psychological drama goes, it didn't do it for me.

Most of the movie I found myself looking for a subtext or subplot or some sign that Craven was trying to do something subversive to the thriller genre, but if he was, it totally escaped me. Maybe there's a reason he took five years off from directing (before coming back, I might add, with Cursed). Mind you, not too bad a job from a screenwriter who also took five years off, and whose previous screenwriting credits include such gems as Cleopatra 2025, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Xena: Warrior Princess.


All in all, not a bad movie, but if you really have the urge to watch it, wait for video, unless you're a serious McAdams fan.