lathe-of-heaven
If I had read the reviews here beforehand, I probably would not have watched this movie. Usually, I read the External Reviews first, especially sites that I go to most for Genre films, and in this case I unfortunately did not get from them that this was so similar in tone and theme to the 'SAW' films, of which I have absolutely NO interest.Like almost everyone here has said in their summaries and reviews, the IDEA was pretty good and intriguing and I was genuinely interested to see what they would do with such a premise. But, although they pulled it off for about the first 45 minutes or so pretty well, after that point in just basically degenerated into a mental torture test. I won't give too much away even though I have checked the possible Spoilers box (something that I rarely do) but in my lowly and wretched opinion, if they had just taken the film in another direction, ANYTHING else, to give it more depth and dimension other than just some entity clearly trying to torture them mentally and forcing them into generic impossible 'SAW'-like situations of having to do something nasty or suffer the consequences, then it certainly could have been more interesting. At about this point in the film, for the next 10-15 minutes, the focus was simply showing how distressed everyone was and their constant crying, begging, and pleading, and not much else... It got REAL old, REAL fast.For me personally, I have NO interest in just seeing people suffer for the sake of suffering. Don't like it. Don't want to see it. In THIS case, the torture was pretty much mostly mental, except the brief excerpts that they showed on the monitors of what was happening to others. So, when it became apparent to me at about this point in the movie that all they were harping on was the continuous suffering of the people on the plane, I just lost all interest because the story wasn't really going anywhere. If they just hadn't KEPT harping on that repetitive one-note thing and actually taken the story in a much more interesting direction, then despite the distasteful elements so far, I think I would have been a LOT more inclined to want to see what was going to happen. But, that just wasn't the case.The acting was actually not too bad considering the high emotions and usually how actors in scenes like that in films like this tend to overdo it or do a really bad job of it. And the personality types of the individuals were not so caricatured and shallow as they usually are, and actually came across as somewhat REAL people, so there is that... But ultimately, the film makers were only interested in showing the suffering of the people, as if THAT alone was the primary entertainment. But, sorry... that just ain't my thing. What I feel would have HUGELY improved the film would be if they had at about the 45 minute mark where things were getting pretty serious and the people were beginning to realize that this was no 'game', at THAT exact point if they had concentrated the story on how the people could have used their wits and tried to come up with some plan to get out of their situation, then THAT would have kept my interest and shifted the focus off of all the unpleasantness. But, no... they just kept dragging it out, minute by minute, repetitively doing the SAME thing with each person, dragging them into the bathroom, forcing them to put on the headphones, and telling them what awful things they had to do. Just dumb... To me it seemed that there had already been PLENTY of that and the audience already bloody KNEW the seriousness of the situation. So, to me, LOGICALLY at that point it would seem that the audience would be getting a little impatient and thinking, 'Okay, now how the hell are they going to get out of this...?' So, after about 15 more straight minutes of crying, pleading, begging, and suffering, I had pretty much had it with this film.So, all I can say is, if that is your idea of a good time, watching a group of people being mentally distressed and tortured, then sure, go for it. And yeah, the point WAS being made about Social Media and all that, fine... But, a movie is a movie, and either it is a GOOD movie or a BAD movie (usually something in between...) In this case I felt that it started off very well, and then became a BAD movie...It's a shame that it turned out to be so disappointing. With such an intriguing premise, they really should have come up with something far better...
ldnfilmlover
the beginning of the movie is extremely thought-provoking and plays on contemporary concerns about internet privacy, but then it all turns a bit silly and random with all the killing..i could almost tolerate the silly random killing if it wasn't for the TERRIBLE cringe-worthy acting from everyone starting with the plane voice-over/tannoy, and the unrealistic (typical of most Brit horror) script trying to portray shock and fear. i think it would have been way more sinister if the plane voice-over was robotic instead of the judging tone similar to the narrator of 'come dine with me'.i was very disappointed that after the tense 'round 1', instead of getting more cruel and intrusive, the writers ran out of ideas and brought out the killing.
trashgang
This is a weird one to review, I mean, there's almost no blood in it and still I wouldn't advice it to kids to watch this flick. And it's easy to say that it is in the line of Saw, watch it, somebody giving orders to 4 players on a plane. It is Chris Crow his second attempt to make a full feature and for being filmed just on a plane he did a fine job. Due being less on horror I still kept watching what was really going on and I even laughed a bit with the inside joke about Big Brother. The acting was really good and you start to know the 4 players in the beginning and you must admit that if you were in the same game you wouldn't like to reveal yourself. Everybody has his dark secrets and this is in fact were it's all about. It made me even think about the internet, it's a fact everything you do is being watched or registered on some server.The story itself did have some twists but the end I personally didn't like. But at the end of the day, it is a suspense full thriller with some pieces of torture, I would say without offending somebody, if you can't stand the gore in Saw than watch this one.Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5
