I was asked to review the American film “In Flight” indirectly by one of its executive producers. Usually, a request to review emanates from a distributor of the film or its retained public relations firm with detailed information on its cast and a brief plot description. In this case I was provided with a trailer and a viewing link for “In Flight”.
Without a film synopsis I had open expectations and thoughts it was a film relating to terror in the sky films that may have evolved from Arthur Hailey’s “Runway 08” and its 1956 television adaptation “Flight into Danger” where the pilot and co-pilot are incapacitated by food poisoning and a passenger with limited aviation experience takes the controls.
“In Flight” is not entangled with terror in the skies instead being a clever “who’s doing it” a bit a la Agatha Christie.
Claire (Tiffany Smith) meets a friend for a preflight drink and encounters the somewhat mysterious Marco (Cristo Fernández) whom her friend describes as a Mexican Brad Pitt. Left alone with the departure of her friend she imbibes a couple of Martinis leaving her drink unattended. Careless Claire. Marco offers her a lift home in his chauffeured automobile and increasing wooziness sets in. She awakes next in the airplane on her flight to Paris not realizing how she even boarded the airplane.
Initially you are struck with tsunami of curiosity. Was Claire raped with Marco spiking her drink?
Your curiosity, and perhaps suspicion, intensifies with only a handful of passengers on the airplane totally out of today’s reality of jam-packed sardine cans. The passenger cabin is outdated seemingly of a decommissioned airplane. Claire finds a note addressed to her tucked into a safety card stating find the source or we take the plane down. Further notes ensue and the passengers she converses with talk of hijackings, deadly puzzle games and the like.
The flight attendants are acting strangely giving her menacing stares and trying to restrict her movements as if they are directing “a show”.
After a stabbing of a passenger, Claire is cornered by the passengers with one of the flight attendants offering her some water to calm her down. Oops the woozies again and down she goes.
Claire wakes up and our apprehension calmed our curiosity is galvanized again. Only Marco appears in the otherwise empty cabin. At this point I reached my conclusion based on an offhand comment made by Marco that her deceased father would have been proud of her. Bingo! I figured this all out as the airplane was really the ferry on the River Acheron taking dead souls to the afterlife. Claire had died! Boy was I creative but dead wrong.
The film is more a journey than a flight.
The director is Bo Youngblood.
Available on VOD.
You can watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrXwo9zAlzU&t=4s
RKS 2024 Movie Rating 87/100.
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