Wes Craven directs this thriller that takes place aboard an
airliner. Rachel McAdams stars as Lisa Reisert, a hotel manager in Miami who has
taken some time off from her job to attend her grandmother’s funeral in Dallas.
Yet she’s still on the job even while she grabs a taxi to get to the airport
to catch the red eye flight home, as Lisa fixes the latest booking crisis over
her cell phone. On top of the usual shenanigans, the hotel is also expecting a
visit from the director of Homeland Security (Jack Scalia), who abruptly changed his schedule
at the last minute, which further freaks out Cynthia (Jayma Mays) the newbie
counter girl who called Lisa for help.
With these crises resolved, Lisa arrives at the airport, only to find that her
plane is delayed. She meets a fellow passenger, a charming young man with the
unusual name of Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy). After sharing a pre-flight
drink with him, Lisa is pleasantly surprised to see that she’s seated right next
to Jack on the plane. Yet her pleasure soon turns to terror when Lisa discovers
that Jack Rippner shares more than a similar name with the maniac who stalked
London over a hundred years ago, for he’s also a ruthless killer who has
targeted Lisa for a very special reason. And so begins a unique and thrilling
game of cat and mouse from the creator of the Nightmare On Elm Street films,
where a seemingly innocent meeting on a plane turns into a battle of wits with
Lisa and a psycho who's sitting right beside her all the time.
With Red Eye, Wes Craven has proven that his directorial skills encompass far
more than just the slasher films that he began his career with. If the Scream
movies showed off Craven’s flair for humor, and Music From The Heart showed his
tender side, then Red Eye proves that he can helm a gripping, nail-biting
thriller that would make Alfred Hitchcock proud. Rachel McAdams is superb as the
classic Hitchcockian heroine, which is an ordinary person who finds herself
caught up in extraordinary events. Her Lisa is a determined, quick thinking
woman who never gives up, and who proves to be more than a match for Murphy’s
Jack, who turns out to be a very memorable screen villain. Special features
include "Making Of Red Eye" and "Wes Craven: A New Kind Of Thriller" which are
a pair of better than average documentaries that look at the production, as well
as its director. There’s also an audio commentary featuring Craven and his
producers, and a gag reel, which is a very funny collection of bloopers and
outtakes from the film. Smartly directed from an intelligent and witty script
by Carl Ellsworth, Red Eye is great fun. --SF
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