RED EYE (2005)

Wes Craven has made some very good horror films over the course of his career. The Last House On The Left, Scream, The Hills Have Eyes, and A Nightmare On Elm Street demonstrate what Craven is capable of when he is on top of his game. Garbage like Shocker, Cursed, Vampire In Brooklyn, and The Hills Have Eyes Part II are examples of Craven at his worst. So on a scale of bad to good Red Eye is stuck somewhere in the middle, leaning more towards the good side of Craven's films, but not quite achieving a cinematic highlights.
The main thing that keeps Red Eye from crashing horribly are the performances by Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams. Cillian Murphy is excellent as the twisted and poorly named Jackson Rippner. Jack works for a group of bad guys that want to murder an important government official along with his family. McAdams effectively plays the pretty Lisa Reisert, an unsuspecting victim who has to outwit Rippner's murderous menace. Rippner's hold over Reisert increases when he threatens to murder her father if she doesn't play along. The reasons given for why the killers need Reisert are dubious to say the least, but the strength of McAdams and Murphy's presentation are so good in the first two thirds of the film that this minor plot faux pas doesn't matter. The first and second act are great, tension filled cinema with Wes Craven perfectly pulling all the right strings. It's basically a psychological cat and mouse game where McAdam's Reisert is doing whatever she can to stall Murphy's Rippner. If she tries anything stupid her Dad will be killed, and if she gives in too easily, an innocent family will be murdered along with a government official. So she has to come up with clever ways to postpone both horrible outcomes and by doing so, only infuriates her new enemy more and more. Everything in the movie works great, until the plane finally lands that is.

Once the plane touches back to earth Red Eye turns into a slightly more adult version of Home Alone. The film completely throws away any sort of logic and just goes into a physical hide and seek battle. These scenes aren't horrible by any means, but its a stark contrast compared to the well crafted atmosphere of the proceeding events. It's basically McAdams throwing lots of miscellaneous items at Cillian Murphy. Pieces of furniture are tossed at him, bats are swung, and he's constantly tripping over things thrown in his way. After seeming like a cool, calm, professional killer at 30,00 ft, Murphy's character suddenly turns into a clumsy dumb-ass on the ground. After such an excellent buildup this stuff is all just a disappointment.
This movie is also weakened by its lack of violence, a surprising point given the pedigree of the films director. When you put killers and assassins in a movie they need to kill people, or at least do something very evil to ensure that the audience builds a true loathing for the characters. Sadly the killers don't do much here besides make some threats and attempt to kill people. Hopefully there will be some sort of director's cut with more violence added to it, but as it stands the theatrical version is really lacking in the aggression department.

So all in all Red Eye is a tale of 2 movies, each seemingly different. The first and better movie is a nicely crafted, tight psychological thriller with the second film being a much weaker but not all bad chase scene leading to a physical confrontation. Wes Craven's career can be described in nearly the same way. Craven is the story of 2 director's, one crafting excellent horror films and the other churning out not so good ones. When you go to see a Wes Craven movie you're never quite certain which director is going to show up for the party, but for the most part, Red Eye is blessed with a director whose focus has long shifted from the disruption of an aptly titled werewolf movie, and is moving onwards and, hopefully upwards.