Originally published 8/20/2005
Red Eye
Director: Wes Craven
Writers: Story by Carl Ellsworth and Dan Foos, Screenplay by Carl Ellsworth
Producers: Chris Bender, Marianne Maddalena
Stars: Rachel McAdams, Cillian Murphy, Brian Cox, Jayma Mays, Loren Lester
For over a generation Wes Craven has worn honors as the “Master of Horror”; from Last House on the Left to The Nightmare on Elm Street to the Scream trilogy. Of course, in the movie business this is sort of like being the best in the world at sawing women in half on stage – everyone agrees it takes skill but few would trust you with “classier” entertainments.
Craven knows his roots, and perhaps to acknowledge them he provides one good old-fashioned game of hide and seek with a knife-wielding madman. But the remainder of Red Eye, a more conventional female empowerment thriller, depends not on gore or things leaping from shadows, but on the purer skill he has honed unnoticed during the assembly of his bloody resume – simple armrest-grabbing tension.
What is it about Cillian Murphy’s eyes? When he burst on the scene in 28 Days Later they were perfectly lost and haunted. They were childlike then as they are now, but in this movie and Batman Begins they widen and glint and reveal a soul unclouded by qualms about how evil its impulses are. This time these eyes are trained on Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams), a lonely young woman catching an overnight flight from Dallas to Miami.
She’s a manager at a luxury hotel, and to Jackson Ripner (Murphy), that makes her just the right woman to do him a small favor. He sits next to her on the plane, makes charming small talk, then idly mentions that if she doesn’t do what he says then her father (Brian Cox) will be killed.
The script’s one act of audacity is to build the center section of the movie around this enclosed environment, challenging Craven to whip tension up when what we are looking at much of the time is just two people buckled into their seats talking in low voices. This is what most makes Red Eye worth watching, because he rises to the occasion, not only providing economic introductions to other passengers that will be useful to the story – I like how we can see little girl Rebecca (Brittany Oaks) piece together enough of what is going on to act – but showing sharp instincts for when to cut from Lisa and Ripner out to the wider body of the plane, subtly emphasizing that this nightmare is unfolding in plain sight.
Beyond that the script shows little interest in distinguishing itself – dutifully delivering with no particular finesse clichés like that-trauma-in-my-past-I’ll-overcome-through-this-experience, the news broadcast that sets up the context of the story while never threatening to look like a real news broadcast, and so forth. The movie dashes along at a greyhound-skinny 85 minutes, no time to give more than the flashes of detail we need to get to the next bit of hold-your-breath.
As a vehicle for that the skill of Craven and his leads makes it watchable. Murphy does a masterful job navigating Ripner’s mix of professionalism and petty temper. The subtler and harder job is McAdams’, though. She’s playing a character who is motivated by a whole host of off-screen events, including the grief of a recent loss, that traumatic event I referred to, and concern for the lives of her father and others, both of which are in her hands in a situation where she cannot seem to have both.
It would be easy to get lost trying to play them all at once. But she stays focused, plays the moment honestly but with glimpses of color to suggest what is affecting her now; and within the confines of the movie effectively essays a woman doing her desperate best to think clearly and get free of this fearful situation despite all its knotty difficulties. The best example I think we have seen of this recently is Jodie Foster in Panic Room; McAdams doesn’t nail it that squarely but delivers enough to make the movie succeed.
Eventually the plane must land and the action becomes more conventional running/leaping/hiding/driving stuff. That’s when the movie’s flaws take more prominence, especially Marco Beltrami’s histrionic musical score. But the climax is a crowd-pleaser and the movie doesn’t overstay its welcome.
These genre potboilers aren’t nearly as easy as Craven makes it look in Red Eye – he takes shaky material and elevates it into brisk entertainment. Perhaps it’s too late for a legitimate second act to his career outside of the horror ghetto, but it’s indicative of talent his fans have long been aware of even if the rest of the world hasn’t noticed before. One thing you can say about a guy who saws women in half: he knows how to work a crowd.