Altitude (2010)

Director:

Kaare Andrews

Writer:

Paul A. Birkett

             There is something about watching young and beautiful people dying. It has become a standard that the lead protagonists of the mainstream horror movies are teenagers or students who just happen to be very beautiful. Our guess is that the logic behind this is that people (especially Men) will gladly go and watch a movie with a couple of hotties because even if the movie sucks they will at least enjoy the view and it will, more likely, produce greater revenue. Well that's not a bad reasoning if you ask me (Kyle), but it, nevertheless, diminishes the reality and the value of the concept. This movie falls into that mainstream, but it has an original idea behind it promising us something new. This time the teenagers/students are in an airplane. That certainly ruled this one out as being a typical slasher horror flick since they are confined in a small space well above the surface of the earth.

              Plot story: Five teenagers rent a small airplane (how about that folks!) and amidst their flight they get stuck in a mysterious storm. 

              Flying on the airplane is by itself scary. No matter if you have flown many times or if it is your first time the feeling of being so helpless is always there. Anything could go wrong at anytime and there are not so many choices one could take if faced with a problem high up in the air. Well at least the view is pretty, unless it's a cloudy day :).

One may assume that, since the flying is so risky, the planes could only be flown by experienced pilots, but that is not the case here. Here we have a teenager pilot and her friends that decide that the train or the bus drive are too lame for them (that's for losers, right?!). They were probably saying something like: "Lets rent an airplane and get shitfaced while we are at it, woohoooo..." :). So they actually came up with enough money to rent an airplane ( We would like to meet their financial adviser). The stage was set for the inevitable disaster. But wait, there is more! If a fact that there are five teenagers in the air is not enough for a series of disasters then we have a monster that will make sure that something goes wrong.

A monster you say?! Yap, that is right, a monster is in the air (opposite to the "Love is in the air" statement :) ). And it's not any kind of a monster, it's a large squid like creature.

 
Kraken in the air?! :)

              The acting itself was mostly ok, but the main problem are not the actors as much as the badly written script is. There are way too much unbelievable dialogues and situations. The most annoying of the bunch was the bully (Jake Weary). The things his character does are on the edge of retardation. The whole teenage drama issues that get resolved in a confined, small space of an airplane are nothing short of ridiculous. That kind of behavior is passable on some generic horror set in a dark house or similar, but not here. None of the characters are someone you could relate to, so in fact we couldn't care less if they all die at some point. 

              Given all that we were hoping that the main plot surrounding the mysterious monster would, somehow, save the movie from the obvious flaws. When we saw the trailer it reminded us of one of the Twilight Zone episodes. Twilight Zone, in its time, was a synonym of good written mystery with an intriguing plot and an intelligent ending that kept you wondering for days.

Unfortunately that is not the case with this movie as it doesn't hold a candle to the Twilight Zone and its level of deepness. The monster did not scare us at all (at some point we were wondering what it would taste like on a salad, actually that would be a "mega squid salad" judging from its size, it wouldn't be surprising to us if you could buy something like that in Japan or China :) ). The ending of this "mystery" tries to be intelligent, but it falls short in such attempt.

The "monster". Yummi!

              The camera work was very good especially given the fact that 90% of the movie was shot in the small ariplane cabin. Special effects are nothing you will write home about, but are actually quite believable. They are a good example of the fact that you don't need lots of money to create something visually acceptable.

                We all dream of flying, it is the ultimate experience of freedom one could ever imagine to achieve in our reality. We bet that all of you, at least once, dreamed of flying or have looked up to the sky wondering what it would be like. Well the flying part would be fun, but the falling not as much, so in order for that not to happen lets be real and let the flying business to the experienced pilots with years of training behind them. 

The idea of a couple of teenagers flying an airplane is, frankly said, silly. This movie "flew" away very fast from our minds and as such we don't recommend it to anyone. If you, however, must watch it then, at least, get shitfaced like a teenager on an airplane would do :).

TeenAIR - at least they look good

Our score:

Kyle: 2/10

Liz: 2/10