Movies
[BD Review] ‘Airborne’ Barely Gets Off The Ground
Reviewed by James A. Janisse
Airborne, an Image Entertainment production, premiered earlier this year at the British International Film Festival. It’s been getting billed as a horror film, but it’s more of a thriller or mystery, at least until the second half. The main drawing point seems to be Mark Hamill, though his role is confined to a subplot that never gets off the ground (zing!). The A-story follows a small group of passengers on a red eye flight in the middle of a huge Atlantic storm. Some passengers begin to disappear, others notice and freak out, and the whole thing escalates into a hijacking with a supernatural twist.
Airborne grabs you pretty quickly with its sleek and sexy style, and although you might think back to Final Destination as director Dominic Burns briefly checks-in with all the passengers before they board, it’s easy to just go along with it and enjoy the ride. The movie will seem familiar because it’s cliche, going so far as to include a menacing trumpet flair after a character announces a murder, but most of the time that doesn’t work against it. The characters, for instance, aren’t anything more than simple stereotypes – pompous old rich guy, wise-cracking military buddies, a young horny couple – but put those stereotypes on a small plane and make them panic and it’s still a lot of fun to watch.
An airplane is a great location for a film like this and unlike Wes Craven’s 2005 film Red Eye, Airborne never abandons the setting for safer ground. The whole thing feels claustrophobic and eerie, especially as the passengers slowly start to piece together that things aren’t right. One, a frequent flier, realizes that the plane is turning when it should be flying straight; another sees a spot of blood on the floor. There’s a sort of Twilight Zone feel to it all, and although it later adapts more slasher elements, picking off the passengers one-by-one, the movie always escalates nicely, raising the tension and excitement in tandem with the body count.
There are some things that feel pretty amateur. Most of the dialogue is just plain bad. Strangers open up to one another and share life stories, the hijackers comprehensively explain their motive and plan, and worst of all is when Julian Glover delivers a monologue over the plane speakers. When the film takes its disappointing supernatural turn, even that gets talked to death, the spirit onboard explained in full detail to the characters and audience. Combined with cheap-looking flashbacks that shade in murder scenes better left blank, it’s obvious that writer Paul Chronnell needs to learn more about “show, don’t tell”.
In case you’re wondering about Mark Hamill, the man does a good job with his role, though he’s nearly unrecognizable in both appearance and sound. That is, until he yells. As soon as he starts yelling you can hear Luke Skywalker all the way down. His character’s storyline, an air traffic controller on his last shift before retirement, is mostly just padding, sometimes getting put on hold long enough to be forgotten. It’s a bit of a shame, but like I said, he works with what he’s given and it’s definitely the stand-out performance of the film. Much better than fellow Star Wars cast member Julian Glover, whose awful lines are croaked out with an elderly rasp that comes off as cheesy.
Airborne has a promising take-off but never develops any substance. When it’s not being cliche, it’s not making sense, and it relies so much on its flashy style that it sometimes substitutes special effects for plot points. With a little more time in the writing phase, Airborne might have been a successful airplane thriller, but as it stands, it’s mostly a let-down.
Hollywood tends to learn all of the wrong lessons when confronted with an indie success story that doesn’t follow the established rules of the industry. For instance, instead of accepting that the massive success of Backrooms has more to do with Kane Parsons’ individual talent as an established artist who has been producing high-quality videos since the pandemic (combined with the popularity of liminal horror among younger audiences), producers are now trudging through old Reddit posts looking for the next viral meme that studios think might have the potential to be turned into a cash cow.
This is by no means a new phenomenon, and I think one of the most pertinent examples of Hollywood misunderstanding what makes a movie work has to be the aftermath of The Blair Witch Project. While Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s genre-defining movie proved that POV camerawork and lo-fi aesthetics can captivate mainstream audiences when backed by a genuinely compelling story, there was a sudden trend of filmmakers attempting to appear hip by incorporating found footage into their films as if the occasional presence of diegetic recordings was enough to make a movie seem “hip”.
That’s why the 2000s were such a frustrating period for found footage fans, as the genre was still mostly relegated to obscure indie productions while studios only teased us with the format’s narrative potential. And yet, talented filmmakers can tell compelling stories under any circumstances, and this is how we get to the weird world of found footage bonus features produced alongside traditional movies.
Diegetic filmmaking may not necessarily be easier than conventional camerawork (it’s a lot harder to simulate reality without the added toolbox of cinematic editing), but it’s certainly a hell of a lot cheaper. That’s why it makes sense that plenty of high profile projects invested in found footage bonus content in order to add value to their home video releases – a once profitable industry that is sorely missed in the current media landscape.
The irony here is that many of these found footage extras were a little too good when compared to their promotional origins. With that in mind, I’d like to take a closer look at three examples of found footage bonus features that were better than the movie they were meant to enhance!
3. Halloween: Resurrection (2002): WebCam Special
I might lose some of my horror cred for admitting this, but Halloween: Resurrection was actually the first Halloween film I ever saw. Thankfully, this misguided entry didn’t scare me off from watching the other movies in the series, but even as a teenager I recognized that the flick’s premise of an online streaming show gone wrong had some merit to it – it’s just too bad that these ideas were never fully realized in the feature itself.
It was only years later that I discovered the fabled WebCam Special on Resurrection’s physical media release and got the film I had always wanted. This 41-minute cut of the film is by no means a masterpiece, but excluding everything except for the found footage elements of the production somehow transforms this ill-advised sequel into a deeply unsettling exercise in voyeuristic cinema.
In fact, I’d argue that the long takes of Michael simply moving through the house without calling attention to himself are much closer to John Carpenter’s original vision of the bogeyman than any of the exaggerated sequels that depict The Shape as something more akin to a superpowered Jason Voorhees. It’s just a shame that the franchise would never explore this format again.
2. Believers (2007): The Quanta Group Videos
Daniel Myrick’s Believers is by no means a bad movie, with this direct-to-video thriller following a duo of paramedics who find themselves captured by a deranged death cult inspired by all the worst aspects of Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate. Unfortunately, the Blair Witch alumni’s low-budget exploration of religious madness was quickly forgotten simply because most people didn’t bother to engage with the other half of the experience by exploring the DVD menu.
Within the disc’s extras, Myrick actually included in-universe interviews and orientation videos meant to expand the Quanta Group’s backstory and beliefs. These found footage recordings greatly enhance The Believers by providing much-needed context for some of the film’s scariest moments. There’s even a wonderfully creepy epilogue sequence here as another group explores the cult’s dilapidated compound after the events of the film.
While it’s baffling that this material didn’t make it into the movie itself through in-universe cutaways (especially IO’s darkly humorous interview), watching it alongside Myrick’s film turns the whole thing into a highly compelling multi-media experience.
1. Dawn of the Dead (2004): The Lost Tape & Special Report: Zombie Invasion
I’ve always considered 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake to be Zack Snyder’s best film (though most of the flick’s qualities are the result of James Gunn’s excellent script) even if it fails to capture the social anxieties of Romero’s 1978 original. However, this apocalyptic production is also the perfect example of an expensive project being overshadowed by the low-budget bonus features on its own home video release.
You see, the Dawn of the Dead DVD actually boasts two separate found footage short films that I find much scarier than the movie they’re marketing. The Lost Tape: Andy’s Terrifying Last Days Revealed is a somber video diary written by Gunn and starring Bruce Bohne as the ill-fated Andy – a minor character in the main film who becomes trapped in his own gun store when the zombies attack. Then there’s my personal favorite, Special Report: Zombie Invasion, a fully simulated news program starring Babylon 5’s Richard Biggs (as well as Bruce Boxleitner) that chronicles the spread of the undead virus.
Not only do these bonus features add context to Snyder’s film, but I’d argue that they make for a better standalone viewing experience than the so-called “main attraction”. Special Report honestly feels like a charming low-budget adaptation of Max Brooks’ World War Z novel (despite coming out a couple of years before that book was published), and I adore how The Lost Tapes turns Andy into a genuinely tragic figure.
These obviously aren’t the only found footage extras worth revisiting (for instance, I adore that Skull Island mockumentary that accompanied the special edition of Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake), but I figured that the three aforementioned projects could provide us with a snapshot of a curious moment in popular culture where found footage could still impress viewers despite not being quite as respected by the studio system.
That being said, don’t forget to sound off in the comments below if you can think of any other found footage bonus features that deserve a shout-out! After all, I’d love to see this trend of diegetic extras make a comeback in modern times – especially where found footage-heavy movies like Backrooms are concerned.
You must be logged in to post a comment.