- Directed by: Steven Quale
- Written by: Stephen Susco
- Stars: Tom Brittney, Holly White, Betsy-Blue English
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-nf8hUFd98
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s stuff on a plane. Flight 298 from New Orleans to Seattle encounters strange events in the air. Things go on for quite a while being weird and random before any kind of explanation surfaces. It’s entertaining, above average in quality, but overall neither of us thought it was really great.
Spoilery Synopsis
We get a cryptic message from a man aboard a plan that swears what we are about to see is real. He says it would be terrible if what’s on this plane makes it to the ground. We then see some found footage of the passengers in the airport before the flight. Black Box: Flight 298 comes on, and we hear the pilot talking about a hurricane and electrical disturbances just ahead, and then contact is lost.
We watch the various passengers board the plane, not as found footage, and many of them seem obnoxious and rude. We also see a large crate being loaded “handle with extreme care.” Chen puts on a tin-foil hat to avoid the cosmic rays up there.
The plane takes off normally, but before long, one man starts coughing. Another guy is a stereotypical privileged businessman-jerk. Jeremy is sad over a break-up, but he makes friends with Chloe, a little girl waiting for the restroom the sick man is camped out in. He then makes friends with Emma, one of the stewardesses.
The sick old man sees a light outside the plane and starts yelling, “We’re all gonna die up here!” After a few minutes of panic, he grabs his chest and tries to open the door. He then coughs up a bunch of blood and passes out. Jeremy is a doctor, and it’s soon clear that the old man is dead.
Suddenly, all the dogs in the hold start barking all at once. The copilot goes down to check, but it looks normal. He speaks to them, and they all get real quiet, real fast. Jeremey notices that the lightning outside is not normal; it’s red and green and moving.
Jeremy and Chloe, the people who see the lights, start getting headaches. Their ears are bleeding. Or was it their contact with the sickly old man? Turns out, a lot of people on the flight have started feeling bad. The captain decides to divert to another airport.
The pilot and co-pilot see weird lights in the sky, and it’s not lightning. They call to see if the military is testing anything tonight, and they aren’t since the weather is too clear. Our plane, however, is in a major storm. The pilot says it looks like a category five hurricane.
The pilot and co-pilot stop responding for no obvious reason, and the plane might not have anyone flying. From outside, we see a special cloud surrounding and following the plane, and it’s full of lights.
Suddenly, the turbulence stops; have they landed? Could they be on a black site for quarantine? Jeremy takes another look at the old man and comes to the conclusion that the electrical system blew up his pacemaker. They all hear footsteps on the roof of the plane.
Something’s trying to get in. The door opens, and tentacles pull one of the passengers out. The businessjerk, who’s been hiding in the restroom, gets splattered in the face and might be possessed. A spider-like tentacle monster then comes on board and starts killing people.
Things get weird at this point. The characters that we know hide in the cargo area, but they probably aren’t alone. The dogs have been taken over, as is the Air Marshal.
Jeremy opens the door, and they see that they haven’t landed, they’re just sorta floating high in the sky. As they look for parachutes, one guy tries to open that big crate we saw earlier. Turns out, that’s Jeremy’s recently dead wife. They find the parachutes, but it’s not enough for all of them. They all record messages on their phones in case they die.
Chloe hears her (dead) mother’s voice, telling her to open the door. She opens it, and the monster gets her. Emma jumps out of the plane with a chute, but Jeremy stays behind. Emma gets pulled back up and drawn back to the plane, but she does drop the bag of cellphones.
The plane starts to move again, so Jeremy makes his way out of hiding. One of the alien bugs has taken over Jeremy’s dead wife’s body and they have a talk. She explains that this happens to most airplanes, as the aliens slowly possess one set of passengers after another. “We will have taken your world, one body at a time…”
The pilot reports that everything’s fine now, no one is sick, and they’re ready to land. Jeremy comes out of the cargo area and sees that the plane is full of passengers, just like before. They all look normal. He kills the pilot and co-pilot and takes over the plane. He points it down and tries to crash it, but the auto landing system takes over and lands the plane safely.
The SWAT team comes in and takes Jeremy into custody. He sounds like a lunatic, so no one listens to his warnings.
Brian’s Commentary
It’s a mix of stuff happening on the plane mixed in with found footage of… other stuff. Fortunately, the found footage bits are few and far between once the action starts. There’s a lot of stuff going on in the beginning that never really gets explained, but most questions are answered by the end.
I was entertained, but it’s not great.
Kevin’s Commentary
It felt too weird and random for quite a while, but it does eventually explain things a bit.
I wondered if it was going to go full found footage, but that was only something sprinkled throughout.
It was pretty entertaining, but also pretty forgettable. Like eating potato chips. The details won’t stick with me.
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