Flight 666 (2018)

I not lying when I say that as I picked this one off of my Amazon Prime list I wasn’t expecting much. The trailer looked very cheesy and it was from the Asylum home of Lavalantula and Sharknado. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy those flicks, but they are goofy as hell. Which made Flight 666 a very big surprise.

Things start off quickly as we are already on the airplane as it is already bouncing along in the middle of a big storm. Some time is spent introducing us to the characters. We meet the flight crew, an air marshal, an army vet on his way home, newlyweds and a few others. This is the slowest part of the movie, but surprisingly the cast is pretty good and does a decent job with it. This is important for later because caring about the characters is key to connecting and enjoying the movie. After this setup the spooky stuff starts happening.

It begins with a nervous flier seeing someone on the wing ala. Shatner’s classic Twilight Zone episode. Only instead of a gremlin it is a ghost! This is followed up by a creepy encounter in the bathroom. He freaks out and is subdued by the marshal. But that is only the beginning as other people start to see stuff. Plus, the food suddenly is filled with maggots and the plane keeps experiencing power failures and other mechanical failures. It is clear that there are ghosts, yes plural, messing with the flight. But why? Well that is the question and one that I won’t spoil with my review.

I’m shocked. Not in a million years did I expect a good ghost story with some jump scares, a couple creepy moments, and an honest to God plot with a mystery that kept my attention until nearly the end. I’ve already said that the cast does a good job, and this is helped by a solid script that gets the action rolling as quickly as possible and keeps its momentum. Between that and being interested in the mystery of the who and why of the haunting I wasn’t bored once during the duration.

The Ghosts look really cool!

It was also nice to see an Asylum movie that was small and simple. They had the resources to tell the story as it takes place on basically three sets. Production values were low and when they used CGI for the ghosts or the plane flying along it was well done. I was pleasantly surprised. Of course, they just had to go with an overblown ending and screw things up. Remember when I said it kept my attention until nearly the end? Let me explain.

With about ten minutes left they give away far too much. I’m not going into detail because I refuse to spoil Flight 666. But what I will say is that after doing a good job keeping everything shrouded in doubt and mystery they reveal it too early. Along those same lines they also manage to screw things up with an overly complicated finale that involves some terrible CGI effects work. After doing so well it was like they couldn’t leave well enough alone. That was disappointing.

In spite of the last paragraph I’m still recommending Flight 666. Avoid any spoilers because after you know the plot I don’t think that it will be nearly as much fun. That also means there is zero reason to re-watch the movie. Once will be enough.

© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer