Red Eye (2005) Review: A Thriller in Economy Class

Is Red Eye worth watching?

It depends. Red Eye is a tight, efficient airborne thriller with two excellent lead performances, but it is a modest genre piece rather than a classic. Wes Craven gets remarkable tension out of a pair of airline seats, and Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams make the cat-and-mouse game crackle. The reservation is that once the film moves beyond its best idea, it settles for familiar thriller mechanics, and its plot does not bear much scrutiny.

What is Red Eye about?

Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) is a composed, capable hotel manager in Miami, heading home on an overnight flight after a family funeral. In the departure lounge she meets a charming stranger (Cillian Murphy) who, as luck would have it, is seated next to her on the plane. Once they are airborne, his manner changes. He needs her help with a plot targeting a senior government official who is due to stay at her hotel, and if she refuses, a killer waiting outside her father’s house will act.

Red Eye is directed by Wes Craven, best known for his horror films, from a script by Carl Ellsworth. Brian Cox plays Lisa’s father and Jayma Mays her colleague at the hotel. It is an American thriller in English and runs a brisk 85 minutes.

Craven finds horror in a confined space

Red Eye’s central section is a small masterclass in constraint. Lisa cannot scream, cannot run and cannot easily signal anyone, and Craven builds suspense from the ordinary texture of air travel: the drinks trolley, the narrow aisle, the passenger who turns around at the wrong moment, the lavatory door. Every attempt Lisa makes to reach help is a small set piece, and the camera stays close enough to make the cabin feel smaller than it is.

The horror veteran’s instincts show in the pacing. There is no wasted setup, the menace arrives exactly when it should, and the film understands that a threat whispered politely can be scarier than one shouted.

Murphy and McAdams make the duel work

Cillian Murphy is the main reason the film is remembered. His villain begins as a flirtatious, slightly awkward charmer and becomes something icy without ever raising his voice, and the famous pale-blue gaze does a lot of work in close-up. It is a performance of quiet control, all the more unsettling for how reasonable he sounds.

McAdams matches him. She plays Lisa as someone whose professional calm is also a kind of armour, and the film lets her be clever, frightened and resourceful rather than simply victimised. Their scenes together have the rhythm of a negotiation, and the tension comes as much from what she might say as from what he might do.

Where the flight loses altitude

Red Eye is strongest while it stays in its seats. The plot that surrounds the flight, involving hotel logistics, phone calls and a political target, is functional at best, and it depends on coincidences and conveniences that feel thin in hindsight. In its final stretch, the film trades the claustrophobic duel for more conventional chase-and-attack beats, which Craven stages competently but which feel closer to his slasher roots than to the sharper psychological game that came before.

Who should watch Red Eye?

It suits anyone who wants a short, contained thriller with a strong central pairing, and it is a good choice for a night when a two-and-a-half-hour epic feels like too much. Nervous flyers may want to take note. Expect threats, moments of sharp violence and some tense peril, but little gore; it is generally fine for teenagers and adults.

If this is your kind of tension:

• Rear Window, Hitchcock’s defining study of suspense in a single confined space.
• Psycho, another thriller that turns an ordinary setting into something terrifying.
• Gone Girl, for a more ambitious thriller that plays with who can be trusted.

The verdict

Red Eye is an enjoyable, well-crafted thriller that knows its limits: a single great premise, two fine actors and a director who knows how to keep a small space frightening. Its outer plot is thin and its ending conventional, so how much you enjoy it depends on whether a tight genre ride is exactly what you want.

Rating: 3/5