A life is plenty of things, to get poetic about it, but strictly based on arithmetic, what else is a lifespan but a period of time? A life is a collection of days, each one being 24 hours long. None of us know how many of those we’re going to get. Many of us spend plenty of energy on ways not to think about that. Some of us are all too aware. Martin Scorsese, who one could make a solid case for as being the greatest living working filmmaker, has recently been giving interviews to that effect. Now entering his eighties, Scorsese is thinking about how many more movies he’ll get to make. Luckily for us, he’s been unusually prolific for a filmmaker of his caliber. Less luckily, nobody gets to make movies forever. It feels like one of the many cruel realities of this mortal existence. Can’t some of us get unlimited time? Or at least a few extra innings? Can’t Martin Scorsese, at least, just to name one?
I could name others. Horror-cinema lovers worldwide lost the brilliant Wes Craven in August of 2015. It felt way too soon, although he was already 76 when he died. And by just about every last account, Wes Craven, the professor emeritus of horror, in addition to being a scholar, was also a gentleman. Couldn’t we have had a couple more years of him? It is the oldest observation there is, but it really does feel like the wrong people keep hanging in there while the best of us get denied the precious additional moments they so richly deserve. It also feels like Wes Craven, much like George A. Romero, strained against the expectation to continue delivering work in only the one genre. He clearly wanted to do more, despite being better at making scary movies than just about anybody who ever lived. You can sort of see it in something like A VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN. You can absolutely see it in MUSIC OF THE HEART. And you can see it in 2005’s RED EYE.
RED EYE, which was to be one of the master’s final films (after this, there was only MY SOUL TO TAKE and SCREAM 4), isn’t really a horror movie at all. In a different world, i.e. one where the studio system never ended, it’d never even be mentioned alongside horror films. It only gets “branded” alongside horror titles because its director made, to name just one, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, one of the greatest horror films ever made. RED EYE is a good old-fashioned Hollywood thriller. Reviews at the time and to this day refer to RED EYE as “Hitchcockian,” but that betrays a lack of awareness of what Alfred Hitchcock was up to with his work. That said, if invoking the hallowed name of Hitchcock brings extra viewers to what is still a lesser valued entry in Wes Craven’s filmography, I’ll allow it. Here’s the fair point of comparison: Wes Craven knew how to generate fear in an audience at the same level of mastery that Alfred Hitchcock knew how to generate suspense. It turns out, however, on the basis of this evidence, that Wes Craven was pretty damn masterful at the suspense game too.
Maybe differentiating “fear” and “suspense” is as fruitless an exercise as trying to define what is and what isn’t horror. But maybe there’s a simple way to look at it: Suspense is situational. It’s built by screenwriting and plot and filmmaking craft. Fear is more instant, more pervading. In A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, you’re afraid of Freddy Krueger the second you see him: Before that, even. In RED EYE, you’re not worried about Jackson Rippner (I know, get used to it) until the moment he identifies himself as a threat. And while Freddy is going to linger long after the credits roll, that’s not the experience of a thriller like RED EYE. Once you’re off the ride, you’re done. You’re relieved it’s over, and you may or may not want to go again, it’s probably not going to haunt you.
As much as the straights malign the horror genre, RED EYE isn’t arguably as profound as something like A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. But that’s not a critique! RED EYE functions precisely as built. It’s an exciting night at the movies! (Or at home, or on your phone on the treadmill wherever you end up watching it.) It’s the story of Lisa, a hotel manager who boards a red-eye flight from Texas to Florida and finds that the initially nice guy in the seat beside her – the aforementioned Jackson Rippner – isn’t any kind of nice guy, but who in fact needs Lisa to use her access so he and his partners can assassinate a government official staying in her hotel, and he’s willing to have her father murdered if she doesn’t comply.
It’s a simple premise. It’s an airport-novel of a movie (ironically, or aptly). It’s pulled off with perfection, top-to-bottom. I was interested to revisit RED EYE recently after seeing Cillian Murphy in OPPENHEIMER, which frames him so indelibly as a sort of beautiful skeleton. Murphy broke out internationally when Danny Boyle cast him in 2002’s 28 DAYS LATER. He didn’t really pop again until that summer of 2005, when Christopher Nolan cast him (for the first time) in BATMAN BEGINS as Jonathan Crane, The Scarecrow. That one came out a couple months before RED EYE, which was a far more modest hit, but still a hit, solidifying Murphy as a star. He’s a fantastic actor and he’s great in RED EYE. After initial viewing, I wondered if maybe Murphy was a little underwhelming as the villain, Jackson Rippner. He’s totally charming and you can see why Lisa likes him, even though he gives his name as Jackson Rippner. (The script plays at the idea that this is an obvious alias, but to my memory, it never ends up confirming that. For all I know, that’s supposed to be the character’s name.) But he never quite hits intimidating. He’s always just a little too pretty and ethereal for that. But see, I’m forgetting my own theorizing about fear versus suspense. For Murphy as Rippner to be a great villain in RED EYE, you don’t have to be scared just looking at him. You only have to believe in the gravity of the situation and in the character’s seriousness to follow through with his sadistic claims, and between Murphy and Craven and Carl Ellsworth’s screenplay, mission accomplished. (Fun footnote I only registered after clicking around IMDb, but Ellsworth ended up writing the 2009 remake of Wes Craven’s THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT.)
Cillian Murphy gets the showier part, but RED EYE wouldn’t work without Rachel McAdams, who by 2005 was roaring in on an unstoppable star-making run of films: MEAN GIRLS, THE NOTEBOOK, WEDDING CRASHERS, and then this, all hitting theaters within a little more than a year. That’s a really solid foundation for movie stardom – the middle two, regardless of what anyone may think of the movies, were likable ingénue roles, and MEAN GIRLS of course was something a little more toothy. But of all those early parts, I like McAdams best in RED EYE. She is playing more of a young adult, a professional trying to keep it together under real trauma and loss and stress. Ellsworth’s script and McAdams’ performance are both admirably efficient at sketching the broad strokes and feathering in small hints as to deeper life experiences Lisa has had before boarding that plane. RED EYE is above all about the story, but there’s just enough character work on the part of both actors and filmmakers that you’re on this person’s side, if not fully in her head. McAdams has great chemistry not just with Murphy, but with Brian Cox as Lisa’s straight-shooter of a father, with Jayma Mays as Lisa’s colleague Cynthia, , with TV-movie mainstay Jack Scalia in a small part, with just about every bit player in the film. This is a real old-school movie-star part, expertly played. Respect to Rachel McAdams.
If there’s anything universal about RED EYE, it’s the fact that airline travel in the post-Bush-Junior era is a nightmare. It’s why you can watch RED EYE today and it still plays, as well as it did almost twenty years ago. Those airports haven’t gotten any friendlier! But when you rewatch the movie, look at how well Wes Craven sets the scene: Again, this is there on the script level already, but the way the various passengers are introduced, before the flight and in the early moments; the way Lisa’s position to them in the plane’s cabin is always entirely clear; the way her relationship to all those bit-player characters (who include Robert Pine, Chris’ dad, a very young Kyle Gallner, and Angela Paton, who you know from GROUNDHOG DAY, trust me) changes once Lisa’s relationship to Jackson Rippner turns adversarial, once Lisa is thrust into the role of protector of the plane. The work done by Wes Craven and his director of photography Robert Yeoman, Wes Anderson’s DP of choice, along with editors Patrick Lussier and Stuart Levy, is just so impressively professional. It’s orchestrated like clockwork, the kind of ground-setting and emotion-manipulating that you don’t notice until once the movie’s done, when you catch your breath and realize, “Man, that was just really well done all around.”
If there’s anything demented and nefarious and twisted about RED EYE, it’s that Brian Cox is playing a loving father. You might never have known Wes Craven directed it if he’d left his name off the credits, except for the fact that it is so masterful. This is not horror by any means, but I am featuring it in my horror series mainly to point out that this most wonderful of horror directors could do so much more even than the already astounding work he is best known for doing. I will admit to something quirky and goofy that I do with my favorite filmmakers: I try to leave one or two of their movies unseen, just so I will always have something to look forward to. It’s hard to do when it comes to guys like Sergio Leone – basically means I haven’t seen THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES all the way through – but happily, many of my other favorite filmmakers were a little more prolific. (For extra credit, guess which of John Carpenter’s movies I intentionally haven’t seen yet!) It’s a dorky little game I play, but obviously it gets to be more bittersweet when it comes to my favorites who aren’t around anymore. It’s terribly sad to be without Wes Craven as a human being. It’s maybe somewhat less sad, but still sad nonetheless, to realize that there are only so many Wes Craven movies in the world. At press time, I still have at least one Wes Craven movie left to see. I wonder how much longer I will wait. There are only so many hours we get to watch all the movies we want to see, after all.
- [THE BIG QUESTION] WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FEMALE ENSEMBLE IN MOVIES? - July 22, 2016
- [IN THEATERS NOW] THE BOY (2016) - January 24, 2016
- Cult Movie Mania Releases Lucio Fulci Limited Edition VHS Sets - January 5, 2016
Tags: Airplanes, Brian Cox, Carl Ellsworth, Cillian Murphy, Dan Foos, Jack Scalia, Jayma Mays, Kyle Gallner, Loren Lester, Marco Beltrami, Patrick Lussier, Rachel McAdams, Robert Yeoman, Stuart Levy, Suspense, The 2000s, Thrillers, Wes Craven
No Comments