Netflixare ready to board one of Wes Craven’s final gifts this July, as it adds one of the leanest, most rewatchable nail-biters of the 2000s. StarringCillian Murphylong before he was recognized by The Academy with his Best Actor Oscar win for Christopher Nolan’sOppenheimer, the 85-minute thrill ride also featuring the incredibleRachel McAdamsis probably one of the most underrated movies of Craven’s career, as he veers from outright horror to dark, claustrophobic suspense that keeps you on the edge of your economy seat.
Released in 2005,Red Eyeearned an 80 percent critical score on Rotten Tomatoes but has rarely had a decent run on streaming, so there will be many people who have either never seen it or completely forgotten it exists that will be thrilled to find it coming to the ever-accessible library of Netflix.
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WhileCraven is known mostly for hisNightmare on Elm Streetmoviesand other groundbreaking horrors, the set-up ofRed Eyedoesn’t include monsters of the supernatural kind and has an incredibly simple set-up. Rachel McAdams plays Lisa Reisert, a Miami hotel manager catching the last flight out of Dallas after her grandmother’s funeral. Murphy’s Jackson Rippner who is in the seat next to her, seems to be a regular guy, if a little jittery and on edge about flying. However, things take a dark turn when Rippner reveals that he has Reisert’s father hostage and if she doesn’t aid him in an assassination, then her father will die. Obviously, being trapped on a plane is not the ideal place to be in this situation, and while the movie does have several tense action sequences, it is the tight, airless atmosphere that makes it a thrill-ride from start to finish.
‘Red Eye’ Is a Perfect Example of Craven’s Best Work
AlthoughRed Eyeis not a horror movie, there are plenty of jump-scares, blood, and moments of terror to see it tread a tightrope across multiple genres. The movie was shot in less than a month by the master filmmaker, and mostly plays out as a two-hander between its leads, which allowed both stars to show off what they could do with very little space and some close expression-based shots that are more effective than a wide chase shot.
Murphy was still relatively unknown at the time, with the film landing three years after hisbreak-out role in Danny Boyle’s28 Days Later, and in the same year he played Jonathan Crane in Nolan’sBatman Begins, but the steely-eyed menace of his role inRed Eyecertainly helped to show off his range, and was a small glimmer of what was to come. Meanwhile, McAdams did an exceptional job of portraying a woman in panic, but who never becomes hysterical, and simply finds that she has to use every bit of her wits to outsmart her tormentor before the end of the flight.
At a time when many movies require a little homework to be fully enjoyed,Red Eyeis a movie that you can just throw on, buckle in, and enjoy in a relatively short space of time. This July, fans of Murphy, McAdams, and the late, great Wes Craven can appreciate one of the most underrated suspense thrillers of the noughties.
Source: Netflix
