FLIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

A journey aboard a Concord Air jumbo 747 on the Los Angeles-Paris route transports a strange refrigerated container. Due to severe turbulence, it is damaged and releases its contents, quickly giving rise to a terrifying nightmare for all its unsuspecting passengers. Certainly, these undead, living dead, or zombies... in short, call them what you prefer... we've seen them in all kinds of settings. First as residents of remote islands, then in small villages, passing through big cities with a stop at huge warehouses or hypermarkets where you find everything, in the basements of a devastated city, and finally across the entire globe, as Romero showed us in his last "Land of the Dead". Never, however, had we seen these "cannibals" invading the airspace inside a huge Boeing 747, so not only on land but also here, in the sky. Produced in 2006 and premiered last year at the Salento Fear Fest Film Festival, "Plane Dead" is directed by debutant Scott Thomas and features a mixed cast of TV actors like David Chisume, seen in series like "Cold Case" and "Las Vegas", Erick Avari ("Law & Order", "Jag" and "NCIS") and from the big screen, like Kevin J. O'Connor ("Deep Rising") and Richard Tyson ("Kindergarten Cop" and "Black Hawk Down"). The beginning isn't the best, but this is due to the fact that the director lingers a bit too much on the introduction of the various characters. After a 30-minute wait (which should have created tension), the film's pace (given that we are on a plane) takes off or almost. The plot indeed continues to have an uneven pace: flat moments of long dialogues alternate with interesting scenes with a good dose of blood. The makeup of the zombies is quite high-level, although honestly I've seen more frightening or better "better" ones, because these, although they remind of the demons of the famous film by Lamberto Bava, are almost not at all. Defending oneself from these beings is already difficult in itself, let alone on a plane where spaces are cramped and especially there is no way out. That's why in every zombie movie that respects itself, firearms cannot be missing... and indeed they are not! "How", you will be asking? Simple! The director, also author of the screenplay along with Sidney Iwanter and Mark Onspaugh, has foreseen that on the plane there is no lack of a "special detainee" guarded by a police officer and a security agent, now present in every plane after September 11. But finally the pace picks up and the living dead now appear from everywhere (beautiful scene of the bathroom) breaking through floors and crawling through the air ducts (another scene that reminds "Demon") chasing those few survivors left. Not a very original film that reminds a lot of "Snakes on a Plane" but that will not disappoint the cult followers of the genre, while for those who are afraid of flying... watch it anyway! Thus, you will have one more reason to continue not taking the plane.