Air Tactics

It's official: the old gore-masters are growing up. Sam Raimi, who brought us the "Evil Dead" trilogy, is helming the "Spider-man" series. Peter Jackson, formerly of "Meet the Feebles" and "Dead Alive" (widely thought to be the goriest film ever made), made us all Tolkien fans. And now Wes Craven, the man behind "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Scream" among other horror classics, has crafted an old fashioned thriller with hardly a cup of blood spilled throughout.

In "Red Eye", Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams) and the preposterously-named Jackson Rippner (a typically creepy Cillian Murphy), meet cute in the Dallas airport before an exceedingly delayed flight to Miami. They trade some light small-talk and share a drink at an airport bar until they realize that, coincidentally, they're seated next to each other on the flight. The film takes place largely on the plane as Lisa discovers that, surprise!, this being a Wes Craven movie, their seating arrangement was far from a coincidence after all.

While Lisa and Jackson are in the air, the film is at its best. The script by Carl Ellsworth finds ways to believably play cat-and-mouse in the confined space. As the plane descends, however, so too does the film's grip on reality; suddenly Jackson, and worse yet Airport Security, become bumbling fools. What remains feels like Mr. Craven trying to wrap things up as quickly as possible before any character's actions are questioned.

In the end, "Red Eye" doesn't amount to much, but it wasn't trying to. As a film, it was meant to be a quick, suspenseful trifle. On that level it succeeds. For Rachel McAdams, however, "Red Eye" is much more. Since breaking out as the queen bee (i-t-c-h) in "Mean Girls", she's added "The Notebook" and "Wedding Crashers" to her filmography. But surprisingly, it took "Red Eye" to show that this actress has range. While the film may be over-the-top, Ms. McAdams keeps it grounded with a thoughtful, mature performance. Most importantly, "Red Eye" may signal a new direction for Wes Craven. The director has a wickedly easy grip on suspense, and with the successful transitions of Mr. Raimi and Mr. Jackson, I look forward to seeing what Mr. Craven comes up with next.