★★★
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”
In 1943, an Allied supply flight from New Zealand to Samo gets a last-minute addition to the crew, Maude Garrett (Moretz) carrying a top-secret case whose contents must be kept upright. Her presence is initially heavily resented by the male crew, and things get increasingly edgy. The plane begins to suffer unusual mechanical problems, which leave Maude trapped in a gun turret on the belly of the plane. They’re apparently being shadowed by Japanese planes, even though they are supposedly out of the combat zone. Worst of all, both Maude and one of the crew members swear blind they have seen bizarre creatures, like winged rats, scrambling around the air-craft, like the fabled “gremlins” of wartime lore.
The first half of this is really good. It’s gripping, despite (or, perhaps, because of?) being set almost entirely in the gun turret, with a claustrophobic intensity that works, building to a sense things are imminently going to kick off.
Then, we find out what’s in the case.
Oh. Is that it? Seriously?
I was expecting something which would tie together the various threads of the plot, including the extraordinary Japanese interest in the flight, and the gremlins. Maybe some kind of occult power device – after all, that was a known obsession of the Nazis, e.g. the Spear of Destiny. Sadly, it isn’t. Instead, it’s another strand, which doesn’t connect to any of the others, and indeed, appears to have strayed in from a soap-opera. Rather than uniting everything, the film thereafter continues to have a trio of separate, independent stories, that show up as necessary for the plot.
But I think the moment where all hope of this getting our seal of approval left the building, was when our heroine fell from the plane, only to be blown back into it without injury by the explosion of a Japanese fighter below. I’d seen that in the trailer, and hoped it seemed more plausible in the context of the narrative. I’m afraid it wasn’t. The unwelcome switch in tone continues, until the film ends with Maude chasing down and having a fist-fight with one of the gremlins, which comes out of nowhere in terms of her character.
Now, I wasn’t expecting an authentic period piece. The (rather nifty) throbbing electronic score from Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper is clearly designed to take you out of the nineteen forties. However, initially, it seems grounded, to an almost painful extent, as Maude has to endure banter which more or less starts at unpleasant. Up until the reveal mentioned above, it’s more gritty than fantasy, and works all the better for it.
Perhaps this is related to the rather unpleasant issue during production, when the writer of the original screenplay, Max Landis, was blacklisted after sexual abuse allegations emerged. Director Liang rewrote it, though Landis still gets a screen credit, and it does feel like two different films bolted together at the hip. I far preferred the first half, and the presence of Moretz, who is great as ever, is unable to hold things together. Much like the plane in which her character flies, the movie eventually falls apart and goes down in flames.
Dir: Roseanne Liang
Star: Chloë Grace Moretz, Taylor John Smith, Beulah Koale, Nick Robinson