Director: Ben J. Williams
Year: 2024
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: Arachnid Mayhem at 30,000 Feet
Genre: Spider
Plot:
Heading off for a special trip, a group of friends boards a special plane trip where they try to stay away from the other passengers causing a ruckus on the flight which soon turns deadly when a swarm of killer spiders is released onboard forcing them to try to get the plane to safety.
Review:
Overall, this was a pretty decent and enjoyable effort. One of the better features of this one is the generally strong and enjoyable method of building up to a series of disasters in the plane that gets everything set up and starting to get out of control. With the early exploits of this one focusing on the series of traditional struggles within a plane that goes for the majority of the time here involving the passengers going through their different demands and customs before a flight, the starting point to this one comes across rather nicely with the group causing difficulty for the flight crew. The initial series of complaints about shoddy service or the inability to access certain parts of the plane serves as a fine setup for what’s coming up later on as these all manage to come back in the second half to be solid callbacks once the spiders are unleashed.
When these spiders are unleashed, there’s quite a lot to like here with the series of confrontations and encounters that take place involving the spiders getting free and running wild in the plane. With the first scenes in their escape from the cargo hold signaling the disturbance necessary to warrant investigation from the pilots, their discovery of the cobweb-riddled setting allows for a fun start to lead into the incredibly enjoyable takeover of the passengers when they run wild throughout these sections. Featuring a solid mixture of practical spider puppets shown crawling over bodies or the inner parts of the fuselage with CGI creations seeing massive swarms of smaller-size creatures running over the plane taking out whoever they can in graphic means, it has some variety as the different attempts to fight back so they can get the plane to safety gets rather fun with some bloody deaths along the way. These all manage to give this one some pretty likable factors.
There are some issues here keeping this one down. Among the main detriments in the film is the flimsy means that signal how the spiders get on the plane in the first place which is immensely silly and not that realistic. The idea of getting them through customs onto a private passenger plane to transport them back to the United States so they can be studied is incredibly weak and manages to just be stupid enough to work yet never be considered plausible or logical in any kind of realistic scenario. That includes the usual series of setbacks associated with the setup including the pilots being incapacitated and unable to land the plane forcing one of the survivors with long-forgotten flying experience to get them to safety which is quite silly and wouldn’t be considered at all. Combined with the aforementioned flimsy special effects that don’t look all that realistic regardless of execution method, there are some factors here holding this down.
Overview: ***/5
A generally fun if flawed cheesy creature feature, there’s enough going on here that it’s fun for what it is although its flaws do emerge throughout here to bring it down. Those with an interest in this type of genre fare, are hardcore cheesy creature feature fans, or enjoyed the creative crew’s previous works are going to enjoy it the most while others out there might want to heed caution.
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