Director: John Pogue
Year: 2011
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
After being contaminated by a viral outbreak, a group of passengers on a commercial jet plane find themselves quarantined at a local airport terminal and must fight to stay alive against the infected passengers and crew running loose in the building as rabid, crazed mutations.
Review:
Overall, this one here was quite entertaining and a worthwhile sequel. What really gets this one going along nicely is the fact that there's a strong sense of true urgency and panic here as this one really runs with its central concept quite nicely in terms of getting the virus up and on-screen early on here to keep this moving forward. The early outbreak on the plane as the slowly-changing passenger that begins tearing through the plane, offering the first hints that something's really wrong here, to the take-down and eventual settling in for their landing at the abandoned terminal gives this a strong set-up that ranges from quite creepy to action-packed rather nicely.
Carrying that panic and confusion over into the exit and subsequent realization they're trapped in the terminal, this manages to get a lot of good parts out of the rather chilling situation and manages to give the feeling quite nicely here as the gradual dawning from how they're going to get infected next makes for a really fun time here with this one getting the action-packed confrontations throughout this section. The initial attack on the gangway out of the plane, a further confrontation in the bowels of the plane when they sneak back inside to grab some tools for survival where the infected crew-members begin stalking them and a strong ambush back in the loading dock where the team has to over-power the infected coming at them gives this some really strong action scenes that are a great deal of fun following up the earlier scenes here, and once the containment team arrives this one really picks up considerably.
There's a lot to like here as the initial inspection reveals the true manner of infection and the resulting race to get out alive from the building as they overpower and eventually chase them through the levels and storage places in the facility. These give this a really enjoyable burst of energy mixed with the thrilling race of trying to escape from them, and when followed up by the grand escape plan that wipes out the remaining members of the group, it's even more fun. Along with the rather fine gore here, these give this a lot to like over its few small problem areas.
The biggest issue here is in detailing how the virus ever left the city, as supposedly showing the newscast of the siege from the original to signify they're occurring at the same time means that there's no way to know that same virus had left and is now on the plane, since the agents who bring that up do so in the middle of the movie when there hadn't even been enough time to sift through the wreckage left behind in the original to discover it and pass it along to them to spill out here. This sort of timeline-altering doesn't make any sense and really makes it seem like a total coincidence rather than anything actually done on their part to investigate it. The other big issue here is the recurrence of the found-footage scenes for the entire finale crawl through the heating duct but yet does nothing with it since there's never a chance to do anything but show him looking back over his shoulder, and it's a wasted opportunity merely to capitalize on the original's gimmick. Otherwise, this one was quite fun and enjoyable.
Overview: ***.5/5
A worthwhile and enjoyable sequel that has some drawbacks, there's enough to like here that it manages to serve itself quite nicely even with those drawbacks keeping it back from the status of the original. Those who are fine with these factors or are fans of the creative crew will have a lot to like here while most others out there should heed caution.
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