Retro Review: Red Eye (2005)

When Red Eye terrorized screens in the summer of 2005, it was both a return to form and a change of pace for director Wes Craven, a horror heavyweight younger audiences have never heard of (talk about scary, right?). Twenty years removed from his Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) heyday, and another decade from his previous Scream (1995)-fueled career revival, Red Eye was a straightforward thriller with very little blood and a scrawny, blue-eyed villain. Hell it was even engineered like a love story – boy meets girl, boy-woos-girl, boy…terrorizes girl?


There’s probably a gender-in-film essay in there somewhere, but let’s just cut to the knife-weilding chase – Red Eye is a clever concept that both embraces and rebels against horror movie clichés, and it’s clear just how much fun that was for Craven. That love-story twist, nailed perfectly in the film’s excellent trailer, is only the first deviation from the norm in Carl Ellsworth’s tight and self-aware script. Horrors and thrillers live for that 3rd act wow moment. Ellsworth puts it front and center, then leaves his cards face up the rest of the way. Red Eye, unlike its contemporaries, doesn't offer much mystery at all. But it is powered by the most basic horror element – survival...