Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on September 28, 2007

That, my friends, is a long title. Much longer than the original “Plane Dead,” but it’s kind of snazzy. I’d personally stay away from conjuring up memories of that awful bit of excrement called Snakes on a Plane but hey, whatever. Flight of the Living Dead is heading your way on DVD on October 2nd, straight from those bad boys at New Line Cinema. Sometime after that, I’d assume, it’ll find its way to your HBO’s and, without a doubt, Sci-Fi’s.

So what happens. Well. Obviously. A couple of scientists working on a “biological weapon” (uhoh!) have their lab shut down so they decided to flee with their research stored inside of a fellow scientist and smuggle it aboard a passenger jet and head fro the freedom of Europe. Obviously things don’t go as planned. Turbulence rocks the boat, err, plane, and before you know it a zombie is loose. And then that zombie bites two people, and they’ll bite two people and before you know it, there’s an outbreak on a plane.

Our characters are varied and ok. We’ve got the Interpol type cop (Chisum) escorting a not dangerous but very hilarious criminal (O’Connor), some teenage kids with relationship problems, a nun(!), and a TSA Air Cop (Richard Tyson). Throw in some sexy stewardesses and we’re off! Oh there is also a professional golfer who carries his putter around. Fore!

The acting isn’t bad, the gore is pretty good, the CGI is mostly weak, but the directing is competent. The writing is somewhat lacking and you’ll have a few uninintended laughs, and even a few laughs on purpose. The real jist of it is this: The movie is called Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane. It is going straight to DVD. If you consider both of those things and think to yourself “Hmm…Maybe I’d like that…” you should watch it. It’s not Dawn of the Dead, but it is better than Snakes on a Plane by a long shot. My one grievance is it took like 30 minutes to get a zombie and then some more time before we got zombie chaos, but that’s a result of a cramped space. The last 30 or so minutes are funny, full of zombies, and very enjoyable. We also get a totally AWESOME hard rock score during this parts and the US Navy shows up with an F-14 straight outta Top Gun. Awesome. Some good laughs happen at the end with various creative ways of killing zombies.

Point blank, if you’re interested at all in this movie, watch it. Rent it, buy it, whatever. It’s an all right flick to groove to. However, if you have no interest in this then odds are it’s not for you. I had an enjoyable time with this one.

The Upside: Lots of fun genre actor cameos, decent zombies, and a good amount of mayhem.

The Downside: CGI was weak and it’s made for DVD so the quality is a bit low overall.

On the Side: Star Kristen Kerr is expecting a baby girl. Congratulations.

Grade: C+