crewless news and notes

Stacey and I caught a matinee of Snakes on a Plane today, a movie anyone with an Internet connection has been hearing about for what seems like forever. Snakes is basically a combination of two of my favorite film genres: horror and cheesy-70s-disaster. Not a particularly intelligent recipe, but an effective one.

Except for the brilliantly-disgusting Slither, I haven’t enjoyed any of the horror movies I’ve seen this year. Films like the Hills Have Eyes remake and The Descent are well-made, but they’re so convincingly disturbing that they end up being no fun. In Snakes, an attractive couple is attacked by venomous reptiles while smoking grass and having sex in the lavatory of a 747. Said couple broke a federal law when they disabled the lavatory smoke detector, so I guess they had it coming. Set pieces like this one might not be very realistic, but they evoke a smile and, sometimes, even a scare or two.

The movie isn’t perfect. Like many disaster and horror movies, it spends too much time setting up the motivations of a plethora of characters who aren’t particularly interesting. But, after the snakes get loose, and the only motivation for any of the movie’s characters is “don’t get killed,” Snakes on a Plane is a good time.