Last month, I took an overnight, eight-hour flight with mechanical issues, a significant delay in departure, spine-crunching seating to render sleep impossible, mayonnaise on the turkey sandwich “dinner,” Venom: Let There Be Carnage playing on the screen and a couple of passengers getting a little too mouthy about having to wear masks. All that’s to say today’s airlines make for a stressful, terrifying experience.
Sadly, Row 19 is neither. Unlike my seat, it’s by no means painful. For a supernatural spooker at 30,000 feet, the Russian film is at least more entertaining than America’s own, higher-profile Flight 7500. Its ultimate destination is what sinks it.
Twenty years after emerging as the lone survivor of a catastrophic plane crash, doctor and single mom Katerina (Svetlana Ivanova, Cosmoball) bravely takes off again. With her daughter (fellow Cosmoballer Marta Kessler) in tow and the same age as Katerina was at the time of tragedy, she boards a red eye with only about half a dozen passengers — I mean, unless you count the ghosts, spirits and other phantasmagorical stowaways eventually causing havoc.
What It All Means can be sussed out well before director Alexander Babaev (Bornless Ones, not to be confused with boneless ones at your neighborhood Buffalo Wild Wings) intends. Although Ivanova succeeds in selling the hell out of the concept and Babaev brings it in at a tidy 78 minutes (with credits), Row 19 lands as a rough and routine trip of terror. Barring a different language, the slick flick is nothing you haven’t seen before — especially if Flightplan is stamped in your cinematic passport. —Rod Lott