Review by Adam Stephen Kelly
Stars Jessica Lowndes, Juilianna Guill, Ryan Donowho, Landon Liboiron, Jake Weary,
Mike Dopud, Ryan Grantham, Chelah Horsdal, Ian Robison, Michelle Harrison, Teghan Gentles | Written by Paul A. Birkett
UK Certification 15 | UK RRP £19.99 | BR Region B | Runtime 86 minutes | Directed by Kaare Andrews
Five teenagers are taken for the flight of their lives when the small plane they're in has a strange, unexplainable mechanical failure, leaving them flying blind in the midst of an impromptu storm and running low on fuel. But such problems are the least of their worries when it appears as though they are being endlessly stalked through the skies by some kind of colossal tentacled creature. And all they wanted to do was take a quick trip to a Coldplay gig to avoid the long drive.
Sky-octopus or no sky-octopus, Altitude completely falls apart in irredeemable fashion by the third act. By this point the consistently melodramatic and unconvincing reactions from the young cast to the constantly mounting problems they face have become so tiresome, that you become immune to caring about their airborne plight. The weakness of the script forces the characters to become absolute dead weight in a film that would only ever work if they were strongly defined, and not so ham-fistedly written and unlikeable. Instead we have the typical assortment of cookie cutters from countless bad teen movies. Is it really necessary to signpost the moronic jock just a minute or so into the film by having him wear a letterman jacket?
The in-depth behind the scenes feature on the disc (which is infinitely more interesting than the film itself) explains just how much the script evolved and expanded from the first draft, which certainly isn't the surprise of the century. The tentacles sporadically appear, the low fuel issue seems to be forgotten about after it's mentioned just the once, and suddenly this hideously undeveloped angle drops in during the last five minutes, where one of the characters seems to discover that he is some sort of god among men, all off the back of an otherwise meaningless comic book of value that he happened to be taking with him to the concert. This is no doubt a self-indulgent nod by director Kaare Andrews to his acclaim as a Marvel comic book writer, who makes his unimpressive feature debut with the film.
With such an intriguing start, it could have been very good, but sadly Altitude quickly descends into a total mess. From beginning to end it fails to find its identity and you just do not know what kind of movie it is trying to be. What you hope would unravel as a claustrophobic thriller firmly grounded in realism and the human condition instead veers violently off the rails and into histrionic, dramatically grandiloquent no man's land.
EXTRAS ??? An audio commentary with director Andrews; an original concepts gallery; Green Storm: a look at the heavy use of green screen in the film; the trailer; and a 50-minute behind the scenes feature.