What a pleasant surprise!
The set-up: Highschool students board plane for 10-day trip to France. One student--Alex-- has panic attack about the plane blowing up and in the ensuing chaos he and six other members of the party are thrown off the plane. The plane then takes off and promptly explodes just as he feared it would. Now the Grim Reaper is after them with a vengeance for cheating him and Alex is the only person who can see the deaths coming.
What ensues is a mostly tightly written fast moving script with a surprising lack of gore considering the trend of films in the last few years, lacking the requisite horny, naked teenagers of the 70's and 80's slasher flicks, and none of the stupid "walking-backward-in-the-dark-in-your-underwear-calling-the-dog-when-you-hear-a-strange-noise-outside" crap. There are a couple of plot contrivances that bothered me, but not enough to ruin the film for me.
There's a goodly amount of humor, lot's of good thrills, a hysterical cameo by Tony Todd of The Candyman fame as a mortician, and a canoe race. (yes, a canoe race) This is not a GREAT film but it's a solidly GOOD film for the genre and worth the price of admission.
BTW This movie contains one of the most shocking death scenes I've ever witnessed on film. Not gruesome or horrifying but truly shocking. I won't say any more than that except to tell you that the entire theater "whuffed" at the same time as if we'd all been collectively punched in the stomach. I can't recall if a Teen Horror movie has ever affected me that way. If anyone else sees this I'd love to discuss this sequence.
