Grimm Up North 2010: ALTITUDE review

jackie-chan
Contributor; Derby, England
Grimm Up North 2010: ALTITUDE review

Altitude is a terrible - in fact no, Altitude isn't a terrible movie. It's competently shot, features some relatively decent effects work for a low-budget genre film and features one fairly ambitious setpiece that's briefly genuinely exciting. But it's the story that sinks it, a terribly written, ham-fisted waste of a half-decent spin on the classic lifeboat scenario with a cast of unlikeable stereotypes and a laughably mishandled Big Reveal that teeters on the edge of causing offense.


Like the many riffs on Hitchcock's premise, the film basically revolves around a close-knit group of people trapped in a confined space menaced by an external threat. A group of young Americans have planned a cross-country trip to a rock concert, one of whom, Sara, suggests that as a novice pilot she could fly them there. Shortly after takeoff, something locks the plane into a non-stop ascent, and it slowly becomes apparent there's something supernatural behind it.


Any genre production running with this kind of plot generally has two basic means of fleshing out their story. Either they concentrate on keeping the typical audience sated, eking out the budget on as many popcorn thrills and gory deaths as possible, or they try and develop the characters to the point people hope they'll make it out alive. Both are certainly possible, but Altitude can't even manage one.


It comes closest with the popcorn thrills. Director Kaare Andrews and crew have obviously devoted a fair amount of thought to how best to make the most of their budget. Credibly, it's clearly and carefully established fairly early on the plane's stuck in the air, it's not going anywhere, there's Something outside and that there's ultimately no rational explanation for any of this. To this end the effects are hardly awards-worthy, but they back the premise up solidly and the harsh, acid-washed filters on the early footage are a good introduction to the storm clouds that subsequently roll in.


No direct spoilers, but anyone who thinks about the setup for a moment - the group are stuck in a vehicle headed for the stratosphere with no outside agency who can step in and help them - will probably be able to guess what the main action setpiece involves. It's easily the highlight of the film, a surprisingly ambitious little sequence that manages a decent level of tension even given how much of the production is obviously sticking to the playbook.


Sadly, Altitude spends far too much time on laying out the group dynamics for this to have anything like the effect it ought to, given the cast are one-dimensional, tedious non-entities to a man. The jock is the alpha jock, whooping, fist-pumping, toting a six-pack on the plane; the sensitive, creative type is so soulful he brings his guitar along; there's nothing to these people beyond their one personality trait and their increasingly embittered sniping at each other, which gets so vitriolic you start wondering how they ever became friends.


None of their deaths raise the stakes, given they're all equally unpleasant. Even the leads are resolutely unappealing, Sara the pilot out of her depth and lacking in any kind of authority, Bruce - haunted by the plane crash that killed his and Sara's parents - petulant and solipsistic.


This earlier crash, introduced in a brief prologue, is supposed to anchor the plot - is the same thing that brought down their parents' plane lurking out there in the clouds? - but partly because of the terrible script, partly because of actor Landon Liboiron's lack of charisma, it never becomes the driving force it needs to be. Bruce seems less haunted than outright mentally ill, and shows no signs of either wanting to move on or help the other four, even putting them in mortal danger at one point.


And again, the final explanation as to how exactly the prologue relates to the supernatural threat is a laughable piece of justification which comes virtually out of nowhere. It's horribly foreshadowed and played so straight-faced it's unintentionally comical, even hysterically funny. Not only that, while there is arguably a kind of logic behind how the ending plays out it's so badly handled that even once that logic's sunk in, the idea the characters would just forgive and forget how horribly one of them behaved borders on some very morally dubious gender politics.


Surprisingly the epilogue does manage a thread of genuine pathos, but it's got no chance of making audiences forget what they just saw five minutes earlier. A mildly distasteful little misfire, Kaare Andrews' film is a waste of a good idea (not to mention moderate talent) that manages a couple of inspired moments but neither builds on nor properly exploits any of them. Other than a snappy gimmick, there's nothing here that hasn't been done better countless times before, leaving Altitude impossible to recommend.


(Altitude was screened as part of Manchester's Grimm Up North 2010.)

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