If I had read the reviews here beforehand, I probably would not have watched this movie. Usually, I read the External Reviews first, especially sites that I go to most for Genre films, and in this case I unfortunately did not get from them that this was so similar in tone and theme to the 'SAW' films, of which I have absolutely NO interest.
Like almost everyone here has said in their summaries and reviews, the IDEA was pretty good and intriguing and I was genuinely interested to see what they would do with such a premise. But, although they pulled it off for about the first 45 minutes or so pretty well, after that point in just basically degenerated into a mental torture test. I won't give too much away even though I have checked the possible Spoilers box (something that I rarely do) but in my lowly and wretched opinion, if they had just taken the film in another direction, ANYTHING else, to give it more depth and dimension other than just some entity clearly trying to torture them mentally and forcing them into generic impossible 'SAW'-like situations of having to do something nasty or suffer the consequences, then it certainly could have been more interesting. At about this point in the film, for the next 10-15 minutes, the focus was simply showing how distressed everyone was and their constant crying, begging, and pleading, and not much else... It got REAL old, REAL fast.
For me personally, I have NO interest in just seeing people suffer for the sake of suffering. Don't like it. Don't want to see it. In THIS case, the torture was pretty much mostly mental, except the brief excerpts that they showed on the monitors of what was happening to others. So, when it became apparent to me at about this point in the movie that all they were harping on was the continuous suffering of the people on the plane, I just lost all interest because the story wasn't really going anywhere. If they just hadn't KEPT harping on that repetitive one-note thing and actually taken the story in a much more interesting direction, then despite the distasteful elements so far, I think I would have been a LOT more inclined to want to see what was going to happen. But, that just wasn't the case.
The acting was actually not too bad considering the high emotions and usually how actors in scenes like that in films like this tend to overdo it or do a really bad job of it. And the personality types of the individuals were not so caricatured and shallow as they usually are, and actually came across as somewhat REAL people, so there is that...
But ultimately, the film makers were only interested in showing the suffering of the people, as if THAT alone was the primary entertainment. But, sorry... that just ain't my thing. What I feel would have HUGELY improved the film would be if they had at about the 45 minute mark where things were getting pretty serious and the people were beginning to realize that this was no 'game', at THAT exact point if they had concentrated the story on how the people could have used their wits and tried to come up with some plan to get out of their situation, then THAT would have kept my interest and shifted the focus off of all the unpleasantness. But, no... they just kept dragging it out, minute by minute, repetitively doing the SAME thing with each person, dragging them into the bathroom, forcing them to put on the headphones, and telling them what awful things they had to do. Just dumb... To me it seemed that there had already been PLENTY of that and the audience already bloody KNEW the seriousness of the situation. So, to me, LOGICALLY at that point it would seem that the audience would be getting a little impatient and thinking, 'Okay, now how the hell are they going to get out of this...?' So, after about 15 more straight minutes of crying, pleading, begging, and suffering, I had pretty much had it with this film.
So, all I can say is, if that is your idea of a good time, watching a group of people being mentally distressed and tortured, then sure, go for it. And yeah, the point WAS being made about Social Media and all that, fine... But, a movie is a movie, and either it is a GOOD movie or a BAD movie (usually something in between...) In this case I felt that it started off very well, and then became a BAD movie...
It's a shame that it turned out to be so disappointing. With such an intriguing premise, they really should have come up with something far better...
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