Red Eye (2005) Critic Reviews

Will keep you awake, jittery and perched on the edge of your seat for pretty much the entire flight.Read the full review

The gripping, seat- clutching suspense in this baby will pin you to your seat.Read the full review

A good measure of the movie's white-knuckle fun comes from Craven's old-hand familiarity with the way thrillers tick.Read the full review

The plot is not absolutely airtight, but Craven's filmmaking is too fast-moving and too involving for this to matter. As a movie, Red-Eye is in every way as well crafted and sharply designed as the Boeing 767 Lisa fatefully boards.Read the full review

The casting of the two leads is a nice surprise in Red Eye, as is its modest scale. One of the ironies about the film is that its relatively small-movie feel allows Mr. Craven to focus on the sorts of things - the performances and little bits of business from the extras - that a director like Michael Bay doesn't have time for, partly because he is so busy blowing stuff up.Read the full review

A minimalist exercise in maximalist suspense.Read the full review

Helped enormously by Rachel McAdams, whose performance is convincing because she keeps it at ground level; thrillers are invitations to overact, but she remains plausible even when the action ratchets up around her.Read the full review

Favoring precision filmmaking over cheap thrills, with a vibe more Alfred Hitchcock than Freddy Krueger, Red Eye establishes two intelligent characters and lets audiences sit back and enjoy an entertaining battle of brains and wills.Read the full review

If constructing a thriller could be likened to building a house, then Wes Craven's Red Eye is a perfect piece of architecture: It's clean-lined and soundly structured, without a foot of wasted space or any materials left unused.Read the full review