Enjoyable and tense horror/thriller

Rating: Null/10 (17 November 2003)

Waiting for the plane to take off for his high school trip to France, Alex has a vision of the plane exploding. He panics and is removed from the plane along with several of his party. As they argue in the terminal the plane explodes leaving them as the sole survivors and the FBI investigating how they knew. When one of the number, Todd is killed, Alex realises that they have not cheated death and that the reaper is returning for them in turn.
When I originally saw this film I was not that taken with it, however seeing the sequel made me realise just how superior to that, the original was. The plot, taken from an X-Files idea is quite clever and originally worked out throughout the film. Each death (or potential death) is shocking or tense or exciting, there is little of the obscene cruelty that exists within the sequel. Here the characters are just a little more than meat to be sliced and diced in fancy manners.
The cast are reasonably good. Many are simply student clichés who have their time counted down. Not knowing who was famous and who wasn't here I didn't know who would live and who would die and it made it quite exciting. Sawa leads the cast well and is a good character  his madness in the cabin is worth seeing. Todd (Candyman himself) makes a brief cameo that helps the film and is nicely creepy and trashy at the same time.
Overall this is an enjoyable trashy film that has gore and suspense and is enjoyable to watch. The sequel was simply excessive death scenes and you'd do well to enjoy this film and ignore it's follow up.