Stay Away, God Stay Away

Rating: 1/10 (27 May 2011)

After watching this movie once, I never want to watch it again. It is without a doubt the most boring and repetitive movie that I have ever seen in my life. I became so sincerely sick of the movie within the first 30 minutes that I could have gotten out of my seat, made a sandwich, poured myself a drink, refilled my popcorn, and written a 70 page essay about the properties of sand without missing anything.
Not long after getting on the plane, we run into one of the movie's first problems. It never stops repeating itself. The head extremist on the plane is asked by one of his cohorts when they should strike. The leader says soon, and the cohort returns to his seat. Repeat this another two times and the movie finally continues. The pilots are killed and their bodies are dragged about. Some flight attendant (You don't learn her name, and you won't care anyways) sees the bodies and runs to the back of the plane. The passengers then talk about what happened for seven minutes. The passenger's catchphrase for the rest of the movie is, "Oh no, (insert event) happened."
While this is occurring, some people who I assume are from the FAA (I didn't notice, as I was on the verge of taking a nap) are talking about other planes that seem to be acting strangely. We get a brief glimpse of the plane hitting the world trade center. I use the term "plane" very, very loosely as the effect work is terrible. It looks like something a person who couldn't even turn on a computer could make. The explosion doesn't even look good, and in a film about a national tragedy involving planes exploding, this is inexcusable. The FAA people's catchphrase for the rest of the movie is, "Where are the terrorists? We found the terrorists! Where are the terrorists?"
And to round out the cast of people you won't enjoy watching, we have the military. They basically get nothing done, and out of the three, these are the people who you will care for the least. They spend the greater half of the movie trying to decipher messages that are obviously cries for help. The army's catchphrase for the rest of the movie is, "Where is our support?"
You may have noticed that earlier in the review, I stated how repetitive the movie was. This is especially prevalent in the passenger scenes. Whenever an event happens, not a single one of them can shut up about it until it has been repeated 10 times. There is a point in the movie in which one of the terrorists stabs one of the passengers. The other passengers cower in fear, repeat "HE GOT STABBED!" 10 times, and the movie continues with its "plot". The terrorists ask for the man they just stabbed to be healed by a doctor on the plane. Then, once the doctor is finished, the terrorists immediately stab the man again. Why? No reason. There really isn't one. I tried for 15 minutes to figure out why they stabbed him, and I couldn't find it. The passengers were already cowering in fear, so it wasn't to intimidate the people. The man wasn't starting an uprising, because he was lying in a pool of his own blood. The only possible explanation for it was that the director got bored and decided to put a random violent image in the movie in order to stir people from their slumber. The FAA people try to prevent any further hijackings, but all they wind up doing is adding to the monotony by repeatedly switching between whether or not a plane is hijacked. The Army performs pretty much the exact same function as the FAA, except that they have some minor power.
The final minutes of the movie are when it actually gets somewhat interesting. The FAA and Army are, needless to say at this point, not involved very closely in the final sequence. The passengers finally fight back against the terrorists. They storm to the front of the plane, killing two of the terrorists along the way. When they reach the front of the plane, the plane finally crashes. Of course, before the 5 minutes pre-epilogue, there is another, possibly the most boring of them all, passenger repetition scene. This is actually somewhat sad, seeing as how it could have been fine if they had only done two or three. But they have five or even more (once again, almost asleep) calls made, which is just plain unnecessary considering that almost all of the calls are, "I love you, tell my family I love them."
This is a movie that is physically and emotionally painful to watch. It's awful in every respect. Only the last 5 minutes are any good, and then the epilogue of course repeats what we just saw... yet again. I'm told by some of my friends that I'll grow to like it later on in life, but I'm not enough of a masochist to sit through this intensely boring piece of garbage again.