Flight World War II (2015)

Film review #629

Director: Emile Edwin Smith

SYNOPSIS: A commercial flight to London encounters a strange storm that it flies through, and ends up over the skies of France in 1940 during World War II. With their only contact with the ground being a young British officer, the crew must find a way to keep it safe from enemy fighters, and make its way home…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Flight World War II is a 2015 sci-fi disaster film. A routine commercial flight to London travels through a strange storm in the air, and emerges on the other side over the skies of France in 1940 during the second world war. The crew and passengers have to deal with the situation, aided only by a young British soldier on the ground named Nigel. The concept I suppose is interesting, but it is extremely similar at its core to The Philadelphia Experiment from 1984, but in reverse, as two aircraft personnel were sent forward in time from the second world war to 1984. First thing to notice is that this film is produced by The Asylum; notorious makers of low budget, often derivative films that cash in on recently released films with barely disguised rip-offs that are just distinct enough to avoid legal action. So if you know The Asylum’s work, you’ll know to expect very little. The film explores some of the implications of time travel, but it creates way too much of a mess with the concept, and raises far too many plot holes that are ignored.

With nearly all of the film set in the plane, there’s no need to splurge on fancy sets, which is ideal for The Asylum. You could certainly make a film like this feel tense and claustrophobic, and get into the different perspectives of the passengers, but that doesn’t really happen. Everyone is a flat, cut-out character with no real personality or uniqueness. We are not given a background on anyone, so there’s nothing to really to develop. The fact that there just so happens to be two academic experts on world war two on a plane that just so happens to travel back to world war two is somehow even less believable than the whole time travel thing.

Probably the most annoying thing about this film is it’s complete lack of relation to reality: there’s things like the German planes you see not being invented until after the film that you can overlook, because that’s very specific knowledge you won’t pick up unless you’re super into world war two history. The main problem is with when the fighters shoot the passenger plane and is riddled with bullet holes: a passenger plane would go down pretty quickly after even a few hits. There’s also points where the windows are blown open and the cabin is de-pressurised, but in the next scene everyone is sitting in their seats fine: there would be no plane left if there was a massive hole in it. The fact that someone is blown out of a door would probably have altered time in some way if someone found their body with their mobile phone or whatever they had on them? There’s just so many things that are just distracting. The “twist” at the end is fairly predictable, and is infuriating, because they just faintly acknowledge it. It’s one of those instances where you want to see more from the twist, rather than just leaving it open for interpretation.

Overall, Flight World War II offers very little in every way: the concept is underdeveloped, the characters are one-dimensional, and the logic of what happens with the pane are at complete odds with reality. It’s not really a “so bad it’s good” film either, as there’s nothing humourous either; just a drab wander through the motions.