SKYBOUND (2017)

Studio:       High Octane Pictures
Director:    Alex Tavakoli
Writer:       Alex Tavakoli
Producer:  Alex Tavakoli
Stars:     Scarlett Byrne, Gavin Stenhouse, Rick Cosnett, Tyler Fayose, Carla Pimentel, Morten Suurballe

Review Score:

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Summary:

Five friends and a mysterious stowaway are forced to keep their private plane in the air when a disaster ravages the ground.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

December 27th – For their first date, wealthy Matt Parker surprises Lisa Murphy, who previously dated his brother Kyle, with a trip from New York to Los Angeles aboard his family’s private plane. Matt and Lisa are joined by Matt’s friend Odin and Odin’s girlfriend Roxy.

Kyle shows up at the airstrip to handoff the plane to Matt. When ground control insists that Matt fly with a copilot, Kyle volunteers to come along, even though it creates an awkward dynamic given his romantic history with Lisa.

While over Washington D.C., the plane experiences an electronics failure that disrupts communications systems. Matt decides to reroute for an emergency landing in Chicago.

Matt and Odin discover a stowaway who identifies himself as Erik Harris. While the others question him, Erik pulls a gun, demanding that Matt keep the plane in the air. During an ensuing commotion, Erik shoots Kyle in his stomach. Odin gets the gun away from Erik and knocks him unconscious.

When the plane gets to Chicago, everyone sees that all other airplanes are similarly stuck circling the city, unable to land due to an unknown situation on the ground. Two planes collide in midair. Matt reroutes to Kansas City.

With Kyle’s condition worsening, Matt decides to turn around to seek medical treatment in Chicago. Odin stands in his way, insisting that returning to Chicago would endanger everyone. As a third year medical student, Lisa is forced to remove Kyle’s bullet and treat his wound. Kyle recovers.

Matt and Kyle see that the temperature outside is inexplicably hot as they are forced to climb out of a strange smoke cloud. After seeing a news broadcast of church bells, everyone starts going through newspapers looking for clues that might indicate what led to the unknown conditions outside.

Lisa finds an article identifying their stowaway as doomsday cult leader Erik Lamarr. Matt, Kyle, Lisa, Odin, and Roxy come to suspect Erik’s group was responsible for a terrorist attack on the ground. Erik denies the charge, claiming he was a fraud who only started his cult for money.

The friends find another article indicating Erik gave psychotropic drugs to his followers to make them think the end of the world was at hand. Everyone then wonders if Erik drugged the cabin’s air system to give them similar hallucinations.

Roxy notes that Erik repeatedly looks at his watch in odd intervals. Erik insists he merely has a pulse watch to control his diabetes. Disbelieving Erik’s claim, Odin flushes Erik’s insulin down the toilet, believing it to be the psychotropic drug. Erik falls into a coma from diabetic shock and eventually dies.

In case the cabin really was contaminated, everyone works together to release the cabin pressure by opening the emergency exit while descending rapidly to exchange the air. While the exit hatch is open, Odin sees that there is ash in the sky.

Over Colorado, the friends see a mushroom cloud in the mountains, leading them to suspect a nuclear attack against the United States. Over Monument Valley, they see bison on fire on the ground.

Lisa receives a cellphone call from her father in Toronto. He confirms that unknown rebel forces in Russia launched 11 nuclear missiles against the U.S. Lisa’s father warns that her plane must get away from the mainland to avoid radioactivity.

Roxy does fuel and trajectory calculations to come up with a flight plan for Hawaii. Because they are overweight for the fuel required to get there, everyone works to destroy the cabin interior to lighten the plane.

Still short of their goal, Matt realizes they will have to drop one of the plane’s engines. Kyle and the others hesitate over the danger, but Matt rallies everyone with a rousing speech. Matt climbs outside the plane and begins hacking at the engine with a hand ax. In order to complete his task, Matt willingly cuts his tether, sacrificing himself to remove the engine.

The plane crashes into the water. However, Lisa, Kyle, Odin, and Roxy wash ashore safely in Maui.

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Review:

If The CW ever partnered with The Asylum to produce a made-for-TV disaster flick, it would probably look a lot like “Skybound.”  Just take a peek at the preflight rundown:

Photogenic faces who might make better catalog models than film actors?  Check.  Poppy pianos and Lilith Fair vocals underscoring wannabe romantic interludes?  Check.  Green screen CGI that makes a tornado filled with sharks seem positively cutting edge?  Check.  How about a story sandwiching a silly love triangle into a sillier doomsday survival scenario?  “Skybound” certainly has that too.

Matt has the money and the means to take Lisa on the first date to end all first dates.  Accompanied by his pal Odin, who knows nothing of Marvel movies since he thinks he is named for an African god, and Odin’s girlfriend Roxy, Matt plans to whisk Lisa away from New York on his family’s private plane for a weekend getaway to Los Angeles culminating in a Vin Diesel movie premiere (I’m not kidding).

Unexpected guest #1 arrives in the form of Kyle, Matt’s brother who also happens to be Lisa’s former flame.  Awkwardness abounds due to unresolved issues between Kyle and Lisa, although the movie only uses this side story for a few brief bits of lukewarm conflict.  Kyle’s more immediate importance is to serve as Matt’s copilot when the control tower threatens to keep the plane grounded unless two people sit in the cockpit.  Good thing Kyle showed up to handoff the parked plane for whatever reason.

Not long into the trip, an atmospheric anomaly disrupts everything electronic, necessitating an emergency landing in Chicago.  Trouble is, there’s nowhere to land.  An unknown event down below has scores of airplanes creating a traffic jam above the Windy City.  When two planes collide in a midair explosion, everyone realizes the sky is as unsafe as the surface.

Complicating this life or death problem is unexpected guest #2.  A squirrelly stowaway aboard the small aircraft claims to have been caught scavenging for food.  However, Odin and the others suspect he knows more than he lets on, and may even be involved in causing the unknown catastrophe.  Now no one can be certain if the greater danger lies beneath, in front, or within the airplane alongside them.

“Skybound’s” cast, at least three of whom struggle to suppress indeterminate accents, appear to be acting as if they’re auditioning for “Days of Our Lives.”  A vacuum of passion sucks suspense out of every tension-filled interpersonal exchange, replaced with inflated melodrama in moments where the script uncomfortably overwrites dialogue.

The look in actor Rick Cosnett’s eyes suggests he can virtually see career opportunities crumbling as he recites an embarrassing monologue to rouse his costars for the climax.  Music swells, the camera pushes in, and Cosnett exclaims, “we can fight, fight our way back into the light!  We can climb out of this tomb, even if we’re scared, desperate, and the only way to do it sounds insane!”  Something sounds insane alright.  Namely the words coming out of everyone’s mouths.

“Skybound” remains confined to the airplane cabin for most of its 80 minutes.  It’s a smart move when working with a small cast and a low budget, though audience engagement takes a hit from stagnant scenery of the same six people speaking in front of beige upholstery.  Plausibility, as much as a premise involving the ground turning into lava can have anyway, takes a bigger hit from the interjection of a ridiculous red herring and inane supporting details that don’t come close to adding up (the newspapers, church bells on TV, how no one mentions the striking similarity between Scarlett Byrne and Kristin Kreuk?).

Earlier glibness to take a green screen jab aside, straight-up CGI scenes are actually on par with the film’s Syfy counterparts, even excellent for their kind in instances where animated imagery occupies the entirety of the frame.  A few glimpses of good stuff pop up in isolated pockets, such as a wildly weird shot of flaming bison galloping across fiery Monument Valley plains.  If “Skybound” only embraced this brand of visual absurdity more, it would be a far more entertaining flight of escapist fantasy.

And that is the disappointing problem with “Skybound.”  It isn’t outrageous enough to boomerang back from ‘bad’ territory to be ironically enjoyable in the way that Asylum/Syfy movies often are.  The kernel for a dopily fun apocalypse flick exists.  It just never pops.  “Skybound” is instead more middling than anything, taking itself seriously without having the gravitas in its plot, performances, or delivery to make any of it stick with something more explosive than a plop of preposterousness.

Review Score:  40

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