The Michigan Daily - Monday, August 15, 2005 - 11
Craven taks change
of pace on'Red Eye'
By Jeffrey Bloomer
Daily Arts Editor
Wes Craven never set out to make horror
movies. He just sort of fell into them - in
1972, as it were, with his cult classic "The Last
House on the Left," which
he made because he was an Red Eye
unknown filmmaker and
studios wanted something Opens Friday at
scary. Presumably, then, he the Showcase
never meant to rewrite genre
history either, but that's DreamWorks
exactly he did - twice. First
it was a merciless child killer with knives for
fingers that haunted an entire generation's
dreams, and then it was a trilogy of maca-
bre horror comedies that revitalized the pop
slasher film that Craven himself helped create
more than a decade earlier, one self-conscious
in-joke at a time.
Now it's still another decade later and Craven,
66 years old and a legend in the field, is tired.
He's proud of his legacy, but after 30 years of
outrageously chested heroines and sliced entrails
and butcher knives, it was time for a change - if
only a small one. So here is "Red Eye," a claus-
trophobic cat-and-mouse thriller with a timely
} political undertow that sets a large portion of its
85 minutes in an overcrowded late-night flight
from Dallas to Miami.
"Because I just sort of fell into making scary
movies, and I obviously made a lot of them ...
you just get a little bored. Obviously, you have a
whole adult life - I'm not just a teenager some-
where in the back of my mind - so what about
those other parts of my life?" Craven said.
The film, which opens Friday, follows a
hotel manager (Rachel McAdams) on a flight
with an operative (Cillian Murphy) who
threatens to kill her father if she won't help
him facilitate a high-profile hit on a govern-
ment official staying in her hotel. It finally
gave Craven the chance to veer away from
the hardcore horror he's famous for and delve
into more psychological suspense.
"It was much more grown up and compli-
cated and really is about this powerful rela-
tionship between these two people. He tries
to think it's this military-type operation, but,
clearly, by the end, it has these emotions all
over it," he said. "It's a struggle of morality,
it's a struggle of world views, it's a struggle
of what is right and wrong ... What do you do
if your dad's going to be killed if you don't
(help) kill another guy?"
Craven added that the film allowed him to
dig deeper than the subdued social undercur-
rents in many horror films and more explicitly
channel today's political atmosphere. Namely,
in addition to its airline setting, the target of the
film's assassination plot is a controversial Deputy
Secretary of Homeland Security.
"It's got the whole post-9/11 tone to it. 1
made it even a little bit more in the sense that
(the Deputy) was (originally) just a business-
man and (he never) was involved in the gov-
ernment," he said. "(The Murphy character)
kind of thinks like a terrorist would. Which
is, there are struggles and we take part in
them, but it doesn't make any difference in
the long run - so just do what you're told and
you can walk away. (Then there's) a person
that can't walk away, because they still have a
moral core. That kind of stuff you can't do in
a horror film too much."
But though the movie gave Craven an
uncommon creative freedom, he said it didn't
come without its own set of challenges.
"The whole second act is basically dialogue
spoken by two sitting next to each other. ... I
mean, that's a tough gig," he said.
Then there was the ultra-tight production
schedule that led to the rush casting of the
Craven directs Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy on the set of "Red Eye."
lead roles, which, in its own way, actually
turned out to Craven's advantage.
"We were racing to get out before 'Flight
Plan' ... so we had to go very fast. So in both
cases, Cillian and Rachel, the young people
I sat down with ... at the end of the meet-
ings, I both asked them if they wanted to do
it and (told them) that I wanted to do it with
them. Part of that ... just eliminated a lot of
sort of studio wish-listing, because you first
approach Tom Hanks and ... he's like 'are you
kidding?' and you finally, finally get down to
people that are realistic," he said.
Now, with the finished film on the -ve of
release, Craven's step away from his roots
is nearly complete. For him, the dynamic
between McAdams and Murphy is at the core
of the film's thematic impact.
"There's almost a sexual or at least a gender
struggle between them," he said. "The fact
that at one moment he can be really almost
considerate, and then the next one he's trying
to kill her ... He comes to admire her so much
because she stands up to him." What. A. Babe.
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