This article explores the political thriller 'Red Eye', directed by Wes Craven, known for his horror films. It highlights the film's departure from the genre and Craven's ability to adapt to different styles. The article also discusses the success of 'Red Eye' and its impact on both Craven and screenwriter Carl Ellsworth.
Content warning: This article contains discussion of sexual violence.The politics of Wes Craven ’s political thriller Red Eye don’t exactly jump off the screen. In fact they seem to have minimal effect on the film. In a shrewd bit of casting, Craven employed Rachel McAdams — still toweling off from her torrential success as Allie Hamilton in The Notebook — to play Lisa Reisert, a hardened hotel administrator caught in Cillian Murphy’s shady schemes.
Murphy plays Jackson Rippner, an operative paid handsomely to perform high-leverage political violence — coups, assassinations, all the good stuff. Rippner stalks Lisa onto her red-eye flight back to Miami, where he threatens to kill her father (Brian Cox) unless she moves the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security (who is about to be a guest in her towering beachfront hotel) to a room with a clear shot for his vaguely Russian torpedo-strapped snipers. With all of that political machinery pushing the plot, it remains unclear if a political thriller can ever truly find itself devoid of politics. If the personal is political, which it is, then there’s no such thing as an apolitical film. Politics come part and parcel with every creative work, with anything that one might make or consume. The archetype, then, of a political thriller is fraught. Every thriller is a political thriller in a sense, as is every drama, comedy, horror, or rom-com. Film scholar Ian Scott, in his book American Politics in Hollywood Film, once distinguished between “movies that offer politics with a capital rather than a small ‘p’.” If the “capital-P” political thriller is to maintain a distinct shape, the genre has to embody a specific political style — a certain type of violent exchange between protagonist and antagonist that affects politicians, or at least a particular populace. So, did Craven, Murphy, and McAdams pull it off? Or does Red Eye fall among a litany of political thrillers that, ultimately, care more about politics than they let on? 'Red Eye' Showed a Different Side of Wes Craven Close Red Eye was a surprising film to see Craven work on, as he is best known for his work within the slasher genre. Craven’s 1984 classic A Nightmare Before Elm Street was hailed as one of the greatest films within the history of the genre, as Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger is often referred to as one of the “big three” slashers, alongside Michael Meyers of the Halloween franchise and Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th series. Craven may not have been able to participate in the sequels to A Nightmare on Elm Street up until the seventh installment, New Nightmare, was a box office disappointment in 1994, but he did launch another successful franchise when Scream became a sensation in 1996. Some may have assumed that he would continue to make horror films indefinitely, but Red Eye offered an example of what else he was capable of. Although there are certainly horror components within the film, it is ultimately a high-concept thriller in the vein of Alfred Hitchcock, and not really a slasher story. The success of Red Eye was a major boost for Craven, as his track record previously indicated that he wasn’t always successful in his attempts to break out into other genres. Although Craven had tried his hand with comedy when he directed Eddie Murphy in the parody film Vampire in Brooklyn, the disastrous reviews that it received proved to be among the worst of either of their careers. Craven’s 1999 drama Music of the Heart did end up earning Meryl Streep an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, but reactions to the film were otherwise muted. Thankfully, Red Eye was successful enough that Craved was able to make a few more films before his unfortunate death in 2015. Craven’s last film was the 2011 sequel Scream 4, which many fans of the franchise cited as its strongest installment since the original. Craven proved that he was well-equipped to adapt material by other writers, as Red Eye was not a film that he personally penned the screenplay for. The film hailed from Carl Ellsworth, a veteran television writer behind many of the best installments in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Legend of Tarzan. Although Red Eye was actually the first film that Ellsworth served as a credited screenwriter on, its success allowed him to make several other high concept thrillers. The 2007 film Disturbia has become a bit of a cult classic due to the comparison that it drew to the classic Hitchcock film Rear Window, and Ellsworth’s 2020 thriller Unhinged inspired a truly meme-worthy performance by Russell Crowe, as it was one of the first films released in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although it is deeply unfortunate that Ellsworth will never have the opportunity to work with Craven again, it is satisfying to see that he has used the popularity of Red Eye to make other films that would have been in its director’s wheelhous
WES CRAVEN POLITICAL THRILLER RED EYE CARL ELLSWORTH HOLLYWOOD
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