Review: FLIGHT 666 (2018)

No, not the documentary about Iron Maiden’s Somewhere Back in Time World Tour, this FLIGHT 666 is another of the seemingly endless releases from The Asylum. Here the folks that gave us SNAKES ON A TRAIN give us ghosts on a plane. Is this one of their rare successes or just another easily forgettable crapfest?

FLIGHT 666 begins with a montage of killings. A serial killer is preying on young women and we get the equivalent of a highlight reel during the credits. The camera zooms out from the last killing, up into the clouds and onto an airplane caught in a nasty-looking storm. Things quickly get worse as one of the passengers sees what looks like ghosts on the wing. Then the engines fail, sending the plane into a dive before just as suddenly starting up again.

At this point, the ghosts start showing up in full force. Remember the killings at the beginning of the film? Well guess who’s on this flight, and his victims are out for revenge.

Horror and flight have a long history together and FLIGHT 666 shamelessly cashes in on it by almost immediately ripping off the classic TWILIGHT ZONE episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and keeps going from there. And that’s a big part of the film’s problem. The script never offers anything new, it just piles on cliches from disaster movies and haunted house films. We get ghastly apparitions that only some people see, creepy crawlers infesting food, random mechanical issues, bickering passengers, etc.

The script also takes a huge chunk from the classic made-for-TV film THE HORROR AT 37,000 FEET in both plot and DVD artwork. Coincidentally both it and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” star William Shatner, maybe one of the writers is a fan of The Shat

The film doesn’t even follow any internal logic. The ghosts want revenge for their own deaths but are willing to risk a planeload of passengers to get it. Why couldn’t they have come after him on the ground for that matter? Also, despite multiple steep, sudden descents the oxygen masks never drop. Ghosts may be the least of this airline’s safety issues…

All FLIGHT 666 really has going for it are some effectively creepy-looking ghosts. There are no real scares and only PG-level violence. You can safely miss this flight and watch the Maiden DVD instead.

FLIGHT 666 is available on DVD and VOD.

Where to watch Flight 666