18 Years Ago, Wes Craven Made the Perfect August Movie

A taut gem released after the rush of higher profile movies with big-name stars, ‘Red Eye’ embodies everything that makes late-summer moviegoing great.

The summer of 1990 opened with a series of high-profile releases that, in June alone, ranged from that year’s annual Arnold Scharzenegger blockbuster (Total Recall), a racing movie starring Tom Cruise (Days of Thunder), some big-deal sequels (Another 48 Hrs., Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Robocop 2), and Ghost Dad. Looming above them all wasthe much-hyped Dick Tracy, the Warren Beatty film positioned to be that year’s Batman, complete with the relentless marketing campaign and inescapable logo. By the time it hit theaters, everyone knew who Dick Tracy was, even if they’d never read his long-running comic strip.

At the other end of the summer was its shadow. Directed by Sam Raimi, the quasi-superhero movie Darkman had no big-name stars—it came out years before Liam Neeson and Frances McDormand became household name—and a difficult-to-explain premise. The marketing made all this a virtue with teaser posters that asked (in huge all-caps font) “WHO IS DARKMAN?” Here was the anti-Dick Tracy. If you wanted to know about this guy, you had to buy a ticket and find out.

By the time Darkman arrived, the summer release pattern had become predictable. Canny studios had come to see August as a time of lowered expectations where a sleeper hit could clean up. The summer of 1985 kicked off with Rambo: First Blood Part II, but it was misfit projects with little-known or emerging stars like Fright Night, Weird Science, Real Genius, Better Off Dead, and Teen Wolf that defined the season’s end. The summer of 1987 began with Beverly Hills Cop II and wound down with Dirty Dancing, a film that nobody predicted would become the sensation it did (if it found an audience at all). Fast forward to 2023, a summer season that began with The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in May, climaxed with Barbenheimer in July, and is scheduled to end with Strays, an R-rated comedy with talking dogs.

But while Darkman, a fine August movie in its own right, benefitted from the quintessential August movie marketing campaign, it’s another release from a horror legend working outside the horror genre that embodies all the best August movies have to offer: thrills, surprises, up-and-coming stars, and a running time that offers just the right amount of air conditioning on a hot summer’s day.

Like Darkman, Red Eye also benefited from a clever (if slightly deceptive) marketing campaign, including a teaser trailer that walked viewers up to the edge of its central twist without revealing its exact nature. (And if you haven’t seen the film, this is a good time to find 85 minutes to watch it and circle back.)

The spot opens with Rachel McAdams, fresh off her breakout role in The Notebook, as Lisa, a young woman endearingly fumbling her way through an airport to the accompaniment of a peppy score. A handsome stranger we’ll later learn is named Jackson (Cillian Murphy) observes her, they meet, enjoy some drinks at an airport Mexican restaurant, and find themselves coincidentally (?) seated next to each other on a flight to Miami. We’re firmly in rom-com territory until, at the two-thirds mark, the spot takes an ominous turn, zooming in on Murphy’s red-tinted eye and revealing this is a film by Wes Craven, director of Scream and A Nightmare on Elm Street, and destined to leave rom-com territory behind. 

The hint of the supernatural—that literal red eye just before a list of Craven’s horror bona fides—is a little deceptive, but the teaser is otherwise representative of the film, which does seem to be setting up a fun romance between Lisa and Jackson until pulling the rug out from under it. Opening with Lisa struggling to make a flight, Red Eye introduces Jackson as just another guy in line behind her at the edge of the frame as she waits to check in for her weather-delayed flight. They meet-cute bonding over their (seeming) shared frustration with an indignant customer verbally abusing an airline worker.

After first turning down Jackson’s offer to grab a drink, she ends up having one with him anyway and they hit it off. Still, that drink seems like a one-off until kismet (or is it?) seats them together on the flight. (Lisa’s journey to her seat, which brings her past a bunch of undesirable partners—guy rapping along loudly to the music on his headphones, lascivious businessman, messy eater—serves as both a fun visual gag and a way to establish the setting.) In her seat, Lisa continues to chat dreamily with Jackson, who even talks her through a rough take-off. But once they’re in the air, it’s all business. Hired by terrorists, he needs her to use her position as a hotel manager to move the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security to a room within firing distance of some assassins. If she doesn’t, the hitman waiting outside her father’s (Brian Cox) house will slit his throat.

Written by Carl Ellsworth from a story by Ellsworth and Dan Foos, Red Eye’s screenplay is a model of efficiency in which every detail matters. Where too many scripts now telegraph set-ups destined to pay off later, Red Eye takes a more casual approach. That 11-year-old girl making her first flight, for instance, seems of little consequence but she’s destined to play a big role. The Dr. Phil book Lisa’s reading at her dad’s insistence is more than just a gag at the expense of a self-help guru (and, in 2023, it’s now a reminder of how long that plague has been with us). A filmmaker with something to prove after the troubled flop Cursed (released the same year after two years of delays and a lot of Weinstein meddling), Craven brings a crispness of his own. When Jackson reveals his hand to Lisa, Craven lets a literal and tonal darkness envelop the film. It’s going to be a long night and a bumpy ride.

Craven also puts a lot of trust in his two leads. It’s easy to see why Lisa would be attracted to Jackson, but there’s something off about the guy. Then and now, Murphy easily projects a something-off-ness. In the early 2000s, Nolan screen-tested him for the lead in Batman Begins before correctly reassigning him to the part of the Scarecrow. Nolan’s Oppenheimer gets much of its power from Murphy's ability to project an unsettled mind within a still body. 

And, at the risk of turning this newsletter into an accidental Rachel McAdams fanzine, McAdams clearly recognizes that the film’s very much about Lisa’s journey and plays through the rush of conflicting emotions that accompany the character along the way. The scar on Lisa’s chest from an attack she later reveals to Jackson is both a source of her fearfulness and what she draws upon to fight back and McAdams makes her transition from trembling victim to badass feel like the natural result of a strong-willed woman being pushed too far by yet another creepy man. Jackson even lays down some proto-Jordan Peterson talk about the divide between “female-driven, emotion-based” ways of dealing with problems and the “male-driven, fact-based logic” he prefers. It comes back to haunt him.

How much of this could be expected when Red Eye arrived in theaters on August 19, 2005? Very little. McAdams and Murphy were names, but not exactly big names. Craven had a following, but his credit hardly guaranteed success. (Red Eye is sandwiched in his filmography by Cursed on one side and My Soul to Take on the other.) Buying a ticket for this smart, satisfying genre film with sharp performances meant taking a chance. 

Though Red Eye wasn’t a commercial sensation—ceding the top spot to The 40-Year-Old Virgin, another film perfectly suited for August that opened the same day—it became a modest but undeniable hit. The early months of that summer brought Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, Batman Begins, and  Fantastic Four. In August, moviegoers exhausted by sure things (some of which turned out to be anything but) turned adventurous and sought out the new and the unknown and were rewarded for their efforts with a film that exceeded their likely expectations. That’s what the month is for. Whether modestly budgeted thrillers, misfit sci-fi adventures, or shaggy comedies, all August movies constantly aspire to the condition of Red Eye.