That’s the End of My Triathlon Plans
Main Cast: Sophie McIntosh, Colm Meaney
Director: Claudio Fah
While I’m sure Italy is beautiful, I’ll never see it. Same with Paris, Japan, and all kinds of other places around the world. As much as I’m sure I’d love it, I’ll never visit any of those places for one very simple reason: you have to fly over water to get there.
And while I know countless planes make those flights every day, I also know the first time I tried it, I’d wind up here: underwater, with a hole in the side of the fuselage, trapped in an air pocket while the plane slowly slides closer and closer toward the edge of an underwater cliff as sharks munch on the bodies of the dead passengers. No, thank you.
The 2024 movie NO WAY UP, written by Andy Mayson and directed by Claudio Fah (HOLLOW MAN II), played on half a dozen of my fears just in the trailer. So I knew I had to see it.
We spend the first 20 minutes just meeting our characters and setting up their stories. Governor’s daughter Ava (Sophie McIntosh) and her friends Jed (Jeremias Amoore) and Kyle (Will Attenborough, DUNKIRK) are on their way to Cabo, with Ava’s bodyguard Brandon (Colm Meany) in tow. Mardy (Phyllis Logan) and Hank (James Carroll Jordan) are taking their granddaughter Rosa (Grace Nettle) to Cabo as well. And for flight attendant Danilo (Manuel Pacific, TERMINATOR: DARK FATE), it’s just another day at work.
Until the plane flies through a flock of birds and one of the engines is damaged. A piece flies off, hits the fuselage and tears a hole in the side of the plane, sending half the passengers and crew flying out as the impact crushes most of those remaining, including everyone at the front.
Brandon manages to rescue Mardy and Rosa. Ava and her friends were, thankfully, sitting close enough to the rear that they managed to survive, while Danilo was strapped in even further back.
The plane has come to rest on a rocky outcropping that, at first, seems stable enough. It isn’t and over the course of the movie, it slides further and further underwater. But for now, they’re all in an air pocket and as long as they keep calm and wait, rescue should be coming very soon.
Then the sharks come, and gravity starts to work against them. And when rescue divers finally do show up, well the sharks are still around. Soon it’s up to Ava and the others to save themselves or die at the bottom of the trench the plane is definitely going to fall into.
Just thinking about it has me all tense again.
McIntosh and crew are pretty solid. There aren’t any particular stand-out performances here, nor is the script anything to call attention to: it serves the story and gets the characters from point A to B with little to no hassle. Fau’s direction, also, does its job without calling unnecessary attention to itself. Everything here serves the movie.
For me, the real star of NO WAY UP was the scenario. We’ve seen lots of airplane disaster movies. We’ve seen lots of trapped underwater movies. We’ve seen lots of shark movies. This one puts them all into one movie and it really gives me the shivers. One of my greatest fears is drowning in a body of water with no sign of land in any direction. But that fear, thanks to this movie, is easily being overtaken by the fear of NOT drowning, but instead seeing the great dark nothing swallow you up as the plane plunges, powerless, further and further down and the only thing that can put an end to it is a shark’s giant mouth coming right for you.
NO WAY UP had me at hello! This one was an AMC+ exclusive, and if you have that service, I recommend it. There’s also a DVD, but I wouldn’t spend too much on it; you’re probably only going to watch this one once. However, if you come across it really cheap, I say grab it and see if it had the same effect on you that it did on me. I wasn’t on the edge of my seat, nor did I clutch a single pearl, but I definitely sat on my couch, strengthening my resolve to NEVER fly over water. You’d have to say I won a billion-dollar lottery and the ONLY way to claim the prize is to get on a plane. And even then, you might need to knock me out for the duration. And once I get there, I’m gonna take my winnings, buy a local place, send for my family and my belongings and spend the rest of my days in luxury in whatever foreign country I’ve wound up in because I just know for a fact, the return trip would be the premise for a sequel: NO WAY UP 2: Why’d You Get Back on the Plane???
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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