No Way Up? They should have called it Sharks on a Plane! If you watch the trailer for No Way Up, you get some hints of action, a dash of drama, and a heaping teaspoon of thrills. The finished product doesn’t match the recipe. Even a botched dish can still taste good, right? If you can bite around the burnt and crusty bits, you can still find some enjoyment in it. And that’s sort of the camp No Way Up falls into.
Is No Way Up Worth Watching?
Is No Way Up a bad movie? Definitely not. Does it deserve the heaps of one-star reviews on Letterboxd? Probably not. Does it have issues? Unquestionably. No Way Up falls under the category of films that shove all of the good parts into the trailer. The trailer does an excellent job of playing out most of the story beats, but unfortunately, that’s all that’s worth watching. If you give away the best parts of your film in a trailer, that’s fine. But not being able to pad the best parts with a few interesting ideas or storylines, then that’s when it becomes a problem.
Let’s take a step back. No Way Up follows a group of “characters from different backgrounds” (their words, not mine), who find themselves in a peculiar predicament. The plane they were all on flies into a flock of birds, causing it to crash into the ocean. After sinking to the edge of a ravine, the survivors, who happen to be stuck in a small air pocket, must decide how to get out alive. Only one issue… there are sharks in the plane!
From the description alone, No Way Up sounds like a banger of a film. In retrospect, it might have been better left as an idea. Flat acting, shallow (pun intended) characters, and lackluster action leave the viewer wishing they, too, were stuck at the bottom of the ocean. This idea feels original, has an exceptional trailer, and stars Colm Meaney—it should have been a home run.
Colm Meaney: The Saving Grace
Colm Meaney is the light at the end of the tunnel for this film; it’s a shame they wouldn’t let him speak in his natural accent. Within being on screen for just a few minutes, Always Sunny alumn Colm Meaney reveals his veteran [of insert war] status, turns out to be a bodyguard, and even does an ocular patdown after arriving at the airport! Let this man shine! As typical for A-listers who receive ‘and’ credits in films like these, No Way Up would go belly up without him. The first 15 to 20 minutes of this film are incredibly solid, even if the film tries to play itself up as a hijacker film during that time. And the final 10-ish minutes are fairly tense and effective. Everything in between that time is completely forgettable.
Oh, and I’d be remiss not to talk about the questionable music choices. The opening song is some pop punk song about climate change, and the credits song is just…whacky and out of place. That is all.
I really wanted to like this film as it checks a bunch of boxes for me: disaster film, underwater horror, sharks, COLM MEANEY. It’s a shame there’s so much filler to extend the runtime to an unnecessary hour and a half. No Way Up could have shaved off 10 minutes and gone through a few more rounds of rewrites and maybe something good could have come out of it. Who knows. All I know is you can test the waters yourself and catch No Way Up on February 16th, 2024. Don’t forget your scuba gear.
