A brand new suspenseful thriller, “No Way Up,” was released to streaming services on Feb. 16. It was distributed by Altitude Films, a small production company based out of the UK. Despite the company’s attempts at creating an exciting, thrilling movie, “No Way Up” turned out to be a mess.
The movie follows a plane traveling to Cabo, Mexico that crashed into the ocean. The plane sinks underwater, and the few surviving passengers must find a way to the surface before their oxygen runs out. While trying to escape, they keep encountering sharks, causing the way up to be harder than they had initially thought.
Despite the action packed premise, the movie somehow failed to provide suspense. I found the movie to be painfully predictable, and had guessed which characters would survive and which ones wouldn’t after about ten minutes into the film. “No Way Up” was boring and unremarkable from the beginning until the very end.
The characters were all very dull and not memorable. The whole production felt very lazy, as the characters felt undeveloped, the soundtrack wasn’t anything special and the acting was way overdone. Nothing seemed to fit together; not even the emotions or the timing of the character’s emotions were realistic. There were also many easily avoidable mistakes made; characters that had been under water one moment were suddenly dry the next moment, character’s hair styles changing in the middle of scenes, etc.
The script was also incredibly unremarkable, as it felt totally unrealistic. Characters would tell random stories from their life during moments that meant life or death for them. The script killed off characters in pretty much the order I expected, and there were no exciting plot twists. You could read a short description of the movie and know pretty much everything that happened. Another thing that was unrealistic to the point that it just made the movie worse were the sharks. They would always come and attack during the most cliché times, and they also looked very fake, once again making the production feel careless.
Before watching “No Way Up,” I read some reviews and was astonished by how negative they were. Thrillers are usually my favorite genre, and I couldn’t imagine one being as bad as the reviews were making this one sound. Nonetheless, I still had hope that the film would be better than the reviews argued. Unfortunately, I found the movie to be very disappointing and boring, despite my higher expectations.
If you know anything about thrillers, you might know that the music can really help escalate the tension and make the audience feel the suspense. Unsurprisingly, this thriller failed to do that as well. Thinking back on the movie, I can barely even remember the music that was used, but I do remember that it didn’t add to the stressful effect at all.
Overall, “No Way Up” proved to be a flop, and I don’t say that lightly. I generally love movies, especially thrillers, but I found myself fighting sleep to stay awake for this one. Nothing seemed to line up or fit together; not the soundtrack, the acting, the special effects or the script. I would say the most exciting part of the film were the opening credits, since it felt like the most professional and well put together part of the entire movie. If you are considering watching this, I would recommend that you save your time and watch something worthwhile.
“No Way Up”: ★☆☆☆☆
