One of the many reasons schlock horror M3gan become such a surprise critical darling last week was down to Universal’s crafty release strategy, sashaying into the otherwise dead zone of January, easily leaping over an extremely low bar. This week reminds us of what the month usually offers US cinema-goers – an unwanted comedy remake, a horror film for Christians and a Gerard Butler action thriller – junk that’s easy for the studios to dump and even easier for audiences to forget.
Already the subject of social media jabs because of its ridiculous title, the Butler of it all, a film about a plane called Plane, is a January movie through and through, filling empty screens just because they need filling, doing the least but at an aggressively loud volume. There have certainly been worse B-movies released in this most cursed of months (last year’s kidnapped mermaid saga The King’s Daughter and 2020’s staggeringly, almost satirically, incompetent Blake Lively thriller The Rhythm Section spring to mind) but there have also recently been far better (slay M3gan slay etc) and as such, Plane doesn’t exactly rise above that low bar but sort of meets it head-on.
