" I know a guy married the same dame 3 times then turned around and married her aunt "
— William Demarest, The Lady Eve

MRQE Top Critic

Betty Blue

There can be beauty in tragedy, particularly when the key ingredient is the same in both —Marty Mapes (review...)

Betty arrives like a bolt from the Blue

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Shuttle is a carnival ride of a movie. It offers immediate frights and long-lasting dread, all in the name of entertainment. For my money, I’d rather watch a horror movie with a subtext, but if you just want a good scare, maybe Shuttle is for you.

The Word ‘But’

How can an airport shuttle be ominous? Let Edward Anderson tell you.
How can an airport shuttle be ominous? Let Edward Anderson tell you.

Shuttle is a mixed bag. It’s a movie whose description requires the word “but.”

One of the film’s strongest suits is its ending. A thread that had been set up early in the film is paid off deliciously. The editing and music are devastatingly calm and relaxed, even as the horror reaches its peak.

But such an inspired ending raises other questions, like why the other loose threads weren’t paid off. They were apparently just frayed ends and misdirections. If you’re going to go for a big payoff at the end, why not go all out as in Oldboy?

There are some laughably contrived developments — like a cell-phone dead zone in a city with an international airport. Eventually the plot reveals that if there were such a place in an industrial landscape, our villain would know about it and take advantage of it.

But if our villain has that much expertise, then he must have been operating for a long time. And how could someone doing something so bad to so many people for such a long time have eluded the authorities for so long?

Playing Along

Maybe for horror movies you have to suspend your disbelief a little. I’m willing to play along if the director makes it fun. Writer/director Edward Anderson (a CU alumnus) does pretty well, from a tense beginning, to a strange turn of events halfway through (the heroes turn the tables on the villain), to the delicious ending.

I want a little more from my horror films than Shuttle provides, but for a freshman effort, Shuttle is a good little scare.