The Twilight Zone (2019) episode review — 1.2 — Nightmare at 30,000 Feet
Original release date: April 1, 2019
Director: Greg Yaitanes
Writer: Marco Ramirez
Rating: 7/10
If you’re going to remake one immortal classic from the original series, I think this is the one I’d choose. Not because it’s bad, of course. It’s not. But the monster in that episode looks absolutely terrible; there’s no getting around it. It could benefit from a more modern look.
And as the episode started, it didn’t look like it would be a straight remake. Journalist Justin Sanderson (Adam Scott) boards flight 1015 from Washington to Tel Aviv. He gives up his seat to a Muslim couple so that they can be together, and as he settles into his new seat, he finds an MP3 player opened up to a podcast about the mysterious journey of Flight 1015. He starts listening to it, and it seems to be describing his flight’s very circumstance.
The podcast mentions that a bird strikes the engine at 10:21 PM, which happens just after he hears it. Or does it? I was under the impression this was his imagination or a hallucination.
He freaks out and heads to the bathroom, muttering to himself, “The past is past” over and over again, seeming to refer to the same mysterious mental issues suffered by William Shatner’s character in the original episode.
He gets a flight attendant’s attention and tries to ask them about if they hit a bird. He’s sort of shut down. Another man overhears him and comes up to him, and says they did hit a bird. This man is played by Chris Diamantopoulos, and he says he’s a pilot.
Sanderson continues listening to the podcast and learns that the flight vanishes at 11:15, 45 minutes from now.
The podcast continues and speculates that perhaps something on board kept the pilot from properly communicating with his crew, and this seems to spark something in Justin. He talks to two Sikh men who are watching something on their phone, and suggests they turn it off. He goes back to the podcast, which mentions a man near the front of the plane who’s in witness protection, going to testify against the Russian mob. The podcast also mentions there’s a US Air Marshal aboard, so Justin tries to track him down.
He thinks that guy who said he was a pilot earlier may be the Air Marshal, though he denies this. He says he knows Air Marshals, and knows they’re supposed to think like terrorists, act like deceptive people.
Which, like, Justin’s doing a great job of, as he combs through the supposed Russian mob guy’s stuff.
People overhear him, including the guy that’s actually in the Russian mob. A crewmember puts an end to this, and Justin returns to his seat to continue to listen to the podcast, which now lists him as a person of interest, saying he’s directly connected to the flight’s events.
The podcast says that some of the last information to come from the flight was a video of Justin’s confrontation with the Russian guys, which just happened. He then speaks with the pilot, and believing he’s threatening the plane, he’s arrested by the Air Marshal (China Shavers). She eventually listens to the podcast, but just shrugs it off, saying it won’t predict the future. She believes he’s had a breakdown. He mentions that he’s had a mental breakdown before, but that this is different.
When she goes away, he continues listening. Chris Diamantopoulos’s character sits down next to him and says he believes him. He basically says that weird shit goes down in the sky. Justin tries to get this other pilot, Joe, to land the plane safely in Canada. Joe mentions there’s an override code, but Justin tells him that he knows it because of the podcast. Joe then plans to break into the cockpit and put everyone to sleep.
Joe breaks into the cockpit and takes out the flight crew. It’s broadcast over the flight’s TV screens. He then cuts off the oxygen, but with his own oxygen tank, Justin makes his way up to the cockpit. Joe says something about thanking Justin for teaching him an important lesson: that the past is past.
Joe then says the final words that the podcast said would be the final words, and leans back and falls asleep, leaving Justin to realize that he was the pilot all along.
The next day, Justin washes up onshore, with luggage all around him.
He finds the MP3 player, and hears that months later, a cargo ship found every single passenger alive on an island except for one: Justin, who still has never been found.
He then realizes that he’s on the same island with the other passengers, who proceed to kill him.
This is another episode that has a strong premise — and one much different from the episode that inspired it — but the ending was still a bit unsatisfying. It’s a better episode than the first. It’s more interesting, it has more unexpected twists. But pretty early on, I figured that he’d be the one that dooms them. The ways he ended up doing it were a bit unpredictable, sure, but I could predict the ending (except for him getting killed on the island, of course) pretty early on.
