So I saw this movie today with my brother. Let me say that this a very scary movie, and it even scared him at times, and my brother likes horror movies. It's not so much a horror movie as a thriller, as there is no tangible monster to fight. More of a force that manifests itself as a highly unlikely sequence of events that ends up killing someone.

Alex Browning is part of a high school trip to France. Some forty students and a few adults will be taking a jetliner to Paris. But as he waits at the airport and then boards the plane, he gets these little signs that something is wrong, that something will happen: he sees the status board put his flight on Cancelled before correcting itself, an ominous rain starts, there's a baby and an invalid on board, prompting another student to comment that it would take one messed up God to take the plane down.

Finally as he's sitting in his seat, being very nervous, he has a waking dream. Two girls come up and ask him to exchange seats, once at the other seat the little plastic thing that keeps the tray up breaks, then as they take off there is a lot of turbulence, which quites for a while, then starts up stronger. An explosion punches a hole in the plane, and as passengers are swept out, a fire- ball engulfs the cabin and the plane explodes.

He's woken up, sweating and terrified. And it's the two girls asking him to change seats. He goes to the other seat and the plastic thing breaks. So now he starts yelling that the plane is going to explode. He's forcibly taken out, along with Carter Hogan, who he punched, and Carter's girlfriend Terry. Alex's friend Tod goes out to make sure he's ok, as does Valerie Lewton, one of the teachers. Billy Hitchcock is dragged out with the crowd as he was getting out of the restroom, and Clear Rivers followed because she somehow believed that Alex was telling the truth.

So those people are kicked off the plane, which proceeds to take off and explode in a fiery ball. The FBI get involved, and they start suspecting that there's something about Alex as the movie goes along. Meanwhile Alex gets a clue that something is going to happen to Tod, so he goes to Tod's place only to find that Tod has apparently committed suicide. Alex and Clear visit the morgue to see if Tod did commit suicide or if it was an accident. The creepy pathologist there says something about them cheating Death momentarily. Death will come back for them and they better watch out.

Terry is also killed, and from a news report on the cause of the plane crash, Alex deduces that the survivors are being killed in the same order that they would have died had they remained on the plane. So the rest of the movie is about Alex trying to save everyone somehow, and him finding out the rules to Death's game. As usual, some people make it through and some of them die in quite horrible ways.

It's a scary movie because it's like they're fighting against the Universe. People are dying from some really unlikely causes, although all accidental. Something falls, pushing something, making something else fall, which causes an explosion. That kind of stuff. Spooky in that you can see the scene slowly developing as the next victim goes about their business, with the little elements slowly coming together in a fatal combination.

I didn't know any of the actors other than Kristen Cloke, who plays a relatively convincing Valerie Lewton. Kristen I've also seen in Space: Above and Beyond where she played Shane Vansen, although she was also in Millenium. Both the above shows plus this movie are the works of Glen Morgan and James Wong, and she's married to one of them. Anyway, her character has probably the most elaborate death scene in the movie.

In conclusion, this seems to be a good movie which I could have lived quite happily without ever watching. It's scary in what I think is a novel way. Good story that skipped one or two points. And a bit of a mystery in discovering the rules that Death uses. Recommended if you like scary movies.