"Row 19" (2022)

by Mike Imboden

Normally here at “The Good, the Bad, and the Verdict”, both Joseph and Mike give their thoughts on a slice of cinema. However, here and there they will be taking the reins in a solo outing. For this installment, it’s Mike with a solo review of Row 19 by Alexander Babaev.

Synopsis

Twenty years ago, seven year-old Katerina (Svetlana Ivanova) was the sole survivor of a plane crash. Now, with a seven year-old daughter, (Diana, played by Marta Kessler), of her own in tow, she’s finally getting back on a plane to visit her father.

The Good

What follows is a mutt of a movie combining elements of everything from an entry in the Airport series of movies, some supernatural horror, and at least one episode of The Twilight Zone which, admittedly, sounds like it might be kind of fun. Truth be told, Row 19 is sort of fun - if your idea of fun is trying to make sense of a Mad Lib answered by a three year old.

Despite a raging storm outside and a flight manifest that fills the cabin with less passengers than most people have fingers, the plane takes off and it’s not long before creepy stuff starts happening and Katerina starts seeing things that cause her to flashback to her own ill-fated flight from 20 years earlier that include her childhood home, visions of her own mother, and a “witch” who is accompanied by sounds that are vaguely like Gregorian chants which is a good form of shorthand to let us know that something supernatural is afoot. When the short-list of passengers starts to get shorter, everyone tries to deal with things in their own way. Thankfully everyone is a cookie-cutter character so we know as soon as we meet them what their fate is and, predictably, what they will do.

The Bad

That all sounds fine, however either James Raab’s script or director Alexander Babaev (or even a combination of the two), tries to get cute and we start getting poorly-aimed curve balls thrown at us. Plot points that don’t really point anywhere, decisions made by characters that make no sense, and more flashbacks which are most likely intended to make us question if what we’re seeing is real or in Katerina’s head, but come across as oddly placed sidebars.

I watched this with the English dub on instead of the Russian language track so I can’t really comment on how well a job the actors did beyond saying their facial expressions and body language seemed to convey what was being said by the dub. The dub itself, however, was a bit clunky with the voice actors sounding a bit bored with their roles or - at the very least - coming across as soulless automatons. The CGI wasn’t much better, so I’ll just say that there is CGI used within the film and let you decide its quality.

The Verdict

All in all, Row 19 isn’t a horrible movie and it DOES have some flashes of above average-ness here and there, but there’s just not enough consistency in the storytelling or directing to let it all rise above a predictable and fairly derivative film about a flight that probably should have been grounded in the first place.