Parents' Guide to No Way Up

Although it starts with a not-bad idea, this disaster thriller is preposterously, laughably bad. It takes itself too seriously and is packed with poor acting, poor dialogue, poor continuity, and poor logic. Like so many post-Jaws shark movies, No Way Up swims along on the bare minimum, perhaps expecting its toothy villains to sell the movie by themselves. Certainly the humans aren't going to do that. Logan and Meaney are accomplished actors, but you'd never know it watching them in this. Struggle as they may, they can't bite through the material's mediocrity. The others fare so badly that you might find yourself starting to hope that they'll become shark food (especially the irritating Kyle, who cruelly harasses gay flight attendant Danilo and seems to have a poorly timed, poorly conceived one-liner for every grim situation).

The filmmakers can't even properly explain just where the characters are in the plane and how the life-saving air bubble occurs; it doesn't seem to match with the exterior shots of the slowly cracking-apart underwater plane. No Way Up is the screenwriting debut of producer Andy Mayson, who previously worked on the suspenseful shark movie 47 Meters Down and its abysmally bad, unneeded sequel 47 Meters Down: Uncaged. It seems as if Mayson—who also produced this—is merely cashing in on shark fever without bothering to make a good movie.