Fear the Walking Dead: Flight 462 (2015)

Review

"How long has your husband been sick?" - Alex

Flight 462 is one of the last commercial airliners to take off from the rapidly escalating conflict on the ground. The plane is headed for Phoenix, Arizona and has an assorted packed passenger manifesto. Alex, an Asian chick, seems to know a lot about the apocalypse erupting in the U.S, Jake Powell is seeking safety with his father, there's an air marshal, assorted crew members, and one obnoxious dude, Marcus, who is becoming increasingly sick. With the lights going out in Phoenix the plane is diverted to LA Lax, where the lights are also going out.

As the plane settles into cruising altitude Marcus makes a break for the bathroom, given the noises that emanate from behind the locked bathroom door Marcus might not be suffering the after effects of a dodgy oyster meal. Against Alex's advice the door is opened and out spills a walker, someone is bitten, the walker is forced back into the bathroom, dead Marcus's wife is a bit of dill and re-opens the door, chaos ensues. During the conflict a gun is discharged multiple times and unfortunately a ricochet cracks a cabin window. Flight 462 is in trouble, the walkers are biting, depressurisation is happening, who is going to survive the inevitable crash landing?

Flight 462 has the singular, at least in the Walking Dead franchise, honour of being a spinoff of a spinoff! That's either way cool, fan of the show, or getting frankly silly, the sometime horror viewer attracted by the main course in the franchise. It screened as 16 minute or so episodes during the commercial breaks in season six of The Walking Dead, and I assume should be on the extras for the season two disc release of Fear the Walking Dead. The promise has been made that Flight 462 will tie in to Fear, am assuming here we are talking season two. I would certainly be up for more Alex and Jake involvement as the two characters are engaging enough from what I can tell from Flight.

The action comes thick and fast during the 14 or so minutes we get, excluding title sequences etc., which is pretty much what has to happen due to the short time frame involved. We got walkers on a plane basically, save your zombie air jokes dude, and that's pretty much the happening thing. Like the first couple of episodes of Fear the passengers and crew have zero idea what is happening and make the sort of mistakes we would kind of expect from newbies to the apocalypse. A couple of people are infected due to ignorance, though Alex seems to know exactly what is happening and how to deal. I would have liked a bit more information on her backstory to be honest, intriguing lady, please be in a major role in Fear. So yeah walker outbreak on a plane, it isn't going to end well.

Okay that brings me to one of the criticisms thrown at The Walking Dead universe; sorry if we are starting to sound like apologists for the franchise but the web does allow prats speaking room. Apparently in the "real world" the outbreak would have been contained and dealt with! Really, so this isn't a work of fiction, i.e. no basis in reality, and a massive outbreak of a fatal virus would have been sorted, tell that to the Africans suffering the recent Ebola epidemic. Sure it was contained, but only due to geographic factors, imagine if it had of been breaking out worldwide! It takes society some time to react, and given the propensity of the human race to panic, something Fear the Walking Dead amply demonstrates in the first couple of episodes, authorities are hampered by the citizens they seek to protect. It boils down to fiction people, show me a TV show I can't pull apart if I was nit picking enough, for example House, you frackers seriously think a Hospital would take on the liability of a Doctor addicted to drugs? It's an unreal world in the comforting glow of the small screen folks; accept it for what it is. Oh and before we get irate House fans writing in, love the show, own every episode.

While Flight 462 really doesn't have time to develop characters it does draw them well enough without having to belabour the point. I'm really hoping some of these folks survive, end of show we have no idea if they do or not, and have leading parts in Fear. Which I guess is touching on a sore point for viewers who need closure, there is none in Flight 462, the plane looks to be in terminal crash mode, though the pilots should be able to crash land the thing, so we really have no idea of what comes next. Interesting there is a sequence taken from Fear the Walking Dead, where Nick notes the plane passing overhead, now that's a big wink folks, expect some survivors. And before you ask, nope haven't seen season two of Fear as of writing, guess what my next episode guide is going to be on.

Guess I should mention that you can view the entire 16 episodes in one long stream, without the intrusion of credits between episodes, and without the seams showing. Looks like they filmed the entire thing then sliced it up for screening, rather than filming each episode separately. I appreciated the approached and was chilling out to the 14 or so minutes run time this involved. If you want to watch episode by episode then be my guest, short attention spans and all, but to be honest I don't see the advantage in doing that. Nice to see AMC are still hitting the webisode thing, I do appreciate the time spent exploring other survivors and the situations they find themselves in.

Not much more to say kids, besides I'm hoping this excursion into the Walking Dead universe gets dropped on the discs for season two of Fear the Walking Dead, sort of like the BBC do with the Doctor Who Xmas special. For fans of the franchise Flight 462 is in the must watch category, short movie fans will dig it, and I pretty much am going to recommended it for anyone's viewing pleasure. It's short, kicks you in the gut, and introduces some solid new characters to the franchise. Book a flight kids, well worth your investment, AMC once again keeping the fans rocking.