The sole survivor of a plane crash, Denise Watson has been plagued by an odd feeling since the accident. An ad executive, she's involved in the production of a coffee commercial that stars a washed up celebrity (who claims to have psychic powers). This pyschic tells Denise that prior to the accident she had a vision of Denise surviving the crash, and that her survival was a fluke, a fluke that a malovelent force will put right by killing Denise and anyone involved...

A so-so movie with an interesting yet flawed concept, Sole Survivor takes the main plot of Final Destination and mixes it with Night Of The Living Dead. Like FD the main character is a person who gets on death's sh*t list by suriving a plane crash. However, unlike FD, this films version of death is a bit more straight forward, instead of utilizing elaborate accidents to claim its victims, death gets its man by reanimating corpses that it uses as zombie hitmen. While this is an intriguing idea, it doesn't work particularly well, and leaves some unanswered questions that leaves the viewer scratching their head.

Probably the biggest problem Sole Survivor has is it does not use its main concept well. Repeatedly in the movie we get scene after scene of zombies that, after locating Denise, stand at a distance and simply stare at her. Thats right, apparently death thinks Denise will simply fall over dead if it's minions simply look at her hard enough. I understand in many cases, death probably assumes it would be futile to strike at Denise with people around, however, if you're a cosmic force thats so intent on murdering a specific individual you're willing to bring the dead back to life to do it, well, it seems to me that you wouldn't care too much if your intended victim is smooching her boyfriend. During the movie I kept trying to psych death up, attempting to give it the confidence it so badly needed. "Come on death, you can do it! You're the f**king man! Lets get this sh*t on the road!"

Another problem is that it often displays a frequent lack of logic. Most notably, the movie never bothers to explain to us how Denise was able to escape her fated demise. We see Karla Davis, the psychic movie star, having her premonition about the accident and Denise's survival, however, Karla doesn't tell Denise about this prophecy until after the accident, so Denise had no idea that she was getting onto an airplane that was fated to crash. If Denise had no prior knowledge about the accident, then how was she able to thwart death's will? Shouldn't she have died with the rest of the passengers? And if she just somehow managed to survive by chance, then why is death so eager to kill her? Did death drop the ball when it came time to claim her? Does death make mistakes? These questions are never answered, leaving a giant hole in the foundation of the story.

During one particular point of exposition Karla tells Denise that "it" will go to any lengths it must to not only kill Denise, but anyone who gets in the way, anyone who understands her predicament, and even anyone who merely suspects whats going on. Really? So anyone who even thinks they may know about death using zombies to kill people has to also die? Why does death need to do this, why does it need to silence people who understand what its doing? Why the level of secrecy? Its not like mankind can do anything to stop it, this is death, its an inevitable fact of life. Everyone is eventually going to die, so death is going to win in the end, I'm not sure why it needs to mess up its own plan by killing people before their preordained time. In the world of Sole Survivor death seems to be either; A) not that bright, B) petty and unneedlessly violent, or C) all of the above.

Despite all of its problems Sole Survivor does succeed in providing some effective chills. The best moment of the movie is a scene where we see Denise at the scene of the crash. Surrounded by dead bodies and debris, we see her sitting calmly in her passenger seat, staring ahead with a blank expression. Its a haunting scene, one that indicates just how good this movie could have been with some more work. (Vhs Caveman, 6/28/05)

Directed By: Thom Eberhardt.
Written By: Thom Eberhardt.

Starring: Anita Skinner, Kurt Johnson, Robin Davidson, Caren L. Larkey.