10. RED EYE (2005)

For two-thirds of its running time, Red Eye had us believing that Craven had a little bit of Alfred Hitchcock’s spirit coursing through his veins.

Taking place mostly on a plane and focusing on two faces, those of Rachel MacAdams’ unsuspecting heroine and Cillian Murphy’s assassin-in-hiding, Craven’s straightforward thriller starts off heavily paranoid and enhances into a claustrophobic battle of wits. Heading into the film’s final act, one would think that the gore-master had made a modern-day, gender-neutral Strangers On A Train.

That’s before the plane lands and Red Eye digresses into a braindead action show that feels like the worst episode of 24 never filmed. The actors’ crisp performances can’t even save Craven’s inability to orchestrate high-stakes action, nor does the ultimately shallow script help his cause. More like Hitch-crock.