"Emergency Declaration" - Film Review
Emergency Declaration is every nervous flier’s worst nightmare. On a flight bound for the United States from South Korea, a healthy passenger suddenly dies a brutal death, which creates panic on the plane. Onboard is a suspect (Yim Si-wan) who posted a terrorist threat about attacking a plane. While most of the police department doesn’t take the threat seriously, a sergeant (Song Kang-ho) chooses to investigate because his wife is potentially on the flight. With the plane in the air over open water with no land in sight and rapidly-depleting fuel, it’s up to the crew to save the passengers from this unimaginable threat.
It seems surreal that writer/director Han Jae-rim conceived of and wrote Emergency Declaration in a pre-pandemic landscape because it feels so very “of the moment.” Watching the fear of a viral infection in a film that was written before words like “mandatory mask requirement” and “quarantine” were in our daily vernacular makes Emergency Declaration feel timeless in a way Jae-rim could never have imagined.
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Despite splitting focus between the police sergeant and the transport minister (Jeon Do-yeon), both of whom are on the ground, Emergency Declaration never loses its sense of claustrophobia on the plane. In fact, the more information the ground teams collect, but cannot share with the plane, the greater the sense of dread and anxiety. There are moments of true terror when it’s impossible for the audience to avoid being swept up into the fear that passes through the passengers.
What brings Emergency Declaration to a grinding halt are the runtime and the melodramatic setpieces. The level of anxiety that must exist to make this film succeed is difficult to sustain for nearly two-and-a-half hours. Emergency Declaration surely draws some inspiration from Train to Busan, but does not have the deftness required to pull off an anxiety attack of this length. Throughout the film, interpersonal drama from select passengers begins to come to light. A nervous father (Lee Byung-hun) has a mysterious connection to one of the pilots (Kim Nam-gil). The police sergeant’s wife is onboard and at risk while he’s on the ground, helplessly watching. Quite simply, Emergency Declaration doesn’t need to resort to large-scale action sequences to pack an emotional punch.
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Even without the threat of a bioterrorist attack, there’s something unnerving about being on an airplane. Perhaps it’s something that flight attendants and pilots get used to, but for the general public, flying is a strange sensation. It’s the lack of control, confinement, and being surrounded by strangers that’s hard to accept with ease. When Emergency Declaration exists in this unsettling realm of possibility, the film is at its best. There’s not much that has to be done to create anxiety in the audience, and a more nuanced approach actually adds to the terror. The further the film skews to extraordinary circumstances, the less anxiety it causes. The bubble has burst. Now, instead of being fully onboard with the terror, there’s levity that allows the audience to take a deep breath, to the detriment of the film’s tone.
Emergency Declaration is thrilling and hits too close to home, given the world we’re living in now, but the film cannot stick the landing.
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