REVIEW: ‘Emergency Declaration’ Is a Tense but Heavily Flawed Airplane Thriller

Films such as 7500, Con Air, and Flight Plan are clear examples that, in the right hands, a thriller set in a plane can be extremely effective. After all, you have a group of humans in a vehicle flying over a thousand feet in the air where there’s pretty much nowhere to go if something goes wrong. In his new film, Emergency Declaration, Han Jae-rim exploits these traits and then adds a lethal virus element to create an experience that although entertaining and stressful, struggles to overcome its many narrative flaws. 

Song Kang-ho (Parasite) stars as In-ho, a detective whose investigation of a video threat leads him to identify a highly dangerous individual who has possession of a lethal airborne virus that can spread fast between humans. But, by the time he uncovers all of this, the bioterrorist in question Jin-seok (Yim Si-wan) has already unleashed the virus inside a plane headed to Honolulu. What follows is chaos, panic, tension, bureaucracy, and moral conundrums as we follow this story alternately between the detectives and politics on the ground and the death, claustrophobia, and drama in the plane.

Han Jae-rim’s script uses many of your typical airplane thriller tropes including that of miraculously having a pilot among the passengers for whenever a crisis strikes the cockpit. In-ho’s wife being among the people on the plane isn’t exactly refreshing, although it works as a solid excuse to see Song Kang-Ho acting his butt off as his character desperately goes from one place to the next trying to find a solution for the bioterrorism problem. 

The film was written before the COVID-19 pandemic and produced throughout 2020, but I’m not sure that a claustrophobic, anxiety-riddled thriller film about an airborne virus slowly killing passengers trapped inside a plane is what the world wants to see right now. So if you are still suffering from the psychological effects of the last couple of years, or you are afraid of planes, you should definitely steer away from this.

Despite its many unbelievable narrative elements, Emergency Declaration is very effective in creating nail-biting tension as a result of tight editing, a nerve-wracking original score by Lee Byeong-woo, panic-inducing cinematography, and overall great performances from this star-studded cast that, besides the always watchable Song Kang-ho, includes Lee Byung-hun (Squid Game), Jeon Do-yeon (Secret Sunshine), Kim Nam-gil (The Pirates), and Kim So-jin (Escape from Mogadishu). 

Emergency Declaration won’t make it easy for you to get invested in its plot, though. Besides the genre tropes, there are many occurrences that are just too foolish to buy. Jin-seok, for instance, practically walks and talks around the airport with a big “Hi, I’m a psychopath, and I want to murder everyone” sign, but nobody does anything about it. Then, the flight attendants inside the plane make more than one questionable decision when presented with obvious evidence that Jin-seok is a terrorist, and when things get ugly, both characters on the ground and in the air are way too unbelievably slow to act. You’ll roll your eyes more than once.

However, after almost the two-hour mark, the film gets a second air when it heavily introduces a moral aspect. While navigating the horror of what might be impending death, the passengers are forced to make very difficult decisions related to their fate; Jae-rim accurately creates empathy and allows the watcher to ponder on the situation at hand. As a result, Emergency Declaration manages to pull off a melodramatic but highly emotional sequence that might make you forget about the hyperbolic occurrences of the plot. 

Emergency Declaration (2022) can’t escape its problematic implications. 

I wish that melodrama, messy twists, and preposterous scenes were the only mistakes of Emergency Declaration. After all, we can look past all of that thanks to the sheer intensity and gripping nature of the film. Unfortunately, the script falls into irresponsible territory more than once. At one point, one of the characters casually reveals that the virus was “received from the Middle East.”

This is never mentioned again and serves no purpose to the story. There was no need to mention it or give the virus an origin, yet Jae-rim decided to throw a line that is simply irresponsible and borderline racist. Furthermore, the director tries to connect the film’s terrorist attack with real-life attacks, such as the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, and he does so in the bluntest of ways, with zero tact — you remove the comparison, and the film stays the same.

Irresponsible elements such as these are present throughout Emergency Declaration as Jae-rim tries to demonize foreigners and land a political commentary. However, these attempts don’t work and everything ends up looking like shameless nationalism.

Emergency Declaration is a mixed bag. There are great technical elements and performances, some fun sequences, lots of intensity, smart moral questions, and a rollercoaster ride of a third act. The soap opera nature of the film works to a certain extent thanks to all of this, but the inauthentic and often irresponsible script is a distraction that constantly takes away the entertainment factor of it all.

Emergency Declaration lands in theaters on August 12 via Well Go USA Entertainment.