TV commercial producer Denise (Anita Skinner) emerges unscathed as the sole survivor of an airliner crash and feels as if she's about to be caught by something. Her doctor/boyfriend (the late Ken Johnson) is convinced that she's experiencing "survivor's syndrome" in which sole survivors experience guilt and either commit suicide or put themselves in dangerous situations. Denise also receives some ambiguous warnings from psychic ex-actress Carla (co-producer Caren Larkey) who predicted the crash. A series of strange sightings and encounters of zombie-like people escalates until it is apparent that something is trying to kill her as people around her start dying as well. Her skeptical boyfriend thinks Denise is going crazy until he finds out that a number of recently dead people - including one that Denise claims attacked her - were found with all of the blood in their bodies drained into their legs as if they had died standing upright.

Shot in Santa Ana for only $350,000, this is a remarkably accomplished low-key horror film eschewing (as the commentary moderators point out countless times) the slasher aesthetic of its contemporaries in favor of subtle chills. As pointed out in the commentary, the film not only draws from CARNIVAL OF SOULS but also seems an obvious influence on the more garish and gory FINAL DESTINATION series (I seem to recall an eighties or nineties TV movie that more directly rips off SOLE SURVIVOR). Lead performances are excellent and the atmosphere is unnerving. This is an accomplished eighties horror sleeper worthy of reassessment by people who caught it theatrically or on video and definitely a must for newcomers who prefer atmosphere over prosthetic and visual effects (although the theatrical trailer gives multiple glimpses of a red-eyed skeletal death figure with a slimy clawed hand - the film itself only offers a brief glimpse of a skull with red eyes in the reflection of a radar screen - as seen in the cap from the trailer).

Eric Cotenas