You might watch Sole Survivor and say, "Didn't Final Destination rip this movie off?" Or you might be like me and say, "Didn't I already see Carnival of Souls?"TV producer Denise is the - Sole Survivor, sorry, I had to say it - of an airplane crash, but she feels like she's constantly being chased by something. Her combination doctor/boyfriend Brian (Kurt Johnson, The Fan) thinks it's survivor's guilt. But Karla, a psychic ex-actress, predicted the crash and has a warning for Denise. Then, you know, everyone around her starts getting killed and turned into zombies, leading even a skeptic like David to start to worry.Of course, the dead kill everyone. They kill her best friend. They kill her boyfriend. They even kill kids and cab drivers. Anyone and everyone could be the living dead, out to drag Denise to the afterlife. And if the Carrie shock ending is to be believed, death isn't about to stop with her.Director Thom Eberhardt would go on to direct the vastly better film Night of the Comet. Here, the film drags at a very slow pace. We all know where it's going and it feels like it may take forever to get there. But hey - there's a Brinke Stevens cameo along the way.

If slow paced, intelligent horror films along the lines of Let's Scare Jessica to Death or Carnival of Souls are your speed, you'll find a lot to love in Sole Survivor.Predating Final Destination by nearly 20 years, Sole Survivor tells the story of Denise, a TV producer, who ends up being the sole survivor of a plane crash. Soon after, she starts seeing people following her and, well,...I don't want to spoil anything else.Sole Survivor is a perfect example of "less is more." Things are never quite clear or explained, which makes the entire film quite mysterious and creepy. Most of the performances are subdued and natural and a large cloud of doom hangs over the entire film. It's impressively creepy, honestly.If you're a gore hound or looking for cheap jump scares, Sole Survivor might not be your cup of tea, but those who appreciate a nice slow burn will probably love it.

SS is a daft semi-amateurish horror film from which the makers of the "Final Destination" serial might have "borrowed" the basic premise. Except that FD movies make sense, while this one does not. SS would make sense (at least its premise) if Denise were the only person to be targeted by the freshly undead. But she isn't. In fact, zombies don't even try to kill her during the first few days. Instead, they just stare at her from the distance like a bunch of retards, while cliché horror music "composed" by music amateurs doodles in the background. If only these scenes looked menacing; they don't. And when these pasty-faced zombies finally get down to the business of murder (as we knew they would) they kill Denise's pal Karla first. They got the wrong woman!Or did they? They then slay a taxi-driver and then Denise's new boyfriend as well. Denise snuffs it only a little later. Apparently, these zombies FORGOT whom they were sent out to hunt down, and end up attacking ANYBODY they can get their hands on, not just the "sole survivor" Denise – who is the only victim it would make sense that they pursue. Dumber yet, these zombies WAIT a few days before they start their killing spree. (The notion that zombies may have poor memory – perhaps even extremely advanced Alzheimer's – makes sense, in a way, considering their low IQs, so perhaps I'm being a little harsh.)Absolutely nothing makes sense in the 2nd half. Are we to deduce that the plane crash started off a zombie apocalypse? There was no mysterious gas involved, nor did the airplane crash into a nuclear reactor or anything like that; it was just a bloody plane crash, one of many. So what made THIS plane crash so special that it started off what seems like the early stages of a "Dawn of the Dead"-type scenario? How the hell does a movie with an obvious ghosts-gotta-collect-her-sole-coz-she-shouldn't-be-alive shtick become a random-killing zombie-dawn flick? (BTW, for all of you who think the premise was original, consider the fact that it is stolen from "The Twilight Zone" episode "The Hitchhiker" AND the movie "Carnival of Souls".) Whoever wrote this nonsense was just as confused as the guy who cast Anita Skinner to play the lead: no boobs, no womanly hips, and a fairly mediocre face. In fact, during the opening bus scene, from the distance I thought she was a man. No joke.Speaking of which, the opening scene serves as a SPOILER. I've never understood movies that start off with one of its last scenes. I'm against it because if I wanted to watch a trailer I would have done so before pressing "play" for this piece of crap. I don't want to know anything in advance. I mean, horror flicks of this kind are dull enough as it is, without having the handful of its flimsy plot-twists given away early on. Duh.There is a particularly baffling segment around the mid-section when Denise's neighbor is playing strip-poker: one dweeb and three women, to be exact. Is this even possible? How does a DWEEB convince three young women to play strip poker? I mean, what is in it for THEM? To see him naked? But wait; things get even dumber pretty soon. Her neighbor Karla gets drowned – for zero reason – by one of the zombies that have been stalking Survivor Girl Denise for days. So why would they kill her friend instead of her? But I repeat myself.Back to the strip-poker: the woman with the small boobs gets naked – instead of Karla who seems to be very well endowed. The director must be a boy-lover because all 4 boobs that he shows in SS are small.

Sole Survivor features a plot that begins a lot like James Herbert's classic book 'The Survivor', and turns into something much more like the modern thriller 'Final Destination'. The idea behind the film is always going to be interesting, as death is the ultimate unknown and stories about the other-worldly forces that govern the afterlife are always bound to be intriguing; but due to this film's low budget and generally slow plot, what could have been a great thriller is left only as an interesting attempt at a good thriller. There were a lot of low budget horror films made during the eighties, many of which are now classics - but this film feels more like a seventies movie, and that's not a good thing as the paltry acting and low quality feel don't bode well with the ambitious plot line. The story follows a woman that is the only survivor of a plane crash. She is haunted by a feeling that her doctor describes as 'sole survivor syndrome', but it turns out that she actually should have died in the crash; and the powers that be have sent their minions to get rid of her.The film gets off to a strong start, and writer-director Thom Eberhardt seems keen to explore all the implications of the central idea. However, it soon goes downhill as the film never really gets going, and most of the ideas don't end up being fully explored, which is a shame. The film does benefit from a continually creepy atmosphere, which bodes well with the central plot in that it makes the finished piece more horrifying. It's always obvious that the film has been made on a shoestring, however, and the director never really makes any attempt to mask this, which is disappointing. The acting isn't exactly brilliant, but it's one of the better things about the piece, and Anita Skinner does well at heading a cast of other unknowns. Eberhardt's script is good in that it manages to give credence to its characters as well, which ends up making the film more credible as we are given a reason to care about the plight of the lead character. Overall, Sole Survivor isn't essentially a 'bad' film; but it is extremely disappointing in that it could have been a lot better.