20 Years Later, Wes Craven’s 86‑Minute Red Eye Is the Short Thriller Hollywood Forgot

Wes Craven’s thriller Red Eye opened 20 years ago on Aug. 19, 2005. It’s a tightly paced airport-and-airplane thriller directed by Craven, starring Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy, and it runs 86 minutes in total.

Quick summary of the film’s runtime, plot, and structure.
How the movie’s setting and performances shape its short length.
Context about modern runtimes and streaming, with sources.

What the movie is

Red Eye is a 2005 thriller directed by Wes Craven. The film stars Rachel McAdams as Lisa, a hotel manager, and Cillian Murphy as Jackson, a man she meets while traveling. Much of the story unfolds in an airport and on a single night flight, where Jackson pressures Lisa into helping him move a target so the target’s family will be more accessible to an assassination plot. If she refuses, Jackson threatens Lisa’s father.

Runtime and structure

The film’s official running time is 86 minutes. Subtracting credits leaves about 77 minutes of story. Much of the film’s action is concentrated: roughly pre-flight setup, the majority of the film on the flight itself, and a brief post-flight climax. The compact runtime places the film below the modern average for adult studio thrillers.

Actors, focus, and visual approach

Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy were both rising in profile at the time. McAdams had recent credits such as Mean Girls, The Notebook and Wedding Crashers. Murphy had appeared in Batman Begins earlier in 2005 and later led in Breakfast on Pluto. Craven centers the camera and much of the story on their interactions, using close framing and occasional focus shifts when they share the same frame.

How it fits with older and newer trends

Shorter feature lengths were more common in the mid-20th century, especially in film noir and studio crime pictures. In recent decades the overall average movie length has stayed fairly steady, but top-grossing films have trended longer. For reporting on average run times and trends, see the Slate piece that tracks changes across decades.

Also, runtimes for major franchises can draw attention; for example, Marvel runtimes are often reported when they fall under two hours.

Read more on average movie lengths: Slate.

Example of coverage about runtimes making news: SuperHeroHype.

Streaming and runtime incentives

Streaming platforms typically measure success in minutes watched. Because of this, some films on streaming services run closer to two hours, which increases total minutes viewed for the platform. As a result, a well-known studio thriller like Red Eye is notable for arriving at a shorter runtime compared with many modern studio releases aimed at adult audiences.