7 films you really shouldn't watch on a plane

Some films we can guarantee will never be shown as the inflight movie on a plane. You're not going to fasten your seat belt, crack open the duty free and discover your viewing choices include Denzel Washington as the pilot making a forced landing while drunk and high in Flight, or Jeff Bridges surviving a crash in Fearless.

It's highly unlikely you'll get to watch the Andes survivor true story Alive, or Tom Hanks in either of his plane crash movies, Sully and Cast Away. And we're pretty certain you won't get to see Snakes on a Plane, either.

There are, however, some innocent-seeming movies that are fine on the ground but at 35,000 feet in the air leave you gripping your armrest, gazing longingly at the emergency exit or begging the flight attendants to move seats.

Watch these on your seat-back entertainment system at your peril…

1. The Mountain Between Us

While most of this adventure/romance has Idris Elba and Kate Winslet looking lovely while battling the elements – snow, mountain lions, more snow – it's the events that lead them to a desolate mountain top that may prove worrisome mid-flight.

The movie starts with them on a teeny tiny plane piloted by Beau Bridges, who starts mumbling, rolling his eyes, foaming at the mouth and – oh my god, he's having a stroke and we're going to die.

Bet you're not feeling so good about that silver-haired, distinguished-looking senior pilot that boarded the plane before take off, now, are you?

2. Contagion

Gwyneth Paltrow is the woman who returns from a Hong Kong business trip with a rather nasty souvenir – a deadly virus that quickly turns into a major outbreak in Steven Soderbergh's thriller. Watch this – or Outbreak, starring Dustin Hoffman, which features a creepy scene of a disease being spread from person to person in a cinema, a closed-in place not dissimilar to that plane cabin you're sat in – and then try not to be bothered by the person next to you who has been sneezing and coughing since they boarded.

Time to get out the sanitising hand gel – but will 100ml be enough...?

3. Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom

Everyone loves the Indiana Jones movies (well, if we forget about Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) but it may be worth remembering that this one features Indy, Short Round and Willie Scott waking up on their plane from Shanghai to discover the pilots have parachuted out, leaving our heroes to crash into the Himalayas.

We lesser mortals don't have Harrison Ford to cling onto while jumping out of a plane on an inflatable raft, so perhaps this would be a good time to ask the flight attendants to tell the pilot how lovely and clever and skilled (please don't leave us!) we think he or she is…

4. Die Hard 2

Scared of flying? Now you'll be frightened of landing, too, after watching Bruce Willis's John McClane take on a bunch of terrorists at Washington Dulles Airport in this classic blockbuster.

While his wife is in a plane circling the airport, unable to land and running out of fuel because the baddies have shut down air-traffic control and the landing lights, McClane has a shoot-out in baggage claim, watches a 747 crash near the airport killing all aboard, and has a fight on the wing of a taxiing plane before setting fire to the jet's fuel. We'll take the train, thanks.

5. Con Air

Hugely entertaining and utterly preposterous, '90s action movie Con Air placed a bunch of psychopathic prisoners, including John Malkovich's sinister mastermind Cyrus 'The Virus' Grissom and Steve Buscemi's perverted Garland 'The Marietta Mangler' Greene, on a private plane to transport them to a new supermax prison.

Of course, you're not going to get Public Enemy Number One sat next to you on your Ryanair flight to Ibiza (or are you…?), but your fellow passengers will certainly look more sinister as the flight wears on and it doesn't look like there's anyone on board resembling Nic Cage to save you, either…

6. US Marshals

1993 movie The Fugitive featured a jaw-dropping bus/train crash, and to top it, the spin-off action movie US Marshals has a stomach-churning plane crash.

You'll settle down with your airplane meal, thinking you're about to watch a fun action adventure about US Marshal Tommy Lee Jones catching nasty people, and instead be treated to a sequence in which a fight breaks out on the plane he is on, baddie Wesley Snipes gets shot at, the bullet pierces the plane window causing depressurisation and people to be sucked out mid-air, before the plane finally crash lands in Illinois.

That mild chicken curry is even more tasteless than usual now, isn't it?

7. Say Anything...

Cameron Crowe's adorable romance, starring John Cusack and Ione Skye, is perfect until the very last scene. Skye's character Diana, you see, is frightened of flying, but the movie ends with her and boyfriend Lloyd (Cusack) on a plane waiting for take-off, him explaining why she shouldn't be scared.

"If anything happens, it usually happens in the first five minutes of flight, right. So when you hear that seatbelt sign go 'ding' you know everything is going to be ok… any second now…" Watch this movie on board a plane and from then on you will listen out for every intercom ding on every flight... forever.

Bonus: Fifty Shades Of Grey

You can pretend all you like that you were searching for Alvin And The Chipmunks 2 when the inflight movie selector got stuck on the soft-core porn movie based on EL James's S&M bestseller.

We – next to you, in the row behind, the flight attendant about to ask you if you want another stale cup of coffee – are not judging you. Oh, wait a minute, yes we are.

(However, if you're the one stuck in a seat next to someone who is, ahem, *enjoying* Fifty Shades, you have our sympathies. But no, we won't swap seats.)

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