On 3 July 2026, an action film premiered on Chinese streaming platforms — iQIYI, Youku, Tencent Video, Mango TV, and Bilibili — promoted as a collision between Shaolin-style martial arts and the more brutal Indonesian discipline of pencak silat. The former is represented by actor, choreographer, and director Shi Xiaolong, known internationally as Ashton Chen; the latter by Iko Uwais, familiar to every fan of action cinema.

The film is an example of wangluo dianying — an internet film. In recent years the internet cinema sector has become fairly significant in China, particularly for monster movies, mutant animal films, and martial arts actors. In the current climate these performers rarely receive offers to appear in larger theatrical productions, but can build their brand through low- and mid-budget films intended for online viewing. Xie Miao is one example of an actor who has made a name for himself in this space.

Given that it was made directly for streaming platforms, expectations for Wings of Dread were not particularly high. Even so, the film — whose original Chinese title translates as Crisis at 10,000 Metres — still disappoints in every respect except the fight choreography. Its protagonist is Gu Chaoyang, an air police officer — one of the armed aviation security personnel. In order to save his relationship with his partner, a flight attendant, he boards the plane she is working on. The same plane is transporting a criminal back to China, and international terrorists under the command of an Indonesian mercenary attempt to free him.

The film’s crew — according to promotional materials — purchased sections of a real aircraft and constructed a realistic twin-aisle cabin set in order to increase the believability of the action. The martial arts sequences therefore unfold in cramped spaces: the cargo hold, the galley, the lavatory, and the aircraft’s aisles. The choreography is designed to exploit these claustrophobic spaces and the turbulence. It is worth noting that one of the fight choreographers was Rama Ramadhan, a long-time collaborator of Uwais who previously worked on such films as Merantau, The Raid, The Night Comes for Us, and the recent Timur. This is significant because Wings of Dread not only uses Uwais’s face and popularity but also partially imports his choreographic background.

From an Indonesian perspective the film is of interest as another international project for Uwais. It is his first production for iQIYI, and in Indonesia itself it will receive a theatrical release in August 2026. Unfortunately, films made outside his home country tend to reduce him to the role of a set piece, offering him no fully developed character. Wings of Dread treats him in a similar fashion, and furthermore all of his lines are dubbed into English by a person with a different voice — one that does not synchronize with Uwais’s lip movements, completing the impression that he was cast solely on the strength of his reputation in action cinema.

Paradoxically, it is not the clash between Chen and Uwais that proves most interesting here. The film contains two extended — though also chaotically edited — action sequences in which four police officers fight four terrorists. Among the latter are an acrobatic mercenary, an enormous and unnaturally strong sadist, and an aggressive woman. The last of these is given a fairly interesting one-on-one fight with a female officer in the second of the sequences — a bout that takes place in the claustrophobic confines of an aircraft lavatory and genuinely conveys a sense of exhaustion and physical demand. The other skirmishes in tight spaces are also satisfactory, making effective use of the spatial constraints as well as the involvement of passengers reacting to events in various ways. Against this backdrop, the clash between the two stars — taking place in the more open space of the cargo hold — comes across as far more conventional and, consequently, less intriguing.

In terms of dramaturgy and narrative, Wings of Dread is unfortunately a failure. The minor comedic interludes concerning the protagonist’s romantic life are entirely bland, and their editing is too hurried. The plot is extraordinarily thin, offering no gradation of tension or escalation of conflict. Simply put, after introducing all the characters it presents the first action sequence, after which everyone dusts themselves off — despite some characters having appeared close to death from their injuries — and moves on to the second sequence, which concludes the confrontation with the terrorists but, regrettably, not the film itself. Instead of a climax, the filmmakers present viewers with a bizarre bomb-defusing subplot, a verbal confrontation with the transported criminal, and a series of passenger reactions — all seasoned with patriotic sloganeering so heavy-handed as to tip into the comic.

Wings of Dread is therefore a film that ought to provide martial arts fans with a dozen or so minutes of entertainment — particularly if they bear in mind that they are dealing with a streaming rather than a theatrical production and temper their expectations accordingly. Even they, however, will most likely notice the shoddiness of every other aspect: the absence of a story, the absence of tension, the heavy-handed jingoism, and the limp finale. It is a production justified by essentially only two action sequences — and even those are at their most interesting when the film forgets about the star showdown and starts thinking about the aircraft as a claustrophobic arena for combat.

Wings of Dread
Wàn mǐ wéijī
Direction: Ashton Chen, Qin Pengfei
Written by: Wang Haoyi
Cinematography: Li Chunying
Music: Rong Zihao
Action choreography: Zhang Wei, Li Qiankun
Asst. director: A Kun, Liang Dongyu, Liu Xiaobo
Studio: iQIYI Pictures
Premiere: 03.07.2026
Cast: Ashton Chen, Iko Uwais, Qu Jingjing, Nita Hsia Jo-Yen, Hong Shuang, Ren Tianye, Gao Yi, Huang Tao, Liu Fengchao, Zhou Haoshan, Tao Hai