Panic Button is a 2011 British thriller featuring Scarlett Johnson, Michael Jibson, Elen Rhys, and Joshua Richards. Four people are awarded an all expenses paid vacation from London to New York City as thanks for their participation on a social media website known as All2Gthr, but once the plane takes off they find themselves trapped in a deadly game that revolves around their online lives.
This film contains examples of:
- Anti-Villain: Alligator, who is getting revenge against the four passengers for driving his daughter to suicide by making them play a suicide game.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Round two involves asking the players extremely personal, specific questions about embarrassing things they do online. Everyone gets visibly upset by this, and two refuse to keep playing.
- Asshole Victim: We find out near the end of the film that each of the passengers were taunting a teenage girl that was livestreaming herself committing suicide.
- Deadly Game: If one of the players does not complete their task, a family member of theirs is tortured or killed.
- Downer Ending: Everyone dies. The video of their deaths goes viral. Jo's daughter is kidnapped and forced to become the replacement daughter for her family's murderer.
- Forced to Watch: Alligator's main method to ensure compliance is to livestream the player's family members being tortured to the plane's screens if they don't continue playing his game.
- Foreshadowing:
- The flight attendant remarks that giving up your cell phone is "like losing a limb, isn't it?" Dave's family member is later tortured by having his arm cut off with a machete.
- Max claims he genuinely doesn't know any of the answers to the questions about himself in the first round. He's not actually Max; he hacked Max's All2gthr account to steal the "vacation".
- Good All Along: Alligator.
- Hero Antagonist: Alligator turns out to be this. Or rather, an Anti-Hero Antagonist.
- Hollywood Hacking: Max does some completely ambiguous "hacking" on his laptop. What he is allegedly hacking, how he is doing it, or what his goal is never gets explained, but his screen shows a couple of command prompt windows open as he taps away at a keyboard and mumbles to himself about being "in".
- Humans Are Bastards: Alligator's point is that social media encourages this.
- Man on Fire: Gwen's sister is doused in gasoline and set on fire when she fails her task.
- Mile-High Club: Gwen is given this as a task.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: The four passengers are revealed to be awful, vile people who drove Alligator's daughter to suicide. And he is simply getting back at them for it.
- Revenge: Turns out Alligator is the father of the teenager that committed suicide, and his goal is to spread their deaths on social media like they did his daughter's.
- Snuff Film: Jo is accused of watching one repeatedly. Additionally, Alligator is revealed to be creating one.
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Streisand Effect: Alligator hopes this is what happens. - Suicide Attack: This turns out to be Alligator's plan. He is going to crash the "winners" into the HQ of All2Gthr.
