- The very concept of the plot is HORRIFYING. Time travel has always been an interest within science fiction, yet this takes it to a dreadful new perspective, that traveling to the past does not allow one to have any influence in previous events, but rather entering a dead, empty world that is due to be destroyed at any moment, taking anything caught up in it along with.Mr. Jenkins: This....is the past....it's silent...it's empty...with all the meaning of a discarded old paintcan...
- Bob Jenkins laments that other planes on their flight path will have also gone through the rip. Therefore there was likely more than one passenger jet that went through, with passengers who woke up just as confused as the novella's protagonists. Since those planes lacked the presence of Brian Engle, those passengers would have been doomed to crash without ever knowing what was happening to them. Even creepier, it's possible a passenger plane went through AFTER flight 29, and AFTER the Langoliers ate the ground beneath them, which means that in the case of those planes, they'd have eventually run out of fuel and with nowhere to land or crash, would have just fallen into the black void, possibly for eternity, with their passengers stuck with a And I Must Scream fate.
- The Langoliers are just terrifying. They're Clock Roaches that devour the previous time continuum in order to extend eternity, but if that's all they are, they'd have had no reason to turn away from the rest of the main cast in favor of hounding down the fleeing Toomy, from whose childhood terrors come not only the name they bear throughout the story, but the manner in which they finally kill him.
- The build-up in the film is extremely tense, as Dinah claims to hear something but that the audience isn't really able to, and her subsequent meltdown after proving how intense her hearing is just makes it worse. Later, as Mr. Jenkins is explaining the conclusions he's drawn about what's happened to them, a strange, sinister noise starts up that drives home that something really is coming for the trapped passengers...
- That's bad enough to begin with, and it gets worse when you consider that Dinah, having been in and out of Toomy's head throughout the story, appears to him in the guise of an angel in order to lead him out of the terminal and away from the airplane, so that he'll bait the langoliers away from it for long enough to give everyone else a chance at escape. She was also present when he talked about the story his father'd told him, and how terrified he'd been of the man. Did the Clock Roaches take the shape of Toomy's terrors in order to torment and kill him? Or were they given it, by a dying little girl who quite coldly chose to murder Craig Toomy in hope of saving the other passengers' lives?
- What about Nick and all the other people that vanished in the flight? Where are they now? The (third-person omniscient) narrator says, in so many words, that "Nick Hopewell ceased to exist." Given that he left behind in so doing the same sort of impedimenta as did the other vanished passengers, the reader may safely surmise that the same thing happened to them.
- Toomey's insane, abusive father has a surprising amount, despite his limited role. The implication that he may have driven his alcoholic wife nuts certainly helps, but what really drives it home is the way that, despite being long dead when the story opens, he nevertheless has a role second only to the Negative Space Wedgie in driving the plot, entirely as a result of the effect he had on his son.
- When Toomey looks at his fellow human beings, what he sees is quite frightening. It's a true look Through the Eyes of Madness.
- "There's nothing out there. Nothing at all." The context of the scene, Brian asks Albert to look out the window for the city of Denver, which the plane is only 50 miles south of, and all Albert sees is a dark, lifeless range of mountains. Nick responds "Denver's blacked out, isn't it?" And Brian responds "Yeah. Either that, or it's gone."
