Is there a better title for a movie in all of 2006—nay, in all of film history—than Snakes on a Plane? In its touching effort to inscribe an entire plot on four monosyllabic words, it reaches dizzying heights in minimalism. Like a portrait miniature of a powerful king, or a haiku about the entire universe, there's something bathetic about the attempt to shrink or localize the instinctual horror that is snakes. It's as though Twister was called Twister in a Bathtub. Or if Arachnophobia was called Spiders in a Pocket.

Admittedly, planes scare people too, in a way that bathtubs do not. (And why not, you ask? Good question. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 352 Americans drowned in bathtubs in 2002, the last year for which statistics are available. It might be wise to cultivate skepticism of water-filled porcelain vessels.) The purpose of the title Snakes on a Plane is to join two separate but amenable fears into a single, glorious ur-terror: something like The Sum of All Fears, but with a little more oomph. In its conjunctive intent, Snakes on a Plane is like Arachnophobia plus Acrophobia. Spiders on a Tall Building. Get Bit or Jump to Your Doom.

But the structure of the title, Snakes on a Plane, is nowhere near so baroque. It's terse, noun-y, almost Hemingwegian. There's something terribly American about its self-sufficiency. Before stepping foot in the cinema, you know the movie's plot (terrorists or Arab snake handlers or Eve or whoever releases some snakes onto an airplane). As a movie, Snakes on a Plane may very well be stupid. I wouldn't know; it wasn't screened for critics. As a scrap of language, however, it may be the only extant poem in the modern American vernacular. recommended