Review of “Flight 7500” (2014)

Our latest Saturday pizza and bad movie offering was something of a departure. Though it’s called “supernatural horror,” this flick at first brought to mind 70s disaster movies like Airport.

Plot:

Vista Pacific Airlines flight 7500 departs from Los Angeles to Tokyo Haneda. Lyn (Aja Evans) and Jack Hafey (Ben Sharples) are vacationing with their friends, and Brad (Ryan Kwanten) and Pia Martin (Amy Smart), who have recently broken up. They didn’t want to tell their friends because they’ve already paid for the trip for them.

A young man with dark hair named Jake (Alex Frost) tries to sell a hot phone to a young woman named Raquel Mendoza (Christian Serratos). Raquel declines the offer and keeps on working on her sketches.

A businessman, Lance Morrell (Rick Kelly), traveling with a strange wooden box, makes the viewer wonder: Is that a bomb? Is he transporting stolen money? Drugs? Hmmm…  

Newlywed Rick (Jerry Ferrara) gets to watch his bride, Liz (Nicky Whelan), go through their wedding pics one more time—again. Liz likes to wipe down the seat handles, especially after a young goth girl, Jacinta Bloch (Scout Taylor-Compton), sits down next to her.

In the galley, flight attendants Laura Baxter (Leslie Bibb) and Suzy Lee (Jamie Chung) talk about Suzy’s engagement and Laura’s affair with the married Captain Pete Haining (Johnathon Schaech).

The plane takes off (no snowstorm in sight), and all seems well until they hit a bit of turbulence. It’s over quickly, except for Lance, who appears to be in some sort of cardiac distress. Brad, a paramedic, tries to help him. Lance can’t breathe.  Blood drips from his lips. Despite Brad’s best efforts, Lance seizes and dies.

Captain Pete decides not to turn the plane around, but to continue. (Wouldn’t you want to land as soon as possible, especially if Lance’s death was possibly caused by disease and not a heart attack?) He clears out the first-class section (upstairs) and has the passengers brought downstairs with promises of vouchers for later flights. As the late Lance Morrow is carried by, the goth Jacinta seems intrigued. She later tells the newlywed Rick, “Death is part of life.”

Back in his seat, Brad notices his thumb turning black, a sign of hypoxia. His sealed water bottle is compressing, another bad sign. (I’m given to believe that a sealed water bottle would actually expand during rapid decompression. Details.)

Uh-oh. It looks like some good stuff is about to hit the fan.

Thoughts:

After poor Lance shuffles off his mortal coil, the four vacationing friends become Scooby and the Gang and begin looking for clues about him. By going through his wooden box, they turn up some creepy and puzzling stuff about him. Flight attendant Laura also goes sleuthing, including dropping down into the baggage compartment. Was someone down there?

These elements struck me as incredibly unlikely. They also don’t make a whole lot of sense. Is this a dream sequence? Is it real? Or is something else happening?

Adding to the feeling of unreality, or perhaps irrationality, are events like the moment when one passenger is viewing something on his phone, and scenes from the old Twilight Zone episode (“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”) showing William Shatner watching a gremlin tear up a wing of an airplane flash on his screen.

The plight of the passengers resembles a real-life tragedy from some years ago, which, to discuss further, would spoil some plot points. This also adds to the feeling of reality v. illusion. What’s going on here?

At one point, I turned to the dearly beloved and said something to the effect of, “Huh?”

An explanation arises, and it’s not quite what the view has been led to think. Part of me wants to say this could have been a moving and poignant story, even with the creepy horror. Another part of me says some of the events served as mere distractions that detracted from the story. I liked what it was trying to convey, however. I’m on the fence about this one.

I could not find a place to download it for free, but YouTube will rent it or sell it to you.



Title: Flight 7500 (2014)

Director
Takashi Shimizu

Writer
Craig Rosenberg
written by

Cast
(in credits order)
Ryan Kwanten…Brad Martin
Amy Smart…Pia Martin
Leslie Bibb…Laura Baxter
Jamie Chung…Suzy Lee
Scout Taylor-Compton…Jacinta Bloch

Released: 2014
Length: 1 hour, 20 minutes
Rated: PG-13