I remember seeing the trailer for this film
'7500'… like years ago. It looked to be an interesting
concept with a nice cast, capped off by a very haunting cover
of John Denver's 'Leaving on a Jet Plane', and as such I was
interested in seeing it. Like years ago. Soon this
movie became the 'Gallowwalkers' of its time since most of us
forgot all about it, and it looked like it was never coming
out anyway. Well it's finally here, and for a moment or
two it looked like it might be worth the wait. For a
moment or two at least.
It's flight time as flight 7500 prepares for its trip
somewhere to Tokyo. We have air waitresses Laura (Leslie
Bibb) and Suzy (Jamie Chung) serving beverages… note that
having been on hundreds of flights, I've never had
stewardesses who looked like this… Pilot Jim (Jonathan
Schaech) is behind the controls, newlyweds Rick (Jerry
Ferrara) and Liz (Nicky Whelan) are on board to annoy, married
couple Brad (Ryan Kwanten) and Pia (Amy Smart) are on their
last trip before calling it quits for good, and goth chick
Jacinta (Scout Taylor-Compton) is here to provide some death
exposition for the audience.
The flight takes off and it's all good, except for that weird
dude. You know the guy, nervous, seems to be hiding
something, will invariably screw everything up? That
guy. Sure enough, this guy screws everything up by dying
on the plane in a fit of bloody vomit, despite the best
efforts of those around to try to save him, but now the
mystery begins. What killed this guy? Does he have
some kind of Ebola-esque virus? Is he zombie? Is
he a mythical ghost monster? We ask these things because
surely he just can't be a dead guy on an airplane, can he?
The next strange thing that happens on flight 7500 is that the
plane runs into some severe turbulence causing the flight to
depressurize, bringing down the oxygen masks. No real
harm or foul there beyond a few seconds of oxygen deprivation,
but this event does seem to amp up the weirdness factor.
Now some of our passengers on the plane are starting to see
some really weird stuff, and that dead guy… it looks like he's
missing which can never be a good thing.
Now our passengers, turned detectives, need
to get to the bottom of what's happening on this plane, and
considering that one by one they are disappearing, I'm
guessing getting snatched by the missing dead guy, time is
running out. Eventually, they will figure this thing out
and it is this final solution that will either make or break
this film for you.
This film was directed by Takashi Shimizu of 'The Grudge'
fame, and even though I was unaware that he directed this film
until the final credits rolled, it kind of makes sense because
as '7500' was coming to its end, I was thinking this movie was
playing out like some bad Japanese horror movie. It
wasn't always that way though.
As is typical in Japanese horror, there is the slow
build. We are introduced to our characters, we get to
know a little bit about these characters to pave the way for
us hopefully caring about whatever fate happens to these
characters, and then the first bomb drops alerting us that all
is not well. All that is setup pretty efficiently, and
we would expect nothing less from a director with the pedigree
of Takashi Shimizu. The mystery deepens, and personally
I'm invested in what's going on, and quite honestly it's
getting a little creepy and there's the one scene in
particular that lets us know that whatever is going on in
Flight 7500 is about to hit the fan. At this point I'm
thinking we may have a winner on our hands.
But it turns out that one scene was the apex of the film and
the movie pretty much descends into tedium from that point
on. The filmmakers were unable to build upon that one
scene of pretty cool horror, as the movie just plodded on,
until we reached the reasons why what is happening was
happening, and for whatever reason, I found this solution
completely unsatisfying, or more accurately I found it
underwhelming.
This is all personal of course, because you very well could
find the conclusion Earth shattering, but I think I was
looking for something… more. I think I was looking
forward to something more horror oriented, since this movie
was setting itself up to be a freaky, ghost, monster type
story, but I got something more along the lines of… heck, I
don't what you would call it. I do know that it's
something I've seen before on numerous occasions, done better
on numerous occasions, but even if this were pulled off
better, I doubt I'd still be pleased with it.
It's too bad really, because '7500' pretty much has everything
you'd think one would need to pull off a fine frightening
experience. Experienced director, rock solid cast, great
atmosphere and a closed setting in which there is no possible
escape. What we ended up with was a great start that
ended up being a little tired, and eventually ran out of
steam, and this makes us sad.
