FLIGHT 7500 (2014)

Flight 7500 (2014)

Director: Takashi Shimizu

Starring: Leslie Bibb

Ryan Kwanten

Amy Smart

Summary: On a flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo, a plane is shaken by sever weather. When the turbulence subsides, a passenger suddenly dies; and a supernatural force is unleashed, overtaking the passengers as they desperately fight to figure out what it is and how to stop it.

Review: There are quite a few ways I could go with this one. I guess I can start off with the on screen performances, which were all very well done. Leslie Bibb had dabbled in this genre before with roles in Trick 'r Treat and Midnight Meat Train amongst others. Same thing for Amy Smart with roles in Mirrors and The Butterfly Effect. Both of them put up very good performances that was all but expected of them. The one that surprised me was the performance of Ryan Kwanten. Majority of the roles that he really stands out for me is more of a comedic performance (True Blood, Knights of Badassdom). I know he was the lead in Dead Silence but even that wasn't a strictly serious role. I was pleasantly surprised by his performance in this.

The story itself was confusing. It had a mystery to it which seemed very similar to The Langoliers. Basically, it's a lot of people going missing and/or dying and a group of people trying to get to the bottom of everything. Unfortunately, there was not much in the sense of any kind of progression that informs the viewer what is going in. Majority of the investigations lead to dead ends. Going any deeper into my explanation here runs the risk of running the twist ending which I obviously don't want to do. The lack of story made the twist very predictable and pretty boring. It wasn't all that original. And once the twist is revealed, the movie is over. So again, the viewer is left trying to figure out what happened. Luckily, it is very simple to figure out because it wasn't very original. The story line basically plays out like someone got this cool idea for a plane movie in their head and sat down and starting writing. They had no concrete idea what the plot was going to be so they kept writing until something came to them. They get three-quarters of the way done the script and realize they still have no solid plot so they figured they would just wrap it up and hope for the best. But then realized that they didn't know how to end a story that didn't exist so the next best thing is to try to give it a twist. The end is the last thing the viewer will see, this the part they will remember most so if they can give us a shocking enough twist, it'll be enough to save the movie (Kind of the way M. Night Shyamalan has made a career). Unfortunately, the best the could come up is one of the wost style of twists ever, so it did nothing to save them. 

This movie ended up being a big let down for me. I'm a huge fan of the director, I like the cast, and went into this with pretty high expectations and it just didn't deliver. Had this movie been scary, or atleast creepy, it could have made up for the fact that plot was horrible. But even on that level, it had nothing for us. The fear factor on this movie is so low that I could have watched this movie on a red eye flight across the country during a thunderstorm, and not had a single concern about what is going on around me.

To wrap it up, cast aside, this movie really had nothing to offer. I definitely wouldn't recommend spending money to see it. I probably wouldn't even recommend watching it if you happen to come across it for free. Chances are, there will always be something better available.

                          
REVIEWED BY BOBBY