The transpacific Vista Pacific Flight 7500 from Los Angeles to Tokyo should have been a long, but relaxing overnight ten hour flight for many of the traveling passengers. After experiencing heart-stopping turbulence, the flight’s most mysterious passenger dies suddenly and violently over the pacific ocean. His death releases a string of strange apparition encounters with rest of the passengers and the crew that literally grapple at their internal fears. As the supernatural force slowly engulfs every inch of the plane, passengers disappear one-by-one and the key to possibly stopping the remorseless evil that has betaken them is to investigate into the unexpected death of the mysterious passenger and into his on-flight baggage.

Ju-on: The Grudge director Takashi Shimizu terrorizes the skies with his trademark macabre of supernatural entities. Shimizu’s “Fightly 7500” mixes Japanese culture with Hollywood cinematic values while also, literally, connecting L.A. with Tokyo with a flight over the pacific. Nothing is scarier than being trapped with no where to run from a menacing force on a pressurized plane that could fail on any given moment. The plane becomes a synonym for death. Shimizu exemplifies the given unforeseen horrors of a plane by adding in the exterior motive of a trembling, and extremely creepy, Shinigami death doll, which allows suddenly dispatched spirits to spook and terrorize. Sinister spirits are unable let go of their robbed mortality. Shimizu couldn’t help but include numerously his trademarks of limbs jutting out suddenly, reaching to grab a surprised victim to face their fate or slowly overcoming an obstacle such as in this film a hand reaching over the edge of a suitcase or springing out of a small airplane trash receptacle.

The cast is made up of relatively recognizable and more modern day horror vets with Amy Smart (“Mirrors”), Scout-Taylor Compton (“Halloween I & II” remakes), “True Blood’s” Ryan Kwanten, Leslie Bibb (The Midnight Meat Train), Rosita Espinosa herself from “The Walking Dead” Christian Serratos, and Jamie Chung (“Sorority Row” remake). Nicky Whelan, Jerry Ferrera, Alex Frost, Rick Kelly, and Johnathon Schaech round out the rest of the cast. The under the radar, non-mainstream cast play their roles respectively and accordingly to the script written by the serial B-horror writer Craig Rosenberg, building up their conflicting outer lives before they’re all crammed into a single jumbo jet liner. However, the instance of too many characters cause each of character’s development to fall flatlined due in part to the measly 80 minute runtime.

Like previous Shimizu ghost features, nothing is what it seems and “Flight 7500” is no exception to that fact, but in trying to build a monumental case to deliver a shock in the finale, various mishaps raise questions that don’t add up the surprising reveal. A couple brain scratching questions rise to the surface, stemming from the following: There were two different midair turbulent events in which both were significant, but the one the film specifies isn’t the one referenced back to the catalyst turn of events in dooming the passengers to a remaining ride of rampaging terror. Also, when the phantasmal mystery becomes resolved and the characters’ realize the understanding behind their strife, the plane’s onboard television transmit a newscast explaining the events that happened to “Flight 7500,” but the divulging is ridiculously forced and a road less traveled trick. The newscast exposition comes as if there isn’t any other means of communicating the characters’ situation, putting in the ground, six-feet under, the mood of the ah-ha moment.

The Lionsgate and CBS Films collaboration presents the 2014 PG-13 feature on DVD in a 16×9 widescreen format with a crisp, LFE heavy English 5.1 Dolby Digital audio. The experienced director of photography David Tattersall uses a vibrant, almost neon-like, dark blue tone that sets appropriately the coldness of thrilling spirits and the lifelessness of mechanical plane setting. The Tyler Bates soundtrack feels as inexpensive as the film’s modest budget which is disappointing from Bates whose had solids scores for Zack Snyder’s epic-extravaganza “300” and superhero-melodrama “Watchmen” while also doing John Carpenter justice in re-imagining the “Halloween” theme. “Flight 7500’s” “The Grudge” like effects stay the plotted course given by this director and embodies the airplane as a haunted house in the sky, soaring through living fog, jutting grey hands, and a presence that can’t be shaken. The overall experience doesn’t have a perfect touchdown landing on the runway, but at least the Takashi Shimizu airplane horror doesn’t crash and burn either, leaving viewers walking away safe and satisfied at their journey’s final destination.