After watching all the Saw movies last summer (please read this blog post about it...I SUFFERED for y'all!), I found myself drawn to watching all (well, almost all) of the Final Destination films. It was a MUCH easier task and the films are definitely more entertaining than the Saw films.
Final Destination
I had been meaning to watch this horror film from 2000 for a long time, and I'm glad I finally did. The teen horror film craze of the late 90s/early 2000s is a big blindspot for me, and the ones I have watched are pretty mediocre. But Final Destination is actually entertaining, funny, and truly haunting.
Devon Sawa (remember him!?) plays Alex Browning, a high schooler about to go on a senior trip to Paris with his French class. After being seated on the plane, Alex has a vision of the plane going down in flames and everyone dying. He awakens from his vision yelling about how the plane is going to crash and everyone needs to get off.
He is forcibly removed, as are a few other students and a teacher: bully Carter (Kerr Smith...remember him!?) almost gets in a fight with Alex and is removed by security; Carter's girlfriend, Terry (Amanda Detmer) follows Carter off the plane; Alex's friend, Tod (Chad E. Donella), follows Alex off the plane out of concern, leaving his brother on the plane; loner Clear (Ali Larter...remember her!?) is so shaken that she also leaves; dumb guy Billy (Sean William Scott) is confused and also gets off the plane; and both French teachers get off, but Valerie (Kristen Cloke) encourages the other teacher to get back on the plane because someone needs to be with the kids and the other teacher is more of a Francophile.
Well, the plane explodes shortly after taking off. Now, people are no longer mad at Alex for causing a scene, but are terrified and suspicious of him. How did he know? Did he somehow cause it? The FBI gets involved, but when there is no evidence of foul play, the survivors don't know what to think.
Shortly after the incident, Tod accidentally hangs himself from the shower head in his bathtub. The audience sees that sinister forces are at play, but the characters assume he took his life out of guilt from leaving his brother on the plane. Tod's parents, having now lost both their sons within a week, are furious at Alex and blame him.
Final Destination is an interesting film because it touches on the concept of survivor's guilt, which is a very real thing that survivors of catastrophic events experience. The films never go too deeply into this, but the subtext is definitely there.
Well, after a few more accidents take the lives of the survivors, Alex starts thinking that maybe Death itself is after them because they were supposed to die on that plane. There is a wonderful cameo by Tony Todd, who plays a mortician and cryptically explains that death doesn't like to be cheated.
Final Destination is great on so many levels. It's gleefully nihilistic in that the people who were supposed to die are ALL gonna fucking die. There is no way (except in a rare case in the sequel) for anyone to survive. It's not about being smart or being cautious because when you're up against a villain that gets ALL of us, sooner or later, you gonna lose, bud. But despite the film's nihilism it's also very funny. It never feels like a drag.
The first film in the series is easily the best because it sets up the premise for the rest of the movies. The sequels, while good, very quickly become just more of the same. But I definitely recommend the first film to all horror fans.
Grade: B+
***
Final Destination 2
Final Destination 2 is a direct sequel to the first film in that it explicitly references the events of the first movie, and one of the characters from the first movie (Clear) is still alive (and living in a padded cell in a mental hospital) and the characters meet up with her to ask what is happening to them.
In this film, Kimberly (I'm not going to list all the actors' names since there are too many) leaves on a road trip to the beach with her friends. Before exiting onto the highway, she has a vision of a massive multi-car pileup that kills a ton of people. She ends up not just stopping on the exit ramp, but parking her car in such a way that everyone behind her is forced to stop as well. As a police officer is questioning Kimberly, the accident happens just as she envisioned it.
Due to Kimberly's vision, there are about nine survivors. Basically, the same thing happens: one of the survivors, Evan, dies in a freak accident within a couple days. When another person dies, Kimberly tries to rally the survivors and figure out how they can beat death. Tony Todd shows up and explains that if a "new life" comes into the world, death might give one of them a pass.
FD2 is really just more of the same, but the characters are fun and, for better or worse, it's the one movie in the series where two people actually "beat death", or so we assume.
Grade: B
***
Final Destination 3
FD3 is where it really starts to get repetitive. Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, before she was famous) is at a high school event at an amusement park. She is scared of roller coasters, but is peer pressured into getting on The Devil's Flight. Before the ride begins, she has a vision of the coaster going off its tracks and killing everyone on the ride. She freaks out and her whole car is evacuated and a bunch of people (but not everyone) gets off. Sure enough, Wendy's vision is true and everyone is killed when the ride takes off.
Then it's more of the same: survivors of the ride start dying in freak accidents. Wendy starts to find clues as to how people are going to die hidden in the pictures she took from that night and she and her friend race to save their friends...but everyone dies!
FD3 is a pretty weak entry in the series, but it has two things going for it: a pretty talented actress in the lead role, and the BEST death in the entire series.
Grade: B-
***
The Final Destination
Not gonna lie, guys: I skipped this one. It looked really, really terrible.
Grade: n/a
***
Final Destination 5
The most recent (I won't say final, since FD6 is apparently in the works) Final Destination entry is actually pretty good. This might be a spoiler, but given the film is 11 years old, too bad: it's actually a prequel to the first film and ends in a really satisfying way that ties it right back to the first movie.
In this film, a group of colleagues are on a bus headed to a company retreat. They have to cross a bridge which is undergoing construction and as they are stopped on the bridge Sam has a vision of the bridge collapsing and killing everyone except his ex-girlfriend, Molly, whom he manages to save in the vision. When he awakens from his vision, he freaks out and tells everyone to get off the bus and run off the bridge. Once he, Molly, five colleagues and his boss are off the bridge...boom, it begins to collapse.
Same deal as before: the survivors begin to die in truly bizarre freak accidents, Tony Todd shows up to say some cryptic shit, and Sam and Molly race to figure out how to dodge death.
While not as good the first film, FD5 is pretty entertaining and has some truly excellent death scenes. The final scene, which has Molly and Sam on a plane to Paris...when they seem some guy a few seats over freaking out and being removed from the plane...is *chef's kiss*
Grade: B
***
Overall, the Final Destination series is really fun, gory, and--not gonna lie--makes you think about fate and death in a way few horror movies do. It actually did get under my skin when I started thinking about close calls I or my friends and family have had with death (nothing crazy, mostly just car accidents or near-accidents) and wondering how many times I got lucky simply because it just wasn't my time.
Overall series grade: B
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