It’s that magical time of the year, Halloween and time for another film series to review. The Final Destination series.
When this came out it was rightly a big hit. Something new in horror, a way to kill teens with elaborate setups that was free to set the scene for the victims in a way supernatural films really hadn’t done to this scale before, but will this end up as more of a tired gimmick at the end?
Final Destination (2000)
“In death there are no accidents, no coincidences, no mishaps, and no escapes!”
Nervous flyer Alex is on the aeroplane about to travel to France when has a premonition that the plane is going to explode, killing everyone inside.
One freak-out later and he, along with several others are removed from the plane only for the premonition to come true in what is a fantastic opening 17 minutes filled with subtle, and not so subtle, teases and nods to what is coming that perfectly sets up what will become the defining trait for this series.
This leads to Alex coming under suspicion by his classmates, family of those lost and the FBI especially as the remaining survivors turn up dead with Alex always nearby the murder scene.
Alex decides he has to cheat Death once more, spurred on after a chance meeting with a mortician played by the late Tony Todd in a nice cameo.
The deaths do vary in how elaborate they but always you are shown the setup so you can easily follow and sometimes work out how the death will happen.
Think an opening scene from an episode of Columbo only with the murder being set up by an invisible entity instead of Patrick McGoohan.
The first follow-up death of Tod is particularly well done and will make you wince and he struggles and fights for his life.
I don’t know why this didn’t create a slew of copy-cat films and spawn a new genre or why it seems to be a series that is not talked about that much.
Maybe the lack of a recognisable villain for people to dress up as during Halloween could be a big part of it, or maybe the following films took an interesting idea and Hollywood did what Hollywood does and ran it into the ground for a quick profit?
We’ll see but one thing I do know is that because of this film I’m not taking any chances so I won’t be listening to John Denver…
Final Destination 2 (2003)
Final Destination 3 (2005)
