Horror Origins: Final Destination

            It never ceases to amaze me just how easy it is for something to ‘jump the shark.’  It may take years to build a critical following for your series; be it in the film, television or written medium, it only takes a few minutes to shit all over it and show the world that you only care about the potential fortune you could be making.

            For some movie franchises, this happens from the word go, like in the case of Resident Evil.  In others, like A Nightmare on Elm Street, the change is a bit slower.  Regardless, it will happen eventually..

            Then there are movies like the Final Destination franchise, which take a great premise but manage to jump the shark more subtly than most.  They don't do it from the get-go, nor do they wait until the third or fourth film in the franchise.  No, these guys managed to do it at the very, very end of the first film.

            On to the review!

            The weirdest thing about Final Destination is that it was a very teen-centric horror film that maintained an R rating.  Usually with films like these, you expect them to be PG-13 so they can get the hard-earned allowances from the high school crowd.

            For those who haven’t seen the film, a nice little recap for you.  First off, it’s surprisingly different, at least from the time that it was released in 2000.  (Isn’t it amazing when the idea of people dying interestingly used to be innovative?  *glares at Saw.*)

            It all starts when Alex (Devon Sawa) has a fever dream while on a class flight to France.  He freaks out about the plane exploding and gets himself and a handful of classmates kicked off the plane.  Now they’re stranded in the terminal with nowhere to go but home while everyone else gets to go on a supposedly kick-ass vacation.  However, as these things go, the plane actually does malfunction during takeoff and explodes, leaving only Alex and those who were kicked out with him as the survivors.

While some of them, like Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), Tod Waggner (Chad Donella) and (kind of) Terry Chaney (Amanda Detmer) either believe him or are just too shocked to care,  Teacher/chaperone Valerie Lewton (Kristen Cloke) jumps right into survivor’s guilt.  Then there's fellow survivor Carter (Kerr Smith), who jumps right into rage mode and stays there for most of the film.

Also, Stiffler missed the flight because he was pooping or something.  Even though he’s not Stiffler in this movie—he’s Billy—Sean William Scott was definitely typecast for a very long time.

Of course the police don’t really believe that Alex can just ‘know’ that the plane is going to explode, so they keep an eye on him.  In fact, it’s the police surveillance that leads to some of the tensest moments of the film.  You see, Alex is actually figuring out who may be next, he wants to warn them but must be careful not to get caught being too near anyone who doesn't quite make it.

Oh yeah, the dying stuff.  It's perfectly reasonable, you see.  Death is pissed that they survived and is systematically ‘restoring order’ by killing them all in cleverly-staged ways, making it appear as if each death was a preventable accident. 

What works best for Final Destination, or the first one at least, is that the death scenes are clever enough to work but don’t seem too forcefully contrived.  Of course if Death were lending a hand, that spill would occur just right, or lightning would strike just so, etc. etc.

Add in a good special effects/makeup department to make the violence seem disturbingly real and you have yourself a decent scream flick on your hands.  The few moments of bloodshed are especially well-done and just realistic enough to be squirm-inducing.

In fact, I have very little negative to say other than just how stupid the post-climax is.  I know that you want to set things up for potential sequels or even just add a ‘what if’ to the entire film.  I understand that, Hollywood.  The problem is, your setup and delivery is really terrible.  It takes the idea of a carefully crafted murder scene created by Death himself to such a dumb, stupid, silly conclusion that it makes me want to slap someone.

But anyhow, check out Final Destination if you like the first few Saw films, because yeah, clever death.  For some reason it also reminds me a bit of The Faculty too, but maybe that's just because of the cover art.  Also, Final Destination has a little less Jon Stewart getting pencils in the eye.