With Final Destination: Bloodlines recently released, I felt reviewing the earlier Final Destination films was only appropriate. They’ve always been standout movies to me, just for the shock value of many death scenes and how they tie things together. So, let’s see how the first film in the series holds up after all these years.
| Release Date | March 17, 2000 |
| Genre | Supernatural Horror |
| Studio | New Line Cinema |
| Director | James Wong |
| Cast | Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, Tony Todd |
| Rating | R |
Story
The opening portion of Final Destination is memorable and one of the film’s best parts, with the way it is set up. A high school student named Alex (Devon Sawa) has an irrational fear of flying, as do many people. He wants to keep the baggage tag from his last flight on his bag for good luck since it landed safely. When he gets to the airport, he starts to notice unsettling things. A knob on the tray table on the back of the seat comes off and John Denver (who died in a place crash) plays in the bathroom. Then he has a vision of the place crashing and everyone dying.
Alex panics and gets himself, a group of other students, and a teacher kicked off the plane. That’s when the plane does crash, and no one can understand how Alex had this premonition. He becomes isolated from those around him as people think he’s crazy or they’re just straight-up afraid of him. More inexplicable incidents start to occur around the group of people who got off the plane and survived the horrific crash. It becomes apparent that they weren’t supposed to survive.
Horror?
Final Destination movies haven’t been taken seriously in the horror genre because the idea of an unknown force carrying out these death sequences seems comedic. The problem is that it’s not treated in that way at all. This is supposed to be a semi-serious horror movie, at least its tone presents it that way. It’s just weird to think of a shapeless, faceless entity trying to finish the job on a group of kids who cheated death.
Death Scenes
The death scenes in this first movie set the tone for the franchise, and the first one is pretty memorable. Tod Waggner (Chad Donella), whose brother was killed in the plane crash, looks like he’s about to get electrocuted with some water leaking from the toilet. This doesn’t happen, and instead he slips on the water and falls into a clothesline, getting strangled. The irony there is that a pair of scissors was only steps away.
What I appreciate about many of the death scenes in this movie, particularly, is that they aren’t as easy to anticipate. You know something is coming, but it’s never quite the way you expect or who you expect. This is illustrated when Billy Hitchcock gets sliced in half by a piece of metal caught in the wheels of a train. It keeps you guessing even when it seems obvious because there isn’t a clear pattern.
The aspect that I enjoy about this movie is that Alex continues to get clues as to who is going to be next, like when a paper gets shredded by his fan and the last piece spells out Tod’s name. It makes it feel like a bit of a mystery to see if you can tell who will be next and how it will happen (except with that one, which was obvious). This is expanded upon in future movies, but I forgot that it was a thing, even with the first one.
Cast
The film’s cast includes many new actors and actresses from that time. Sawa had some trouble with the more emotional responses you would expect from his character, but I thought he really came into his own in the movie’s second half. Seann William Scott is great comic relief, and he can fit in pretty much any film in that role. I didn’t feel like he had much dialogue, though. Ali Larter (Clear Rivers) could have been given a much bigger role in this film, but she was one of my favorite characters during the time she had on screen. Tony Todd stood out in this movie as the mortician William Bludworth, who reveals that the kids have disrupted death’s plan. It’s one of the best scenes in the film.
Conclusion
I didn’t enjoy the first Final Destination film quite as much as I thought I would. The ideas introduced are fascinating; you can take them in many different directions. However, I felt like this first one kind of played it safe and primed you for what was to come. I liked it, but it’s not one of the most memorable in the franchise.
