Final Destination Movie Review: A Wonderfully Grotesque Beginning

James Wong’s Final Destination is now a quarter of a century old. In that time, the franchise has grown to five sequels, including the latest, Final Destination: Bloodlines, ten novels, a one-shot comic, and a comic book series. The key to its success are the Rube-Goldberg-type deaths in which the most outrageous sequence of events leads to what are some of the most brutally over-the-top killshots ever put on the silver screen. 

In Final Destination, a group of students and teachers board Flight 180 headed for Paris to enjoy their high school senior trip. One student, Alex Browning (Devon Sawa), has a premonition that shortly after takeoff, the plane will experience a catastrophic mechanical failure and explode over the city, killing all passengers. He wants off the plane, causing a fight amongst fellow students, and leading to Alex, several students, and a teacher being kicked off the plane and missing their flight. Moments later, Flight 180 takes off and explodes over the city. 

Death has gotten his feelings hurt, and begins to kill each student and teacher in the order they would have died on Flight 180. From that point on, it is death after death. And the gorier and more complex, the better. One of the students accidentally hangs himself in his shower following a series of ridiculous events, and his death is considered to be a suicide. Alex and another student, Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), sneak into the morgue the next night hoping to gather clues. Instead, they meet one of Final Destination’s recurring characters, coroner/mortician (depending on the movie) William Bludworth (Tony Todd). Bludworth tells the teens that the air-disaster survivors have spoiled Death’s plan and can now expect to be picked off one by one until Death is satisfied.

Final Destination is a great beginning to an interesting, intelligent series. The deaths are so outrageous that they come off as a good kind of funny. Trying to guess what action will eventually lead to a death is great fun. These aren’t horror films, they are comedic, supernatural thrillers, and they are still, after all these years, worth a watch.