Final Destination Franchise Marathon

My History with Final Destination [Click to SKIP]

A little under 20 years ago I was sitting in the house my dad had grown up in sitting in what used to be my aunt’s room with my two older cousins. Prior to this time period I hadn’t watched much horror, thriller or the like seeing as I was only about 10 (my first “horror” movie was What Lies Beneath when I was under 7 but I wouldn’t fall in love with the genre until a few years after this experience). The new Final Destination had come out, Final Destination 3 (2006), and my oldest cousin explained how much she liked the first two when we started up the new one.  Riveted, enthralled and horrified by the time that film had ended my world view had shifted and I was extremely concerned about avoiding death.

I asked my cousin something along the lines of, “This isn’t like real though, right?” and she literally looked at me and said she didn’t know. Now, obviously that is the honest answer but it was the answer that sent my little mind into a spiral of worry. Despite my fears I still went to the local amusement park for a school function and I shit you not the song “Roller Coaster of Love” came on while I awaited riding “The Screamin’ Eagle” the most intense of the rides our small park had to offer. It definitely occurred to me that that could literally be a sign like those the main characters face in the films. I braced myself to get on the ride while weird things started happening around me and then having a premonition of a horrible accident. Luckily, that didn’t happen and instead it was a regular but fun time on a ride that would eventually break over 10 years later, far too long after I’d visited the park to be a coincidence like those faced by the characters in the Final Destination franchise.

I didn’t watch the other films in the franchise until years after watching the 3rd, eventually catching the 2nd on TV and I can confirm that I’m still changing lanes to avoid logging trucks to this day. I commute to my day job and I shit you not I can think of 2 instances this year I was on the highway behind a logging truck and quickly thought of the famous car crash scene. While a director has claimed they regret not making Death, the antagonist of the franchise, have a physical and therefore marketable form I do think there’s something to be said about living rent free in an extremely large amount of North American driver’s heads.

The Final Destination Franchise

Despite the spiral Final Destination 3, the best one IMO, gave me as a child I really love this franchise and once I’d reached teenage-hood and beyond I readily watched every new installment. An easy franchise to fill a weekend horror marathon with at this point the franchise is comprised of 5 released films and 1 unreleased film set to come out later this month titled Final Destination: Bloodlines. The first 5 films followed the original’s 2000 release with subsequent releases in 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2011, about 2-3 years between each one. The first follows a group of teenagers who get off of a plane right before it crashes and are then chased by an invisible force, Death, seeking to restore balance by ending the survivors in order of when they would have died on the plane. Obviously not all of that is known when you go into it but at this point the movie came out 25 years ago and if you don’t know the premise by now that is a miracle I need to stop.

The second film, following in 2003, is the same premise with the same antagonist but the accident is a multi-car pileup on a highway. The following films in the franchise also copy the format of a different accident with the same premise but only 1 and 2 have cross over main characters. The 3rd film, my personal favorite, is a roller coaster accident, the 4th is annoyingly titled The Final Destination instead of Final Destination 4 and I recall it being advertised as the last installment that would be made (as proven by I Know What You Did Last Summer’s upcoming reboot, no horror franchise truly dies). Not only was it titled differently it also leaned very heavily into the 3D being forced upon audiences in the late aughts. It didn’t pay off and it is the least liked of the movies, centered around a NASCAR accident with deaths that were way too far fetched, even for Final Destination.

The 5th and most recent film came out 2 years after the mess of The Final Destination and returned to the franchise’s roots, simply titled Final Destination 5 as well as swinging back around to earlier concepts in more ways than one. Now, 14 years later a new film is being added to the franchise, Final Destination: Bloodlines. Coming out later this month it follows a family matriarch and grandmother who survived an accident at the Space Needle in Seattle, Washington when she was a young woman. We can discern that her accident will be very similar to those of other Final Destination films, a realistic premonition followed by a group of people leaving right before shit hits the fan, thus surviving the accident.

Interestingly enough this woman is able to live a full life, growing old (looking forward to maybe seeing what that was like) and has grown children with children of their own that are teenagers. Unfortunately for both her and them however they have inherited her escape from Death and now are imbalances in the universe, not supposed to exist and chased by Death itself. We get a glimpse of Tony Todd in the trailer (RIP and I hope that this elevates him to his rightful position) as the mortician and most recognizable Final Destination character, William Bludworth. I’m also looking forward to seeing if they expand on Bludworth’s character, a missed opportunity of previous films, but this would be bittersweet as it is Todd’s last performance in the franchise.

Movie Overviews

Final Destination (2000)

SPOILER FREE-ISH SECTION

The first film and focus of this section that released on St. Patrick's Day in 2000 and cost an estimated $23 million to make. Originally intended to be an X Files episode the story, written by Jeffrey Reddick, was inspired by something he read with Death as an unseen, evil force as the antagonist. Following the success of Scream in 1996 New Line Cinema swapped the characters from adults to teenagers in hopes of repeating that success. James Wong and Glen Morgan turned it into a full scipt and Wong directed the film. Both felt that the feeling of the heebie jeebies the circumstances inspire was relatable and interesting for a horror film, something bad happening when someone had a feeling something bad would happen.

At the time it was notable that slasher movies followed a formula that kept audiences on the edge of their seats wondering who might make it until the end but the writers wanted to confirm those fears that every character will die and the suspense is how they will die. Rather than a never-dying slasher with a Halloween costume they wanted Death, the antagonist, to be an unseen force-something they came to regret once it became a franchise due to the lack of obvious Halloween merch. Craig Perry and Warren Zide reportedly wanted to help with the film's budget because they were fascinated with the concept of death as an unseen force. Not only is death a force in Final Destination but something that is interacting with the physical world with intent.

Built around subtleties and an accumulation of elements to create tension the entire movie feels off like everything seems normal but something is really wrong. John Millet has said he "skewed the sets" or designed them to be a "bit unnatural"and create unease around the environment. I can attest that everytime I watch the films I notice a new unsettling detail or something that was clearly intentional in the background of a scene, like in the first film when the teacher, Valerie Lewton, played by Kristen Clark, opens her closet to investigate and the camera angle switches to from inside of the closet with her in the forefront. In the background of that shot the way that the items are blurred in and out of the foreground looks like a man standing over her right shoulder. It's extremely spooky and almost moves like a shadow of a man would, freaky and ominous as Death literally stalks her like prey around her house.

Another element of note used to influence audience perception is the color saturation. Earlier in the film before Devon Sawa playing Alex Browning has his premonition on Flight 180 the film is notably more color saturated, things aren't as skewed and the world is for lack of a better word: right. The film opens with those early 2000's slice through the screen white font that states production credits and building music. Lightning crackles as the first shot and quickly the camera is through a bedroom window where we eventually get to a shot of an oscillating fan that we will see throughout the film. Items are used to inform background details like Alex's passport, a plane ticket to France. and school books about France. Alex and his fellow peers are high school students traveling to Paris, France on a class trip taking off from New York.

Other classmates are introduced including Clear Rivers, the quiet but observant girl played by Ali Larter, and the class jock, Carter Horton played by Kerr Smith who is really attached to his girlfriend, Terry Chaney played by Amanda Detmer. Alex's friend Tod Waggner played by Chad Donella and his father George Waggner played by Brendan Fehr are also introduced as the father says goodbye to Tod and his other son, both on the class trip. Skip ahead to right as the plane is about to take off Alex is asked to switch seats with 2 popular girls in his class which he agrees to, placing him next to Tod. The flight takes off seemingly normal but all of a sudden they start to jerk and rock in the sky, bouncing rather than gliding in ascent.

In what can only be described as an actual hell scape of a nightmare scenario the plane rips apart in the sky and section by section the passengers are killed or pulled out of the flight. Stuck to his chair in horror and terror Alex witnesses this happen and is some of the last to die when the whole plane explodes in the sky, killing him and the remaining passengers. As the flames engulf his seat Alex is zooted back to pre-take off still sitting in his original seat right as the girls ask him to switch. He immediately freaks out and announces that the plane is going to crash and everyone is going to die.

Alex is obviously very panicked and jumps ahead to Tod's row where he went in his premonition and confirms that an anomalous broken chair tray is exactly where he expects to find it. He tries to warn everyone on the plane about his vision but they are appalled and Carter, incensed, physically confronts him. Due to this altercation and Alex's protests the crew and some airport staff carry a group of passengers off the plane while the rest stay seated. This group includes Alex and Carter, both high school teachers, Carter's girlfriend, Tod at his brother's request to help Alex, and at the last minute, Clear too, get off the plane.

Once the group is off the plane and back at the airport gate the staff informs the teachers that only 1 of them can rejoin the flight with the students through to Paris. Miss Newton demands she be the one to stay over the other teacher, who is more so involved in the French program, and reassures him that they will follow on the next flight out. He reboards the plane as the boys keep fighting at the gate about Alex's proclaimations. Unfortuneately Alex isn't lying and the plane explodes in the sky while it is taking off, the blast smashing the airport windows and leaving no survivors.

Now, in another film franchise this would've been the horror and it is horrifying; for Final Destination however this is simply the stage setting and the set up. Now that Alex has stopped an entire group from dying in the plane crash they would've died in Death, an unseen force often characterized by gusts of wind and character's subtle reactions, is after them in an attempt to fix this. The tagline for the film, "Most people have dreams. For Alex, this is real." packs the punch that the true danger lurks somewhere off of Flight 180 that calls the character's individual fates into question.

SPOILER FILLED SECTION

Following the explosion the group pulled off the plane are justifiably questioned by FBI agents Weine played by Daniel Roebuck, and Shreck played by Roger Guenveur. Cut together to show the passage of time and how the explosion is sinking in with each survivor while talking with the agents. Alex is honest and straight to the point with them, clearly trying to make sense of things himself, but the agents think this is part of an act and believe he's involved. The group is let go to their family members and it becomes clear from Tod's dad that he blames Alex for one of his son's dying.

We then time jump to a memorial that's a reveal of an eagle statue with the names of the victims engraved on a plaque. By this memorial for the crash victims everyone in the community seems to be wary of Alex except Billy Hitchcock played by Seann William. He wants to use Alex like a magic 8 ball, believing him to be psychic but Tod comes over and says they need to get out of town when everything is over. The memorial they're at is a reveal of an eagle statue with the names of the victims who were students engraved on a plaque. Alex tries to comfort Miss Newton but she also rejects him, which has always confused me. Clear approaches Alex at the memorial and thanks him because she believes he is the only reason she is alive and a picture is taken of them by a school photographer. Tod reads something he wrote in class about the brevity of life and unpredictability of death which he previously told Alex is how he is feeling. This turns from him giving the speech at the memorial to a voiceover and a shot of the outside of Tod's house that switches to him going into his bathroom.

It's revealed in cut away scenes that Alex has spent the time jump post-crash to memorial researching planes and trying to understand what he experienced. We see his desk is covered in materials and he's mapped where the group was sitting when the crash happened. Tod is the first person that Death visits and in his bathroom is one of the most egregiously direct ways that Death comes for someone. Blue toilet water begins leaking from the bottom of the toilet and puddling next to it on the tile floor and the liquid moves slowly in a direct line towards Tod. As the liquid slowly approaches Tod does everything suspense inducing like him cutting his dry face with a dry razor (because of course that wouldn't work) or putting scissors up his nostril. It's set up to seem like Tod will slip in the liquid with scissors in his nose or a blade on his neck which would cause some gruesome death. The real danger however is revealed when he opens the shower curtain and inside is a wire clothes line with stockings and underwear drying on it, regular household items.

While this bathroom scene is happening there are cut away scenes to Alex conducting more research into plane crashes and the model of the Flight 180 plane, specifically the seating chart. An unsettling chill comes over the room Alex is in that causes him to decide to take a break from the flight stuff and look at a Penthouse magazine. A nosey owl comes up to the window and Alex throws his magazine at the window to scare it away because it is clearly freaking him out and the magazine is shredded into pieces by the metal oscelating fan. The pieces flutter around the rom and one lands on Alex's leg perfectly, almost intentionally, and it says "Tod" in large, bold font. Immediately he's spooked and runs to get to Tod, afraid that something is going to happen to him and wanting to warn him. All of this is intercut with scenes of Tod in the bathroom and fake outs to build suspense and urgency for Alex making it to Tod's house.

Tod slips in the blue liquid that followed him to the tub's edge and falls into the clothes line in such a way it pulls out of one side of the wall and wraps around his throat, hanging him in the tub while his feet slip in the blue liquid, unable to catch footing to lift himself. A brutal effect is used to show the blood vessels in Tod's eyes bursting and they make a point to show the brutality of this death with the deep set wire still around his neck. He's been strangled and it appears like a suicide in part because the trail of liquid sucks back into the base of the toilet without a trace. Alex gets to Tod's house just as the ambulance and FBI agents are on the scene. Tod's dad blames Alex for his death, believing he had been guilt ridden after surviving when his brother didn't and thus Alex's fault for saving one brother and not both brothers. He tries to get Mr. Waggner to listen to him but understandably he's distraught and leaves Alex outside. Alex doesn't believe that Tod would commit suicide so he goes to see Clear and she confronts him that something is still with him from that night. After this him and Clear decide to sneak into the funeral home to see his body for themselves.

At that funeral home they're caught by the mortician, William Bludworth played by the famous Tony Todd. He shows them that Tod has marks consistent with clawing at the wire which they believe means he didn't want to die or commit suicide. Bludworth says there are no accidents in death and is spooky and ominous when he informs the pair that they have disrupted death's plan by surviving. He also informs them that death has an intricate design that includes every action we do or don't take like a butterfly effect leading us to the grave. Basically he says that their friend's unusual demise is part of Death repairing that disruption with a new design since they cheated death the first time around by getting off the plane. Bludworth warns Alex that cheating death could insight, "a fury," that Alex wouldn't want to deal with.

Tod gives a haunting performance as he peers up at Alex and then stops him on his way out to say that he'll see Alex soon. Things pick up significantly timing wise after this when everyone is in the same spot in town and Carter confronts Alex again. Terry gets upset and as she's declaring she won't let the circumstances ruin her life anymore she walks into the road and is struck by a bus, killing her in front of the group. This cuts away to Clear trying to get ahold of Alex, both taking Alka Seltzer implying the connection Clear told Alex about between the two still exists and that she could feel him. He won't talk to her though and gets distracted by a breaking news report about the crash.

Alex hears a news report about the flight announcing a cause has ben determined. It's reported that Flight 180 blew up due to mechanical failure that caused an explosion and that explosion had a direct path through the cabin, beginning under Tod's seat. Alex maps the explosion through the rest of the cabin over the seating chart to determine what he believes is the design Death originally had for them which is the path of the explosion. Already this design has predicted Tod would be first then Terry and now this design reveals that Miss Lewton will be next.

The scene cuts to Miss Lewton's house, she's on the phone with someone explaining her lasting guilt for telling the other teacher to get back on the plane. She is packing up her things and planning to move away because everything reminds her of the accident. As she walks over to the window she explains over the phone that looking at her yard fills her with fear and as she looks out the window she sees Alex snooping around in her darkened yard.

In a panic hiding behind the curtains Miss Lewton calls the police office to get ahold of Agent Schreck and tell him about Alex showing up at her home. While this happens Alex is snooping around her car, checking the tires as well as the undercarriage and it's clear he's checking for Miss Lewton's safety within the context of the movie but to the agents he's further raising suspicion that he's involved with the deaths of his classmates. The agents quickly show up and take Alex into custody to speak with them as Miss Lewton watches on from inside. A gust of foreboding wind comes in through the open window causing Miss Lewton to stop but she doesn't take this as the warning it is.

At the police station the agents interrogate Alex and want to know why he was at Miss Lewton's to which he readily explains his theory. Alex explains that he thinks that Death has a pattern that they have disrupted by not dying in the plane crash and that now the survivors are dying in the order they were meant to die in in the crash-what the audience knows to be the premise of the film. Intercut with the interrogation is Miss Lewton continuing to pack up her things, finding an old record in the closet and setting up a previously mentioned shot that looks like a man in a coat or a grim reaper is right over her shoulder to the right. It looks like Death is stalking her and just behind her every move waiting for opportunity to strike.

Valerie Lewton puts the record she called "mom's favorite" on and it's revealed to be John Denver, the song used as a motif in the film signaling that she's in danger. Alex explains to the agents back at the station that he believes he saved 6 lives but is only a freak to his peers irregardless of the outcome of their investigation. Alex says he's "not going Dahmer" on the agents which would make me feel like he could have an obsession with serial killers under different circumstances which would make me more suspicious of him and not less.

Alex informs the agents that every person has a pattern, not just those involved in the Flight 180 explosion. Despite acknowledging the design Alex is steadfast in his belief that he can beat the design, almost like using a cheat code in a video game. Back at Valerie's she's still listening to John Denver and decides to boil water in a tea kettle that does a trippy visual effect when she wipes water off of it, making her think a presence is behind her. She tosses the towel she used to wipe the water onto a knife block, which is truly wild in my opinion but doesn't seem to phase her.

Valerie's gas stove doesn't light so she pulls out a match box and goes to light it, an ordinarily mundane task made tense via the viewer waiting for death to befall her. She lights the stove without incident though and the agents reveal to Alex they don't think that he had anything to do with the plane crash. They explain they planned to leave shortly after drawing that conclusion but once everyone started dying under bizarre circumstances they grew suspicious of him. The agents want Alex is promise no one else will die, assuming that the only forces capable of giving or taking life are other humans but he says he can't promise that. Not only that but that as long as he's in custody who dies is out of his control.

They release Alex because they have no real evidence to hold him on and agent not-Schreck says that he almost believed Alex at one point. Schreck says he gives him the creeps and is dismissive about his claims. Valerie pours the water into her mug and sees it's a high school and immediately throws the boiling water out while screaming, startled and disturbed by the reminder. Instead of refilling it with water she opts for freezer stored vodka on ice but the quick change in temperature cracks the ceramic mug. She sets the now cracked and leaking mug onto her desktop computer, which is also wild and just another careless action.

The water drips down into the mechanics of the computer and cause it to short circuit and catch fire. This short circuit causes an explosion and the glass from the computer monitor shoots out and hits Valerie's neck. She pulls it out immediately which is a mistake and blood starts gushing from her neck, a door with a dagger made of stained glass as the background as she rushes across the room, blood spilling everywhere. She knocks the record player when she slips in her blood which causes the track to screech and skip. Alex is walking along the road and a man is burning leaves, embers and burning leaves rushing him like the sign he got for Tod, something he cannot ignore.

Valerie's house is lit on fire when the computer sparks and those sparks ignite the Vodka she previously dripped across the apartment. In an almost cartoonish fashion the lit line of Vodka travels up the stove and the fire ignites the Vodka bottle next to it, sending more glass flying at Valerie as she's propelled backwards. Alex happens upon the house as this is happening and Valerie reaches for the towel she threw earlier with a blood soaked hand. As she grabs it she accidentally pulls the knif block down with it, sending the knives flying out. One of those knives stabs her right through the abdomen, also cartoonishly.

Seeing something is wrong Alex rushes in and happens upon the wild scene, Valerie stabbed on the ground in her kitchen as the fire spreads around them. A chair falls when another mini explosion happens around the stove and lands on the knife that's stabbed Valerie, pushing it all the way through to the floor and effectively killing her. Alex in a panic having been thrown back by the same explosion grabs the knife from her in an attempt to help but ends up standing over a dead Valerie with the kitchen knife in his hand, fingerprints all over it. He looks at the knife and realizes this, drops it and then runs, leaving behind a shoe print in Valerie's blood.

As Alex runs outside Billy happens by on his bike, sees him and stops with confusion as to why Alex would be at their teacher's home. Miss Lewton's home explodes just as Alex is making it across the front yard and it sends both Alex and Billy off their feet to the ground. He looks back at the house then takes off past Billy and down the street into the night, fleeing the scene in a murderer like fashion. Cut to the next day and the agents are asking Clear questions, trying to find Alex. She informs them that Alex cut her off because she said she didn't believe him. They give Clear a card and call her work interesting.

That night Billy, Carter, and Clear arrive at the memorial site around the same time. Carter gets out of his car and tries to carve Terry's name into the wall but is unsuccessful and instead asks Clear why she wanted them to meet her there. Clear informs them that she's being watched and needs their help getting to Alex. When Carter asks why she tells them that Alex knows which one of them dies next and in what order they die. Cut to a highway and Carter's car driving by a sign that indicates New York City is 105 miles ahead.

During the car ride Billy wants them to be careful, drive the speed limit and take caution while passing but Carter is angry and threatening, not taking things as seriously. They arrive at Jones Beach State Park, still ropped off with a sign about the accident. Clear tells them that Alex could be anywhere between there and a mile down, telling them to drive down and then come back to look for him along the way with her starting at the entrance. Clear finds Alex on the beach and they sit with eachother on the shore. She tells him her heartbreaking backstory that culminates in losing both of her parents at a young age.

Clear tells Alex they can't give up and the scene quickly cuts to back in Carter's car on the highway but this time Alex is next to Billy in the backseat. He expresses concern about the agents looking for him following Newton's death. Clear says they're taking Alex to her dad's cabin that is a couple of miles from her house and Carter inquires if Alex heard about Miss Lewton. Alex is shook because he thinks it's obvious that Billy told the FBI he saw Alex at Miss Lewton's house. Clear confirms Billy was an eye witness for them, Billy counters though that he saw valid evidence for Alex's involvement like his shoe print and that she'd melted into the floor.

Carter clears up however that he cares if Alex knew she was next somehow rather than his involvement with the deaths. Clear gives him a look to not lie to them and he confirms he knew, Carter then asks who's next and Billy hopes he gets to see the Jets win a Super Bowl. Alex protests that it doesn't matter who's next because they are all in the same boat together. It starts to sink in for Carter and he asks what's the point and why they should wait any longer before he slams his foot on the gas sending the car flying forward.

Carter is driving eradicly and blowing through stop signs and everyone is screaming for him to stop. Alex realizes his seatbelt is cut only to look back down and see it fixed. They rush into an intersection as the light turns red and everyone is justifiably freaking out. Carter starts screaming that he's in control of his life and that he alone controls his death, which is never what you want the driver of your car to say. Billy reaches for the steering wheel and tells Carter he doesn't have to prove to them how big his balls are right now and Carter elbows him in the nose then takes his hands off the wheel entirely as they barrel towards a semi just barely missing it and another car.

Alex looks out the window and sees a hazy train that looks like it's coming at them then disappears, freaking him out and causing him to go into overdrive fear when Carter stops the car on the tracks. Clear panics and tells Carter to open the car and Alex screams for Billy to open his door so they can get out of the back as a train in the distance appears on the tracks, horn blaring. Billy is petrified but can't open the door so they just continue to panic in the back until he's finally able to open it and run out. Carter decides to stay in the car, Alex asking him to get out with them and not kill himself.

In a douchey fashion Carter goes to turn his car on and says it isn't his time but the car won't start, he looks towards the incoming train and says, "oh shit," and tries to free himself from the car and thus the tracks. Alex rushes back onto the tracks to try and save him from the car and the train smashes into the car splitting it in 2, making it appear like both boys were killed by the crash.

A cut away from the tracks however reveals Alex was able to save Carter from the crash and Clear runs up to check on Alex, thankful he survived. While the threesome is still on the ground Billy is standing with his back to the tracks as the train passes over them, barely deterred by the car. A triangular jagged piece of metal is under the train between the tracks which the camera notably focuses on. Billy is panicking, feeling that Alex’s predictions have been proven true because Carter almost died and Alex saved him after seeing the vision of the seatbelt. Billy yells at Carter over the sound of the train passing that Carter needs to stay away from him because he’s next up to die.

He tells Alex and Clear to get away from Carter too because he’s dead but Carter screams at him that he’s not, still on the ground. Billy screams, “You’re dead! You’re dead!” over and over again, telling Carter he won’t be going with him. The shot snaps back to the piece of metal under the tracks, rattling due to the motion from above. It catches on the wheels and shoots out from under the train right towards the group as Billy turns around. The piece of metal slices Billy’s head in half like a really messed up Fruit Ninja situation and his body collapses off the side of the road. Alex is trying to make sense of things and screams that Carter was meant to be next, confused why he is alive and Billy is not dead.

Alex is now relieved to know with his visions he can intervene in their deaths and save them but Clear is more concerned about the incoming police force to the crash. Alex connects that the saving of Carter made the design skip him and get the next person in the path which was Billy. Clear tries to reason with Alex calling him baby and saying that he’s lost his marbles but Alex thinks he’s next up now and then Clear will be after him. He grabs her face on either side and tells her he won’t let Death get her. Carter interrupts their embrace and tells them to get the fuck to Clear’s cabin before the police show up, him staying behind to talk to meet them at the scene.

At the creepy cabin in the woods Alex is taping, covering, roping, and essentially attempting to safe-proof the area from Rube Goldberg machine like deaths being set into motion. Alex grabs a lamp and a can of mush after putting gloves on to protect against the sharp edges. A gust of wind comes under the door and knocks over a paper bag of trash that causes a chain of events leading to a knife through the door. Alex finds rusted fish hooks in the cabin and thinks Death might come for him in the form of an illness like tetanus. He challenges Death to get him in his rigged cabin, confident that he can cheat the force after him.

The agents loose sight of Clear and she pops up next to the car surprising them and offers to take them to Alex as long as she can come with them. They tell her they will get him and bring him into protective  custody and she can wait at home. Alex reads the paper at the cabin and sees an article about the fire at Miss Newton’s and then further down he sees a blurb about the parents of the 2 girls that asked Alex to move at the start of the film and died in the crash setting up a college scholarship in their names. This sparks Alex to recall he never moved because his vision occurred before he moved so he never switched seats with the girl, thus changing the actual Death order that he disrupted.

This is a cool use of the butterfly effect and a detail that almost goes unnoticed unless you’re looking for it at the start. The order he’s been working off of is the order from his vision which put him dying second to last and then Clear dying after him. Since he didn’t move that order is wrong and he’s actually the last to die so when Carter was skipped and then Billy died it’s actually Clear who’s up next and not Alex like they believe at that point in the film. This revelation means Clear is in huge danger and Alex is perfectly fine, wasting time by being in the cabin basically if he wants to save Clear.

Just as Alex realizes the real order and danger the scene cuts to Clear looking outside her bedroom window as the thunder and lightning continue outside. Suddenly her nearby power pole is hit by a lightning bolt that causes it to explode, causing mayhem outside with the open and raging electrical wires. The power goes out because of this and Clear discovers that the power line is downed in her front yard. The police show up to the cabin just as this is happening but Alex takes off across a body of water in a canoe on shore. They get back in their cars to go back to Clear’s area while she looks for candles to light in the dark. Her dog is outside going crazy at the downed wire and she rushes out, a candle being blown out by a sudden gust of ominous wind that stops her in her tracks.

Alex takes off through the woods, running from multiple cars worth of police and FBI agents and Clear goes outside to save her dog who’s chained up and unable to escape. Alex falls down a hill in the forest as Clear’s dog punctures the above ground pool, leaving water spilling into the yard and a live wire landing in it just as Clear and her dog are able to jump out. While Alex runs through the woods a tree is hit by a bolt and is downed right on top of him, his face stuck in a puddle drowning him. The police are sucking at finding him and Clear is climbing onto her roof to get back into her house, getting into her bedroom window just as her TV and other electronics burst from power surge. She makes it to her car but can’t get the garage to open since the power is out and it falls on her car, trapping her in the garage and unable to escape.

Alex finally gets to Clear’s and sees the situation building including lighter fluid now spilling out under her car amongst the swinging live wire. He uses a shovel to knock the wire away from the hood of the car but this causes a canister of air to shoot under Clear’s car just as the train of fluid ignites and sets the under carriage of her car ablaze. Alex explains to her that he plans to save her so that Death skips her and that he’ll always be with her. He grabs the live wire so Clear can get out of the car and she’s able to as Alex is blown back from the explosion and electrocution. A panicked Clear begs Alex to be okay and the paramedics say he isn’t breathing but the scene cuts away to white.

The white screen fades into the light at the end of a boarding tunnel at the airport. The camera moves down the tunnel and shows an airplane door opening as the words, “SIX MONTHS LATER,” come onto the screen. Guests are getting off the plane safely and it’s revealed that Carter, Alex, and a blonde Clear are on board and happy to have safely landed. Shocked they made it onto a plane again a pan down from a sign shows that they are in Paris, at a cafe together. They are in awe of the city and they all cheers to Terry, Carter feeling her absence is felt. Carter tells them he’s shocked they’re sitting in Paris having a drink and that the group are the only people that get what they’re going through.

Carter says they won and Clear says they won a full chance at life. Alex all of a sudden tells them there’s something he can’t figure out about the design and goes to grab the seating chart from his pocket, having brought it on the trip. Clear is less than pleased and wants him to let it go, both tired of hearing him talk about this. He points out that his intervention saving Carter sent Death to Billy which then in turn sent it to Clear but he intervened again which sent it to him but no one actually intervened in his death to save him. He notes that the power line explosion threw him but Clear throws out it’s possible everything was meant to happen exactly as it has and they were always meant to be sitting right there.

She obviously means it in a optimistic way, that they survived against all odds and don’t need to worry about this stuff anymore. Carter points in agreement with her, siding with moving on with their lives rather than obsessing over Death’s design. Carter then says Alex could be next and that they proved 3 times you can skip someone by saving them and tells him that he’s still next. Suddenly that wind comes on again and Alex notices all of the dangers around them until his red wine spills on the map and colors him blood red. He tells the pair to stay at the cafe away from him since he’s next and Clear sees a vision of a bus, yelling to save Alex at the last minute.

Rather than hit Alex the bus hits the curb trying to miss him and this crash causes a lighted sign above this cafe to be hit. It blows up and then comes swinging down and looks like it will go right into Alex until Carter tackles him onto the ground and out of the way, saving him. Alex gets up and says that it has skipped him and as Carter asks who’s next the sign that went swinging past them comes swinging back behind Carter as Alex still lays on the ground out of the way. Carter looks like he realizes he’s next just as the sign is about to hit him and ultimately kill him and just as that is about to happen it cuts to black and credits.

Hindsight is 20/20 and it is easy to judge the harsh critique this movie inspired from some at the time of its release. I think that the subsequent films like Final Destination 2 and Final Destination 3 in particular have made the first film more famous. The world is clearly not as flushed out as it is today with only that movie as the material that the audience bases the concept of Death’s Design on. In this movie Alex has ”visions” but they are more so him seeing objects or items that indicate something like double-takes that aren’t totally real feeling. In subsequent films the visions change and are full on play outs of the next death or in one case random object like a Clue envelope to give hints.

Watching the film back it is clear how much attention to detail this one includes that other movies in the series sometimes lack. Tiny details are added to each scene to build suspense or provide fake-outs for the viewer while they attempt to guess what the cause of death will or won’t be. Misdirects are a Final Destination favorite, present in all of the movies in at least one of the character’s deaths. In this one we have the fake out with Tod in the bathroom early on, multiple misdirects during Valerie’s death, and the crash as a fake-out before Billy is taken out by the rogue piece of metal.

All 3 of them surviving up until that last scene did leave some lack of finality to the movie but I think that was the intention based on the second film following just 3 years later. Subsequently the franchise became somewhat of a plug and play formula, 1 part freak accident, 4-7 parts characters in archetype form, motifs like songs, themes like the brevity of life, and a twist on the premonitions to predict deaths specific with each film. The first isn’t my favorite but I do hold it in high regard as the first of it’s kind and the use of an unseen force with the plot subversion off rip. Starting with all of your main characters dying might seem nonchalant today but I could imagine it was quite unique at the time this movie came out.

Final Destination 2 (2003)

The second installment in the Final Destination franchise came out 3 years after the first, releasing in 2003 under the simple and clean title: Final Destination 2. No taglines or misgivings about the scenario which would follow the events of the first movie which left off as the sign Carter saved Alex from swinging back to hit Carter as Alex lay on the ground then skipped again. FD2 opens on a newscast about Flight 180 stating it is the one year anniversary of the explosion and subsequent crash the next day. The news caster goes on to say that the events following the initial crash that killed 40 students and 4 faculty from Mt Abraham High School, the events from the first movie, are more shocking than the crash.

The reporter states that some believe the accidents following the crash were unfortunate events that added to the tragedy. He also states that some believe it is  proof something more sinister is happening and he introduces his guest. The guest starts by saying supernatural doesn’t just mean witches and ghosts but that he believes a force exists that he calls a malevolent presence around people all day everyday. He believes this force, that some call the devil, decides when people live or die but doesn’t like religion so calls it Death, essentially the FD universes version of Death, invisible, personified and angry.

The guest continues that Death has a grand design that all people fit into and really reiterates Death’s ability to be everywhere all the time. The mad-man looking guest is leaning forward and gesturing more wildly as he goes on. He explains that Alex getting off the plane disrupted Death’s plan which he wants to warn others about. The guest differentiates between regular deaths and the deaths that follow the accidents which are weird and random, ultimately not making sense. This newscast is playing while the camera pans over the main character asleep in bed, she is Kimberly Corman portrayed by A.J. Cook who is the JJ from Criminal Minds. A sinister and deep voice says, “Kimberly,” and she stirs awake.

On the TV the news reporter doesn’t believe the guest and brushes him off as crazy. The guest recommends everyone be on guard always for Death and Kimberly’s light goes out as he says this. He goes on to say that one can survive by looking beyond the “visible world” and that that is the only way. The TV goes to rolling static as the guest says that no one escapes Death and essentially if it’s your time then it’s your time. The red from the static turns into the red of Kimberly’s car as she closes it up to say goodbye to her dad.

Kimberly’s dad, Michael Corman portrayed by Andrew Airlie, is worried about Kimberly going to Daytona with her friends. Her friend Shaina McKlank portrayed by Sarah Carter approaches as they say goodbye and messes with Kimberly’s dad by saying they have contraband-style items for the trip. Kimberly and Shaina head out and her dad notices a red spot of fluid in the driveway indicating something could be wrong with the car. While Michael goes inside Kimberly and Shaina pick up their 2 other friends, Dano Estevez portrayed by Alex Rae and Frankie Whitman portrayed by Shaun Sipos and start out on their trip.

On the on ramp Kimberly almost rear ends the car in front of them and is startled by a woman banging on the window. The woman has a bag of cans and the bottom gives out, causing the cans to spill out everywhere onto the highway on ramp. The kids in the car are assholes and laugh about this, Frankie calls her a “fucking freak” as she picks up her cans and they look on. The boys have an immature back and forth that culminates in Dano revealing a gallon plastic bag half full of weed flower. Their car passes a decorated school bus and the students on it are chanting “pile-up” in a frenzied state, causing Kimberly to raise an eyebrow at the oddity of it. She shrugs off the weird choice of chants and turns on the radio to an announcement about a 1 year anniversary memorial for the Flight 180 passengers.

Kimberly and Shaina exchange uncomfortable looks when they realize and Kimberly changes the station, switching to a channel playing “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC. The coincidence of the song playing while they themselves are on a highway makes them chuckle. They come up on a guy in a sports car who is revving his engine, Evan Lewis portrayed by David Paetkau. He has a leather jacket with flames and is trying to flirt with Shaina on the passenger side when Kimberly’s dad calls to tell her the car is leaking transmission fluid. At the same time a woman on the back of a motorcycle comes up and flashes her boobs at the boys in the back seat which causes Dano to choke on the joint he’s smoking.

Kimberly notices a sheriff directly behind them and panics about Dano’s smoking weed right in front of him. He panics and throws the joint out the window and it flies onto the windshield of a car to their right, landing i dried leaves and beginning to smoke. The woman driving this car, Kat Jennings portrayed by Keegan Connor Tracy, sees this and turns on her windshield wipers, sending the lit joint flying off her car. Dano motions for her to keep quiet when she connects that he’s the one that threw the joint, motioning to the trooper Thomas Burke portrayed by Michael Landes, directly behind them. Just then Kimberly’s check engine light begins flashing and despite seeing signs warning they are entering a stretch without rest stops but Shaina tells her they should just wait because she got the car checked recently.

Other people near them on the highway include pregnant van driver, Isabella Hudson portrayed by Justina Machado, motorcycle driver Eugene Dix portrayed by T.C. Carson, a truck driver drinking beer, a kid simulating a crash with his toy cars, and a man in a convertible blasting music, Rory Peters portrayed by Johnathan Cherry. Rory’s car exhaust is crazy bad which causes Frankie to yell out of Kimberly’s back window. She then notices Tim Carpenter portrayed by James Kirk, drumming 2 large water bottles on the dash of the car he’s in. The car is driven by his mother, Nora Carpenter portrayed by Lynda Boyd.

Nothing of note is happening on anyone’s journey thus far on the highway, Eugene zips in and out of traffic on his bike, Rory snorts coke just as Trooper Burke approaches, and Kimberly clutches the wheel with new driver anxiety. The road is slick with earlier rain and the Trooper’s hot morning coffee spills on his lap just as one of the chains holding the logs on the logging truck snaps, sending the logs flying backwards. This is one of the most iconic deaths in the entire franchise and is noted on TikTok and other social media today as the source of an entire generation’s hesitance around logging trucks. As Burke looks up a giant log comes crashing through his front windshield and goes directly through him and out the back. Eugene tries to break as the logs come flying down the highway at full speed and his bike slides out sending him flying down the highway on his back. Just as this happens Rory spins out of control and that causes his car to flip, flying through the air down the road. Eugene slams into a log in the road and his bike flies into him after, smashing him against it.

Rory’s car is smashed by a semi and explodes, Kat slams into a log and her car flips over it, and then Tim and Nora are spinning out and can’t stop once a water bottle falls under her break pad. This is a bigger fear for me that I think about more constantly than the logging trucks personally. Since she can’t stop they crash at full speed into a log and their car explodes upon impact, sending the car ablaze. Kimberly looses control of the vehicle and their car flips multiple times as Evan’s sport’s car slams into the undercarriage of the stopped logging truck in the road. This impact causes a huge explosion that causes chain reactions of more explosions that send flaming debris flying all around. Kimberly and her friends are flipped on their side and barely conscious, looking out towards the explosions and seeing Evan stuck in his seat belt being burnt alive in the crash.

As Kimberly watches helplessly from her own crashed car another trucks comes speeding towards them out of the wall of fire, smashing into Evan’s car and coming directly towards Kimberly’s car and head within that car. She screams and the shot does the FD zoom out when a premonition happens to show Kimberly in her car right before she enters the highway. She’s at the exact moment she slammed on her breaks when she almost rear ended the car in front of them on the exit ramp. Dano gives her shit just like he did the first time, freaking her out even further just as the woman with the fingerless gloves slams her hand against Kimberly’s window, her cans falling out of her bag around the same time. The sequence of similar events combine with Kimberly seeing Eugene and Burke in her mirrors behind her then the school bus from Mt. Abraham High School packed with students chanting about a pile-up.

Once she sees enough signs from her premonition she immediately freaks and tells her friends there’s going to be a big accident and that they will all die. Cars start honking behind her to go and she turns on the radio to find the broadcast about the memorial event and then the AC/DC song. She pulls in front of the on ramp to block other’s from entering so Burke gets involved officially with the lights and sirens. Dano is mostly concerned about his weed stash, hiding it in his pants, Rory also hiding his drugs from Trooper Burke as he parks nearby. Burke demands to know what is going on and Kimberly explains the premonition about the pile-up so he pulls her out of the car. Everyone is really pissed that the driver of the car blocking the ramp is now out of the vehicle, meaning they are really really stuck.

Some of the crew of survivors start getting involved, Evan and Isabella asking to drive around or have Kimberly move out of the way. Burke doesn’t want to hear it however and Kimberly sees the logging truck pass by, shouting that it’s the car that will cause the wreck. Just after it passes by it crashes just beyond them on the highway and Burke rushes back to his car to call the accident in. Everyone is freaked out, especially Kimberly’s friends who know she predicted the logging truck accident before it happened and Shaina asks what is going on from inside her car. Kimberly turns around and sees a traffic sign that includes “180” on it and a semi smashes into her car, causing an immediate explosion. As this happens Burke pulls Kimberly out of the way, saving her from being hit and smashed between the 2 vehicles. Kimberly’s friends are killed fairly instantly in the crash and subsequent flames while Burke comforts her on the side of the road.

The survivors are brought to the police station, all freaked out, especially Kimberly. Another officer tells Burke that the survivors are lucky SoBs and points out Evan won the lottery a few days earlier. He also informs that the pileup was the worst that they’d seen in years. Kimberly is open and upfront that her premonition was like Alex’s on Flight 180 and points out it was a year ago to the day of their own accident. Nora doesn’t understand the significance of this though so Eugene explains the FD predicament they now also find themselves in. They are also informed 1 person did survive the Flight 180 incident, Clear Rivers, who’s in a padded room. This reprisal of a character is the only time this has happened so far in the franchise aside from William Bludworth.

Some of the survivors are following along with Kimberly and Eugene’s explanation despite his lack of personal belief, but most of the group is hesitant to believe there’s anything more than surviving a bad accident at play. Back across town Evan comes back to his apartment with a collection of new and expensive items, throwing old noodles out his window and heating up takeout. His haphazard cooking is made more dangerous by Death shadowing him, a magnet falls in his noodles that he places in the microwave and his ring falls down the garbage disposal.

When he goes to reach for it his hand is stuck just as his microwave begins sparking and his pan begins burning and smoking on the stove. A fire breaks out and Evan makes it out onto his fire escape just as his apartment explodes behind him. He slips in the noodles from earlier, landing in glass and then being impaled by his fire escape ladder. This is actually shown and definitely looks a little sussy, though the TV version edit that cuts away is a bit more effective at building the scare and leaving shock. Back at the station Burke is looking into deaths of Flight 180 survivors including Terry being hit by a bus, Tod being hung in the bathtub and then an article appears of Alex’s death, being hit by a falling brick after not leaving his house for 3 months. He died in an alleyway and had been with Clear when it happened, even being taken into custody.

All of the survivors catch a news broadcast that night that shows footage of Kimberly being pulled out of the way of the semi. They are all stunned when they see that Evan has also died since the accident. It’s of note that both Alex and Evan are reported to have died instantly, and while I think the majority of FD deaths play out that way it is curious why others seem particularly more cruel. Nora tells Tim she believes that Kim and Burke were not genuine and trying to scare them whereas the others seemed more shaken and convinced. Kimberly decides to go visit Clear in order to get insight into their situation and her premonition. While there the attendant asks for all of her belongings citing potential risks which worries Kimberly that Clear is dangerous but they assure her that Clear is there of her own desire and the restrictions are her doing.

Clear is more scared of others than anyone has to be scared of her, she has a closed circuit TV connected to a camera pointed outside her door. Inside her padded room is research about the accidents similar to Flight 180. Kimberly explains that she had a premonition and Clear asks if she’s feeling that Death is after her now. Clear tells Kimberly that she put the people that survived on a list and confirms they are in danger. Clear calls it Death’s list and advises Kimberly that the list goes in order of death in the crash. Since Kimberly was meant to die in the crash with her friend who got struck on the side of the road she thinks she’s next but because Burke pulled her out of the way he intervened and it skipped her..

Clear tells Kimberly that Death will circle back until it completes the list. This doesn’t gel for Kimberly though who points out that in her premonition her friends and her died last but in the actual crash they died first. Clear wonders if it’s going backwards and confirms that that must be the case based on the premonition and Evan dying. Clear tells Kimberly that Alex used to wonder why him just like Kimberly did but the best advice she has is listen to your intuition and check for signs. Kimberly calls Clear a coward when Clear kicks her out and she joins up with Burke to try and warn the others and intervene.

She sees a flock of birds above her in a reflection that aren’t actually there and realizes she can see visions of upcoming deaths for whoever’s next. She identifies that Nora and Tim are next and they go to look for them. They are at Tim’s dentist appointment which sets up multiple spooky and cringe-inducing fake outs of potential disasters at the office that could lead to his death. Tim almost chokes on a puffer fish ornament while on laughing gas because the office is distracted by a pigeon that slammed through the window. Despite this Tim and Nora leave the dental office just fine out into the construction outside just as Kimberly and Burke run up to them. Tim chases runs into a flock of pigeons that fly up into a machine operators face, causing the glass above him to smash down on top of him. This kills Tim instantly while his mother looks on in agonizing shock.

Kimberly and Burke stick around and try to get Nora to come with them since she’s next but she doesn’t want to leave her son. Burke goes to drop Kimberly off and Clear is waiting outside of her house when Kimberly informs her that another survivor has died. Clear tells Kimberly she hopes she’s ready for this and the scene cuts to the group as a funeral home. Clear has taken them to see William Bludworth, the only person who seemed to know about what the kid’s in FD1 were dealing with and took them seriously. He is the original lore-provider in the franchise aside from internet research that Alex conducts. They approach a semi-hidden door and Clear goes in without knocking, telling the others that Bludworth probably knows they are coming.

Inside of the cavern like dungeon the room is smoked filled with a crematory fire raging in a furnace. Through a red-lit room that looks like a walk in freezer Bludworth emerges and greets Clear by name, slamming the door shut behind him and wheeling a cart with a body on it. The body is Evan and Bludworth makes a joke about brains and that Evan is still fresh, Clear is a bit combative and asks him to tell them if he knows how to stop Death. Bludworth tells them there are no escapes but she counters that her and Alex survived death many times and her being still alive is proof he’s wrong. He reaches for her chin to lightly touch it in a creepy manor and he tells her that she has a fire and attributes it to her being near death. He pulls Evan’s nipple ring out by ripping it and pushes his body into the furnace to cremate, whistling as he takes the cart away.

Kimberly grabs Bludworth and begs for his assistance and he looks at her quizzically and tells her that new life is the only thing that can stop death. He explains that for every death there is a life and that balance must exist. Bludworth argues that a birth would disrupt Death’s list and force Death to start anew on said list and he reaches for Kimberly’s necklace and tells her to look for the signs. He calls her by her name and she asks him how he knows it and he just smiles his creepy smile and looks at Clear before the scene cuts away. Burke doesn’t feel that Bludworth helped and rather just freaked them out and Clear smacks a teenager in the head for smoking next to a gas pump. While they have a confrontation Kimberly gets another vision of a car crashing into water and sinking to the bottom. She sees it as if she’s in the car and drowning, starting to actually drown.

Clear notices all the danger that exists around them at the gas station and in public, and demands Kimberly tell them what she saw. Kimberly’s vision of a white van jogs Burke’s memory of the pregnant woman in the delivery van on the on-ramp of the accident. They decide they need to find this pregnant woman, convince her of their theory, and protect her from death until she gives birth to the baby that will refresh Death’s list. Burke offers to use his tools as a cop to find her and the scene cuts to them reviewing his dash footage from that day and searching her license plate number. He finds her ID and they call the survivors to meet them at Burke’s apartment so they can inform them and get them on board while all protecting each other.

At this meeting Kat gives Nora a Valium and Eugene doesn’t believe there’s an actual threat. They try to inform the group of how to stay alive but they are pretty dismissive until an 8 ball keychain drops when Eugene grabs his coat that causes a chain reaction to send a hanging kayak swinging directly into Clears direction. She ducks in time to miss it and it launches through the window, breaking it. This makes the group tell her to get away from them because Death is after her, putting them in danger. Instead she recommends they sleep in shifts and safe-proof the apartment. Meanwhile police overreach is used to arrest Isabella because of her van.

Nora decides to leave which also inspires Eugene to peace out at the same time because he feels he controls his life. Rory puts something in the closet and it causes items to crash down, freaking him out and causing hooks and a trophy to make a shadow of a man with hooks. In the elevator Eugene and Nora are with a man with a crate of hook arms and the group calls to warn them about a man with hooks while this happens. The guy is a creep and gets super close to Nora to smell her and push up on her when she answers the phone, getting her hair stuck in a hook. Nora panics when they tell her about the man to look out for and she backs out of the elevator doors and her neck is trapped between the doors.

This is another iconic FD death, and the elevator begins to rise with her head still stuck. With the 2 men inside the elevator and 2 women behind Nora they all try to release her from the doors. The elevator keeps trying to rise and this eventually decapitates Nora, her head inside the elevator going up and her body on the floor with Clear and Kat. Eugene rushes back into the apartment absolutely horrified and takes Burke’s gun, pointing it at the group to back up before pointing it at his head. He tries to shoot himself in the head but the gun doesn’t work.

The gun is completely loaded despite it not going off after multiple tries just as Kat and Clear enter the apartment again covered in Nora’s blood. Kat asks if they can find the pregnant woman which then cuts to the group riding in Kat’s SUV headed to where Isabella is being held in custody. Rory points out the danger of them all being together when Kat is next but they feel relief that Isabella is confirmed safe and giving birth any minute. Isabella goes into labor while they’re on the way and then leaves that station to be taken to the emergency room.

During the car ride Eugene tells the group that he has cheated death before which causes each of them to share how they also had a near death experience. Some of theirs were stopped by Death killing the survivors of Flight 180. Kat’s bus headed to a resort hit Terry, Rory witnessed Carter being hit by the sign in Paris which caused him to change plans and avoid death, Eugene replaced Val when she died which caused him to not be the teacher a student stabbed and killed days later at his previous school, Burke went on the call about the train crash that killed Billy which caused him not to be killed alongside his partner and finally, Kimberly got distracted by a news report of Tod’s death inside a mall when he mom got robbed and gunpoint and killed.

This is the only movie that has such a intertwined connection to a previous FD film, despite some lighter connections in later films. I love that each person had a connection to an FD1 character’s death and that that death caused a ripple effect of disruptions to Death’s list. Like the Butterfly Effect Death seems to be cleaning up all the unintended side effects of a different disruption by killing all of these people in the Route 23 crash. Clear believes that they created a rift by surviving Flight 180 and that Death is working backwards to tie up loose ends. Just as she explains this theory their tie shreds and the car flies off the road and onto a farm through hay barrels and into a palette of white piping.

The crash also almost threw Isabella’s car off the road but being in labor she tells him to keep going to the hospital and not stop. Adams calls in the crash and continues to the hospital. Eugene’s lung collapses due to the crash which means he also goes to the hospital. Kat is stuck in her car, pinned in her seat by a branch with her car stuck on the broken pipes. A teen on the farm is almost hit by a news van driving eraticly but Rory pulls him out of the way and saves him. That news van backs over onto rocks that slice through the car’s fuel line, causing a chain reaction. Rory asks Kimberly to clean up his porn stash and drugs if he dies, giving her his keys and wallet. While a crew works to get Kat out of her van Clear heads to the hospital to be with Eugene.

The crew working to get Kat out of her car smacks the side hard enough to cause the airbag to explode, this causes her head to propel back and for her to be impaled with the sharp, broken pipe stuck through her headrest. She’s killed instantly and the hand her cigarette is in drops down the side of the car out of the window. The still lit cigarette is rolled by the wind down into the pipe now filled with fuel from the news van. A branch snaps and stops Burke from intervening or being in the way just as the news van explodes and send a barbed fence flying through Rory, slicing him into 3 horizontal pieces. This is pretty gnarly and now that he is dead they all rush to the hospital, Kimberly having a vision that makes her think a doctor will try to kill her.

At the hospital Isabella is in labor with Officer Adams by her side, panicked but unaware of Death’s list chasing her. Eugene is hooked up to a machine breathing for him and sees on the news that both Kat and Rory have died, meaning he’s next on the list. As he realizes weird things start to happen like his hospital door closing, and his machine becoming unplugged. Clear goes to look for him while Kimberly and Burke go to find Isabella. She gives birth and just as she does all of the building action in Eugene’s room seems to come to a complete halt, his machine back on. They tell Clear the good news and Kimberly has another vision but this time it’s of the past and shows that Isabella was never going to die in the crash, she was never involved. She then has another vision of crashing the car and drowning, seeing that someone will drown.

Clear opens Eugene’s room just as an explosion busts out and takes Kimberly and Burke off their feet. Clear is officially dead and the franchise is worse off for it. Her hands now bloody she realizes she was the driver and resolves to drive the car into the lake to fulfill the premonition in hopes her death could stop the list. She does just this and Burke jumps into the water to save her. It appears like Kimberly dies and is brought back to life by the doctor she’d thought killed her in her vision. Burke is there and they think that they beat Death with her death and revival. Fade to a sunny off-white that then turns to sky that pans down to a wholesome and sunny outdoor BBQ on the farm.

Everyone is there including the kid Rory saved and Kimberly’s dad. They hadn’t been aware that he’d had a brush with death so aren’t looking for signs but feel something is wrong when they do find out. Just then the teen who went to check the grill is in an explosion that kills him and sends his detached arm flying onto the table in front of his mother as she screams in terror.

Final Destination 3 (2006)

Directed by James Wong and written by Glen Morgan and James Wong the 3rd installment of Final Destination follows a similar formula to the first 2 films. In the review of the first film I went over the first film which was inspired by Jeffrey Reddick’s spooky experience while traveling. The first 2 films in the series are connected by a main character, Clear Rivers portrayed by Ali Larter, who is an original victim of Flight 180, the central accident in the first film, and helped the U.S. Route 23 pile-up survivors from the central accident of the second film. She is able to jump start their journey by telling them her story after they track her down at a mental hospital, voluntarily entered for her own protection. Anyone who visits her must surrender any sharp objects or potential death-traps before seeing her, keeping herself off Death’s metaphorical list and alive.

Jump to the third film however and we are following a completely disconnected group of high schoolers, seemingly random as far as the franchise is concerned. While the second film begins this way this film has virtually zero callbacks to the previous characters aside from Tony Todd’s William Bludwurth. The 3rd installment also jumps directly into the action with no background on the characters which is unlike the first 2 films that showed parents and the group arriving at the scene of the accident.

This film jumps right into the action which is happening around a senior night at an amusement park in Pennsylvania. Nearing graduation the students are celebrating with an assortment of rides, carnival games, and more. The main character, Wendy Christensen portrayed by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is introduced as one of the school’s yearbook photographers. She’s armed with a digital camera and approaching various students to capture shots of the night—which will become important. This is an effective tool to introduce the key characters and eventual victims while showing their archetype which informs about their traits. A jock who breaks a strongman game, 2 popular girls who value appearances trying to get away from a predator with a video cam trying to hit on them, an outcast couple that includes a guy way too into weapons and a girl really into eyeliner, and finally we meet Wendy’s little sister—a junior who has snuck in.

The jock is named Lewis Romero portrayed by Texas Battle, the 2 girls are Ashley Freund and Ashley Halperin played by Chelan Simmons and Crystal Lowe, and then the predator guy is Frankie Cheeks portrayed by Sam Easton. The emo couple is made up of Ian McKinley portrayed by Kris Lemche and Erin Ulmer portrayed by Alexz Johnson, the pair inseparable before and after the accident. Wendy’s sister is Julie Christensen played by Amanda Crew and Wendy is accompanied by her best friend, Carrie Dreyer played by Gina Holden, and her boyfriend Kevin Fischer played by Ryan Merriman. While Wendy’s interactions provide context to these characters the character that provides that most context for her is her boyfriend, Jason Wise played by Gina Holden.

The initial context for Wendy is provided by Jason on the way to ride one of the biggest roller coasters at the park, Devil’s Flight. Wendy is nervous and hesitant, preferring to stay back all together than get on the roller coaster. She sees a sign on their way in reading, “No exit after turnstiles. I’ll see you soon,” with the image of a devil and skulls surrounding the sign. The whole ride is entered via stone tunnel past this sign and it’s very intense on the hell theme, with screaming ghost figures coming out of the stone ceilings. While in line Jason and Wendy talk to Ian and Erin who inform them the odds of dying in a roller coaster which doesn’t ease Wendy.

Jason has to convince Wendy and promise to sit with her and comfort her during the ride, showing they seem fairly into each other. While this relationship seems mutual Carrie reveals in a hushed conversation with Wendy that she plans to break up with her boyfriend and Jason’s friend, Kevin, after they all graduate. When the group of 4 is at the front of the line the attendant directs them to take the front cars but Wendy objects, she’s afraid to sit in the front and be able to see the tracks. Kevin tries to help and suggests that Carrie sit in the back with Wendy and ride together then the 2 guys will sit in the front and ride together. This time Carrie objects however because she doesn’t want to be relegated to the back due to being a girl.

Wendy feels bad and tries to convince Jason she’s fine with sitting in the back alone. Then Kevin feels double-bad and offers to flip a coin with Jason to determine who will sit in the back with Wendy so she’s not alone. Jason wins and goes to sit in the front car with Carrie and tells Kevin to keep an eye on Wendy because she’s freaked out, which Kevin agrees to do. The aforementioned squad of characters happen to be the people in the same group for this ride, each in 2 person cars linked together in a chain. Wendy approaches her stall and sees it’s the number 6, obviously referring back to the Devil. Distracted by this and Jason telling Kevin to keep his hands to himself and Kevin responding he might need to comfort Wendy allows creeper Frankie to slither past them and secure the car behind Ashley and Ashley.

Kevin and Wendy walk further down the way to the open cars and are beat to them by kids while Jason yells after Wendy that he’ll see her after the ride. The kids that get onto the ride and take the last remaining open cars are removed by an attendant which allows Kevin and Wendy to get on the ride after all. The car behind them is empty and both Lewis and Frankie aren’t sitting next to anyone when the handlebars come down. The attendant pushes Lewis’ further down, making the hold tighter, and the camera cuts to under the cars where fluid is now leaking.

Frankie tells the 2 Ashely’s to show him their boobs on the ride, his camera still out until he overhears Wendy getting told to put her loose object aka camera away. He sneaks it into his jacket pocket to hide it as the ride starts up and Kevin puts his hand in wet gum that sticks to his hand. Kevin is very golden retriever energy and tries to hype Wendy up but she isn’t having it, instead she’s noticing all of the clangs and cranks of the climbing roller coaster cars. They clink to the top of the first incline and Frankie’s dumbass has his camera out.

Cheering in anticipation the group is hyped while Wendy is panicked about the height. They begin their descent on the ride and the undercarriage of the cars is shown to still be leaking liquid. Things go normal for the first portion of the ride, Wendy feels uncertain about the safety but everyone else is raising their arms and cheering. Frankie keeps filming and when they are upside down he screams for the 2 girls to show him their boobs and then drops the camera. The video camera falls to the bottom of the loop and wraps itself around one of the tracks by the strap. Not long after the roller coaster car runs over the camera, crushing it and busting its connection with the tracks.

The collision causes a chain reaction under the cars and the mechanisms used to control them start to bust. The handlebars that hold them in their seats suddelny pop up as if released at the end of the ride. Panicked and shaken the teens reach for them as quickly as possible, trying to keep them down enough to stay in their seats. Everyone survives this but then wheels starts to stall on the tracks, becoming broken and looking like they’ll bust off the cars at any moment. Someone screams that they are going to fall off the tracks as they continue to spiral, holding the handlebars down.

As the wheels fail the car is just bare on the track causing sparks to fly up as the ride becomes increasingly turbulent. Just when it seems like the ride could come to an end with minimal injury if it keeps up this way they hit a snag on the track and a cart pops off sending the passengers in it, Carrie and Jason, flying. Lewis is also propelled out but catches himself and is hanging on the side of the cars until he’s thrown back. Kevin catches him and tries to hold on but he flies off and ends up hanging onto the back until a piece of stray metal knocks him into the roller coaster’s metal frame.

The surviving riders end up upside down on one of the roller coaster loops when their cart stalls. Erin and Ian fall out of their seats, hanging on by their now open handle bars. Still upside down but in their seats Wendy and Kevin shout at the them to hold on as they frantically try to hold down their own bars. Ian falls first and then Erin both presumably dying but not shown on camera before another unnamed student falls out of their car. Wendy looks below them and sees their bodies and Kevin gets the idea to rock back and forth to get them moving again. With Wendy’s help this works and the pair go barreling backwards on the tracks, the last 2 remaining riders.

Kevin is standing up now as the roller coaster cars pick up speed and the camera flashes to a piece of metal sticking up from the crash. As they approach he’s trying to get back in his seat with his handlebars still standing up and that piece of metal cuts his body in half above the waist. Blood splatters onto Wendy and she screams as the cars shoot towards a sudden break in the tracks. When the cars hit it the whole line goes off the track and flies into the air sending Wendy flying out of her car. She is rushing towards the tracks nearest the ground and her premonition ends as the impact would have happened.

She has tears in her eyes and looks around to see she’s at the start of the ride again, right as the attendant is waving his hand in front of her camera and telling her to put it away. Obviously Wendy is even more panicked when Kevin touches the gum from her premonition, she starts screaming that the ride is going to crash and a manager comes out and signals to the attendants to release the bars. She warns him that the track is collapsed and that the crash will happen and Lewis is super rude and misogynistic about Wendy, giving her shit for crying.

Kevin goes to confront Lewis for this and their physical altercation starts with bystander Erin getting slapped. Once she’s been hit Ian jumps into the scuffle and it’s revealed that Jason and Carrie are still locked into their roller coaster car. The attendant tells Jason that no one gets off the ride as a bunch of people get off the ride including Ashley and Ashley who proclaim the fight and scenario is “so high school”. Frankie decides to leave because he’s only there for the 2 girls anyways. The group in the back cars who got off the ride are escorted out by security and the front car passengers haven’t been released and attendants start the ride.

As the ride starts Jason screams at them to try and get off and as she’s walking out Wendy hears the ride start up and realizes that Jason didn’t get off. She makes it back to see the cars ascending up the first incline but she’s tackled by security when she screams after Jason. Her and Kevin are kicked out of the ride through the back just as the cars derail and fly off the track. Wendy scream-cries Jason while looking up at the accident unfolding.

Rather than jump to an interrogation or police interview after the accident this Final Destination time jumps to their graduation. Tributes have been erected around the school to honor those who died in the Devil’s Flight crash. Wendy walks around the school in the overcast rain and takes note of these memorials on her last day of school which confirm that Jason and Carrie died in the crash. Kevin tries to talk to Wendy about graduation, telling her he is also struggling from the loss of Carrie and Jason. Wendy tells Kevin she is going to leave their town and never look back because there’s nothing in the town she cares about without Jason.

Kevin protests that he made a promise to take care of her but she slaps that down by telling him they wouldn’t have been friends if not for their partners and each being friends with the other’s partner. Ashley and Ashley see Wendy leaving and approach her inviting her to come tanning with them for graduation. One of them gives her their phone number and they pat themselves on the back for extending kindness.

Luckily for the sake of the plot Kevin doesn’t quit and runs after Wendy telling her about Flight 180. He is able to provide the background that lets us skip the needing to put things together phase of the movie. By the 3rd installment it’s nice that referencing back to the other films in the same universe allows the plot to skip the monotonous figuring out stage. Kevin informs Wendy that the passengers that survived died in the order they died in the premonition. She’s not down with this and tells him to fuck off but the information is planted in her head.

That night Wendy is confronted by Julie for stealing an heirloom necklace and Wendy breaks down confessing her guilt. This reconnects their icy relations and Julie asks to borrow the school camera for graduation. Wendy offers to recharge it while she gets ready and Wendy realizes that there are pictures from their senior night she hasn’t seen. While this is happening the 2 Ashleys are at the tanning salon and have brought a slushy into the room despite warnings not to. This melts in the heat and water travels down the electric wires of the tanning beds which causes them to short circuit.

The owner of the salon mistakenly locks himself out while they are in the beds and doesn’t notice at first. They leave a note on the front and that door locked as well and then set up with headphones in both listening to Roller Coaster of Love. Intercut with Wendy putting together that the photos are her hints to the deaths of the people that got off. She starts to worry and decides to call one of the Ashleys to check on the pair after she sees the photo of them is overexposed and makes them look almost on fire.

The heat they turned on pushes a coat hanger over that then falls onto a CD shelf that breaks off the wall as a flat piece of wood. This piece falls off one of the tanning beds and then slides horizontally between the two beds, effectively trapping both girls in the beds. The beds start to heat up as this is happening to the point that they notice something is wrong but when they got to lift the lids of the beds they realize they are trapped and panic. Skin bubbling, glass shattering heat continues to rise and visibly burns the girls skin. Eventually both beds break through the bottom on fire and the 2 are burned alive in the beds, side by side. The shot transitions from above the beds with the fire coming out of the sides to 2 white coffins next to each other over open graves at a funeral.

The funerals are packed with locals including McKinley and Erin; McKinley taking it upon himself to respond to the sermon out loud, drawing attention and ire from the crowd. He is upset that 2 girls that didn’t do anything to anyone are dead while there are evil people alive and well. Lewis and Kevin take it upon themselves to remove him from the crowd but he goes pretty willingly. Frankie makes it about himself and how he viewed women leading them to change their appearance to impress him. It’s gross and weird as one would expect from his character type, Julie is visibly grossed out by his comments but he perceives it as a good time to make a move and goes to kiss her. She face palms him while walking away with her friend Amber, another junior who secretly attended the senior night.

McKinley and Erin get in his truck to leave the funeral service with Kevin and Lewis in tow, making sure they leave without causing more trouble. He peels out of the parking area leaving the 2 boys behind and Lewis tells Kevin to bring him a PSP if he ever has to come to his funeral, an ominous foreshadow. Wendy calls Kevin from Jason’s grave in the same cemetery, a gesture she’s ready to talk and he comes to her because she didn’t want to upset anyone with her presence. Wendy tells Kevin about the last convo she had with Jason and that she wonders if him pointing out her lack of control induced fear that caused her vision. None of the other protagonists with visions try to come up with a chain reaction for the visions that isn’t related to a prior near death experience but rather a random comment. She describes a presence around her that she knows isn’t Jason because it is, “cold and terrifying,” which triggers a gust of heavy wind that only impacts the pair. After the gust passes Wendy pulls out printed photos and shows examples of photo anomalies that could be predictions of events like Lincoln’s assassination and the September 11 attacks but then includes a photo of a plane fire that had “180” in the background exactly 1 year prior to the accident.

This is when Wendy expressly states her theory that the photos she took that night contain clues about upcoming deaths and possibly the manner of death. She believes they can utilize these clues to save people who got off the ride with them by intervening in the event of their deaths. Wendy almost passes out which cuts to the pair in a car passing a Tri-Centennial sign for their town as they continue on. Distracted by the photos Wendy is showing him Kevin almost hits a man opening his truck door on the side of the road and must swerve to avoid him. They decide to go to a fast food place and Wendy demands they go through the drive thru so that no one overhears their conversation topics. They pull into line at the drive thru and look at Frank’s photo while they wait, believing he is next because he sat behind the Ashleys on the roller coaster during Wendy’s premonition. I like the use of the real world object like a photo to trigger a clue or memory of a premonition in this installment. This feels more realistic and adds to the believability despite the more outlandish deaths like that in the tanning salon.

Based on the photo Wendy has of Frankie they think his brush with death could have something to do with water because of a SpongeBob prize behind him. After a cranky couple honks at them to pull forward Wendy sees a message in the order menu just as the radio changes on it’s own and a moving truck with a lift on the back rams into the side of Kevin’s truck. The trucks pins Kevin’s car just as another truck, the one he almost hit earlier, begins barreling down the hill towards them out of control without a driver behind the wheel. Wendy peeps this through the back window and her and Kevin realize the doors are pinned too shut for them to squeeze through. Panicking they honk for the person in front of them to move forward but get the finger instead. The couple behind them is also oblivious to the impending danger because they’re in full blown argument until the very last moment. The driver spins out backwards leaving just Kevin’s truck to get hit.

Thinking fast Kevin kicks out the front windshield and helps Wendy climb out onto the hood. They are able to jump out of the way of the incoming collision between Kevin’s truck and the incoming truck just in time, Kevin’s arm around Wendy to keep her semi protected. The impact send the car’s engine flying forward into the convertible in front of them, blades first. The blades rip the back of his head open, killing him hopefully instantly because it is a rather brutal death otherwise. The bloodied PlayBoy necklace the victim was wearing is on the ground and they realize it is Frankie who just got killed, the guy they were looking for. The engine blade is still stuck in his head when they approach the vehicle and it spurs one more time throwing his head forward and startling Wendy.

Kevin declines a ride home for either of them, offering to drive Wendy after they walk back to his house, telling the first responders that they will be alright. Wendy immediately asks if they will be when her and Kevin are alone and when he says they will be okay she tells him she feels like there’s a viciousness to these deaths. Kevin however thinks that Frank’s death proves her theory wasn’t true because nothing he remembers from the photo of Frank indicated his death would be like how it was. Wendy wants to leave again but Kevin is able to get her to stay in town, telling her after that he’s not an idiot despite what people may think about him.

They decide to take a closer look at the photos together and see if the order is correct. The picture they have of the full line of cars is half blocked by the attendants hand, making it hard to determine everyone who was on the ride. They keep going through the pictures and stop on one of Carrie, Kevin telling Wendy he’d planned to propose to Carrie after graduation. She wisely says nothing because telling him what Carrie told her would be cruel. They then stumble across a mistaken photo that is more of an up-skirt shot than Frank even took. Behind that up-skirt shot Frank is making a goofy face captured mid-movement and there’s a fan right above his head. The angle of the photo and Frank it looks like the fan is going into his head, symbolic of his actual death.

With confirmation that the photos predict the impending death they go back to Lewis’ because he was sitting directly behind Frank, making him next. They believe that the swords above Lewis in the photo are because he’s at a football came that has mascots with swords. They ultimately decide to warn Lewis after Wendy calls out Kevin for wanting to intervene now when he’d previously advocated to be willfully ignorant. Now however he believes if they can beat it they have to try or he’ll obsess about it. He didn’t want to see his photo but he asks Wendy if it’s bad like potentially embarrassing. They’ve resolved to go to see Lewis and tell him in person rather than risk calling him and him being less likely to believe it.

Despite showing up however Lewis tells them they are “—on crack. Both of you,” in between sets at his football training camp. Kevin explains that Ashley and Ashlyn both died, then Frankie Cheeks who’d been directly behind them and that he’s next which isn’t a bad argument to make even without the other supporting occurrences of this phenomenon. Wendy starts noticing all of the similar items in the photo and gym like the crossed blades and bears but specifically the danger that the gym versions present to Lewis. Lewis’ stance is that he controls his own destiny and his monologue is very reminiscent of Carter in the first Final Destination. He has given himself credit somehow for Wendy’s premonition and him being accidentally saved. The gym is a walking liability with puddles of water coming out of the drinking fountain right next to a boom box plugged into the wall.

Lewis proclaims that in 4 years time he’ll be a second round NFL draft pick going to Oakland, which is sad because Oakland no longer has a team. He talks about super bowl rings and completing 15 seasons, having earlier cited his injury free high school run as evidence of his durability. He’s continually increasing the intensity of his reps and slamming the equipment around in this violation of a gym. A chain of events is set off when a guy going hard in front of a taxidermy bear in the gym snaps one of its claws off. That claw flies across the room and hits a man doing squats in the eye, causing him to drop his weights and stumble back. This commotion causes the blades to come loose of their mounts above Lewis’ machine that cuts 2 of the wires of the machine which causes everyone to stop and hold their breath in anticipation of something bad. Lewis celebrates that he wins, even in the face of death he feels he wins, and he goes to do a celebratory rep with full force. This causes the now broken machine to malfunction and send the weights crashing back down on either side of Lewis’ head, crushing his head and killing him.

Blood and other matter flies out at Wendy and Kevin, standing the closest to Lewis when his head is crushed. Cut to them leaving the field, arriving back at their car with bags and wearing new gym clothes with the school’s logo, cleaned up from the earlier scene. Wendy asks Kevin if she did something to make the accident and subsequent deaths on everyone but he responds he doesn’t know why. This girl has had this same look of cry-panic most of this movie even before the accident, Wendy always pisses me off a little bit.

The next scene opens on McKinley and Erin at what looks like a Lowe’s unbranded knockoff and he proceeds to use the lift to get to the top shelf to shoot pigeons with a nail gun, killing at least one. Communicating via walkie talkie because of course they are Wendy and Kevin approach Erin who then calls over McKinley. The pair are stocking merchandise in the vast hardware department store and McKinley messes with the lights to freak them out. Wendy demands to know who was sitting behind them on the ride but he fucks around and makes a joke, being evasive. Erin jokes that the person behind them was a man in a black cloak with a scythe, implying it was the grim reaper to mess with Wendy.

The group has a discussion about death and if it’s a person or force that is after them if death is indeed after them. McKinley goes on a diatribe about death and reincarnation but in an edgy 4chan way. He says that everything in life is a force going from one thing to another. He keeps talking as Erin hands him items to stock and Wendy starts getting the ominous feeling that precedes an accidental death. She sees banners and thinks that is the clue from the photo, honing in on that and things above them where McKinley has just lifted to. She points this out to Kevin who then yells at McKinley that he needs to watch out for the boxes which causes McKinley to swerve the lift suddenly and a bag of bird seed ends up falling to the ground now ripped open. They try to reason with a sassy McKinley who makes fun of their attempts to help him, however panicked those attempts might be. After saying that he doesn’t know “yet” he scoffs at them but Erin wants to know who’s next in the order. Wendy explains that because they don’t know which Ashley died first they don’t know how the order works for people sitting next to one another.

I like that this is included and not assumed that there’s an obvious way that the order would go, either left to right or right to left. Erin brushes them off however and says that death is complicated but Wendy disagrees, McKinley siding with Erin that life is rather meaningless. He accidentally knocks things off the shelf as he stocks and Erin picks up nails with a magnet that starts a chain reaction. The magnet causes a roll of chain link to start unrolling which falls down and hits the keys on the other lift that McKinley isn’t on. This turns the machine on and then McKinley’s careless driving causes the forklift claws to hit a shelf and cause caulking tubes to fall down which knock a box loose that McKinley earlier pushed back to fall off the shelf and get caught between shelves. This box perfectly lands on the gas pedal of the now turned on lift and it starts rolling forward, knocking over liquid bottles on the way.

Wendy keeps looking for clues in the photo of the couple as McKinley turns on a saw and almost slips into it in the unswept sawdust. The soaped up lift wheels make it through the bottles and into a wall of tools, one of which is a hammer that knocks a lever on the lift. Another hammer falls and hits another lever that pushes the lift forward into the shelves. McKinley is messing with Wendy and Kevin while the chain reaction continues, Erin looking on. Wendy realizes that wooden stakes above McKinley are in danger of falling just as they are hit by the forklift pushing the shelves into ladders that then knock into the shelf the box is on, sending it flying down. She tackles him out of the way to save him and her, Kevin, and McKinley are crushed by flat wood boards falling from a higher shelf also knocked over by the lift.

The fall and crashing of the wood causes a sharp piece to fly out and slice an air pump open which causes sawdust to go flying into Erin’s face which knocks her off her feet. She falls backwards into McKinley’s nail gun that he’d used to shoot birds earlier in the night. The nail gun goes off a considerable amount of times seemingly just by her head propelling backwards into it and the nails go through the back of her head and through her hand she’d raised to shield her face. This death is pretty gruesome and particularly cruel from the invisible antagonist and it doesn’t seem instant, Erin able to look down as blood spills from her head, in complete shock. Cut to Wendy leaving the police station, the officers looking menacingly after her and Kevin who waited for her outside the station. Kevin explains that he didn’t tell them anything but Wendy says that she told them everything including the background about Flight 180 and the connections of the current deaths.

The officers didn’t believe her and she doesn’t necessarily blame them for that. Kevin worries that they missed their chance to save whoever was behind Ian, believing that it’s skipped him since Wendy saved him by intervening in his death. They assume that he’s next and then Wendy but they part ways to take care of respective business—she’s going to review the photos and he’s being picked up by his dad for his volunteer security shift at the Tri-Centennial.

Back at their house Julie steals the charm bracelet her and Wendy have been beefing over while Wendy sleeps, passed out on her desk staring at the photo of the mystery passengers next on the list. She wakes up with the photo of the mystery passengers on the ride and notices the very bold charm bracelet on the wrist of the rider, which she now realizes is Julie. She then sees the bracelet is gone and doesn’t catch Julie before she leaves, trying to call only to get voicemail. She tells Kevin to look for Julie and he asks her to look at his photo so they have an idea of what to look out for if they can’t save Julie. His looks like something blowing up in his face like a flash and hers is normal but Jason’s face is all blurred and she’s wearing a McKinley High shirt.

They think that he needs to stay away from fireworks and she needs to stay away from McKinley, which becomes hard when his car appears behind her as an ominous song begins playing on the radio. Every which way Kevin looks is danger at this celebration, from old weapons to handmade fireworks, electrical equipment in the middle of the field, to horses, and so on. Wendy rushes to the celebration to warn both Julie and Kevin about their impending deaths. Her radio turns on without warning and starts tuning through random channels before stopping on this film’s motif song about a person following another person, “Turn Around Look at Me” by Johnny Mathis. I like that each film has a motif song that harkens back to that accident, generally something that was playing nearby or during the accident. This one is a little random and rather fits the ominous tones of more personified death than previous installments. It doesn’t play during or before the accident in a noticeable way but it does appear often and is a hint to Wendy about possible danger around.

She looks in her rearview and sees Ian’s van, assuming there’s not many vans like his in their Pennsylvanian town. This combined with the notion that McKinley will cause her death, the motif song is playing on it’s own from her car stereo, and now McKinley is hot on her ass following her like an ominous shadow. A random wolf walks into the road that Wendy is able to swerve around before she hits it but McKinley is stopped by it and falls further behind her trail. With this extra time Wendy arrives before Ian and heads into the fair grounds to find Kevin while keeping an eye on her back. Kevin sees Julie and tries to get to her while the crowd moves for the fireworks show. One of the Colonial War reenactment soldiers puts a canon tool leaning against the canon to help with crowd control. This piece falls and knocks over the top canon ball, sending it flying under a tent and causing a train reaction to start. This ball knocks a stand keeping a cart with fireworks stationary just as Kevin finds Julie and tries to confront her about death’s list and the danger she’s in. The fireworks understandably upset the horses that are part of the reenactment but it doesn’t help when 2 teen boys light small fireworks by a horses hooves. The explosion sends the horse running, breaking free of his anchored stake, still following along on a rope attached to his saddle.

Julie keeps running from Ian and Wendy’s confrontation then turns and flips off Kevin like she flipped off Wendy in the photo and as she does that Wendy flashes back to the photo. She screams for them to look out and Kevin pushes Julie out of the way of the incoming runaway horse, which sends her to the ground. The stake trailing the horse hits Julie’s neck and the rope wraps around her, dragging her behind the horse. The horse stops for a moment but is sent running again when the fireworks sound off again, and Kevin grabs one of the reenactment swords as Julie starts being drug again. The horse jumps over a cart and Julie is heading towards the spikes under it at full speed, pulled by the horse. Luckily, Kevin is able to intervene and slice the rope, saving Julie and thus skipping her. Despite being happy she’s okay Wendy and Kevin demand to know who was on the ride with her because they are next.

The upset horse is being tended to by police and it starts to panic again when another round of fireworks go off just as Julie’s 2 friends come running up to her and Wendy in the field. As they approach they hear Wendy explaining the urgency to find who was next to her on the ride and it becomes clear as one of the friends freaks out and goes to stand up like she’ll run away. Just as she does this another chain reaction the horse set off sends a flag pole with a spear like end flying through the air. It impales Julie’s friend Amber, confirming that she’s the next one on the list, or was the next one. This is an instance of someone in the accident group that is a surprise, not confirming until the death which of Julie’s 2 friends got on the ride with her.

In shock from Amber dying in front of them Wendy realizes that Amber’s death means Kevin is next and in immediate danger. She takes off running in the direction he went off in after the horse just as he is flung into a food cart and a shish kebab stick punctures a gas canister pipe. The bust causes an explosion that happens in Kevin and Wendy’s faces, mimicking the face he made in the photo Wendy took but not killing Kevin because she intervened. Julie comes running up as they land and they go to lift Kevin as McKinley sees them and is definitely hunting Wendy. He feels invincible and tells them he believes what they told him before after seeing it himself. He demands to know what is in Wendy’s photo that predicts her death and the look she gives him is really obvious.

McKinley immediately registers that Wendy’s look and clear desire to get away from him ASAP means he is involved in her death somehow, that he causes it. He wants to get things over with and she offers to just pass without a conflict so it can skip her. He tells her he doesn’t care about what happens to her and feels he won’t die now because he survived his death. As he screams about how he won’t die the fireworks cart that the horse knocked loose earlier flies up just as they go off. Wendy sees this as it is happening and is able to get her, Kevin and Julie down and out of the way as the cart pops forward sending the fireworks shooting. Each firework zips past McKinley in spectacular fashion coming close to him on either side and above but ultimately hitting a structure behind him and missing him all together.

This makes McKinley even more confident that he’s invincible and protected from death now. Wendy realizes however that what really occurred is that Wendy’s death was intervened on when the group ducked down out of the way. At that time McKinley wasn’t next so the fireworks missed him as he wasn’t the intended target. Unfortunately he is the next person on the list so Death had a little surprise for him, the fireworks that hit the structure cause the lift to break and send the giant McKinley billboard crashing down over him. This smashes him and sends a chunk of his upper body still twitching flying out. He dies flipping the bird missing the majority of his body. His death means Julie is technically next again. Wendy is in shock with blood still on her face as a tear falls down, partially relieved.

The image of Wendy with a tear down her cheek lying in the grass in shock fades to white and that white image then fades into a shot from subway train tracks up towards the ceiling with the words “FIVE MONTHS LATER,” across the bottom. As the train comes towards the camera the shot cuts to inside a train car, a man is playing guitar and singing songs. The shot pans behind him to a group of 3 young adults asking about which place to get food. It’s revealed that one of them is Wendy and she goes to check the map only to hear the singer’s song transition to the Johnny Mathis motif song. Her mood immediately falls to terror and she starts to see more signs like her blurred reflection in the subway window which makes her recall her photo and how Jason’s face was blurred.

The subway doors she’s been staring at her reflection in open as she stands panicked and frozen in front of them. She is pushed back by passengers and goes to sit down near her friends as the man with the guitar exits, following him with her eyes. Due to looking to follow him she catches the number “180” in a reflection at the train station. Even more panicked Wendy then sees ads on the top of the subway that are related with the deaths like Buildit, the place Erin died, Phoenix Tanning Co. where Ashley and Ashlyn died, and a sign that mentions the inevitability of death. The intercom comes on and warns that the next stop is, “The end of the line,” and to exit if your final destination is not the last train stop.

Despite their stop being the last one of the line Wendy tells her friends they should get off at the second to last and just walk. They protest that it’s really cold and as they pull into the 2nd to last stop a ton of event fans are crowding the station waiting to get on. One of the fans drops a candy bar that is knocked off onto the tracks by the wind from the passing train. A rat runs along the train track infrastructure to eat the candy bar next to open wires. Wendy goes to exit with her friends but they are pushed back onto the train by the fans and then Julie enters and Wendy gets distracted. Their group is now stuck on the train and Wendy goes to catch up with Julie who she didn’t expect to see until later.

Wendy tells Julie she sensed that Julie was coming at this time and that she has a feeling like the night of the accident. Julie is quick to tell her things are over and that without Ian to cause her death coupled with them being skipped they are all safe. Julie says she ran into Kevin at home which means that Wendy is safe since both her and Kevin have to die in order for her to be next. She goes to introduce Julie to her friend and roommate and she notices Kevin at the back of the car, with headphones in. He’s excited to see them and he says he came to see the game and planned to text her after that he was in town. The rat in the tunnel gets too close to the open wire which causes it to short circuit and stop the track from switching completely, stuck between 2 directions.

The train barrels into this derailment not unlike the roller coaster train earlier in the film. The subway starts rocking and crashing, electricity cut off causing the car to be dark. Just as quickly as they are safe each of them dies in gruesome ways, Julie being knocked by flying metal debris through the train car. Kevin is pushed up against a car window that cracks and his face is similar to his face in the photo. Kevin is ground to a pulp when the window gives way under his head, killing him. Now with both Kevin and Julie dead Wendy is next up and she’s thrown from the crashing subway car onto the tracks. The whole station is in shambles and a ton of people have been killed in this crash as Wendy realizes her leg is broken and she’s stuck on the track.

Another train comes barreling down the tracks while Wendy is still pinned. She screams as it approaches and just as it’s about to hit her the camera pulls back like other premonitions to reveal that this is Wendy’s second premonition of an impending accident. It’s revealed she’s having that premonition as Kevin is talking and they are already trapped on the train car. Kevin goes to pull the emergency lever to stop the train and they rush to the doors to try to open them. The train car starts to loose electricity like in the vision and someone is screaming to stop the train before the screen cuts to black. The sound of the crash plays over the sound of the crash as “Love Train” comes on while the credits begin rolling.

The third installment is my favorite of the movies, I think it is the most effective at breaking out of the original story connections and still standing as its own film. I think there’s a good level of camp in this one that helps personify death and give it more flare but it doesn’t push it too far into comedy territory. The deaths are outlandish in this film but so are those in the other films so when not separating it from those these deaths are fairly similar in creativity and shock. The fake outs are decent and it is interesting to see what clue from the photo or photos indicated about that person’s death. The story flows decently despite a noticeable cut back on pre-accident background that helped shape some of the narratives around the characters in the first 2 films. There isn’t much difference between pre and post accident Wendy which seems to be different from both Alex and the 2nd film’s lead.

I appreciated the attempt at the relationship portion, that becoming another repeating element in Final Destination films, a man and woman duo who become couple-like while facing off against death. Despite saying she didn’t like him early in the film by the end Wendy and Kevin are really cool with one another, having some close moments along the journey before the time jump. That they both lost their significant other in the crash made their connection more interesting and layered despite how awkward it could be at times. Wendy pisses me off sometimes and is in a state of emergency at all times even before the crash. She believes she’s responsible for it which isn’t necessarily something that the other characters face. In the first and second films the main characters are upset they couldn’t save all of their friends despite saving random people but in this one Wendy feels she is literally the reason that death decided to chance upon them that night.

This film also lacks the connection of other near death experiences leading the characters to all be around one another at the time of the accident. This was an expansion on the lore from the second film that was discarded in the plot of this installment, opting for the connection as high school peers similar to the first film but without even a teacher this go around. Adults are noticeably absent from this version, we don’t meet Julie and Wendy’s parents despite multiple scenes in their house that even include reference to their parents. This could be because the characters are presumably all eighteen or older but it is noticeably different from the first film that heavily featured Alex’s and Tod’s parents. They were another obstacle and element for Alex to deal with while facing the antagonist of death whereas we only see Kevin’s dad in 3.

I think 3 exemplifies the franchise catching its stride, perfecting a formula for the franchise that could be transposed onto other accidents, free from the relational connection to the first film’s characters. With the widespread use of internet becoming popularized Final Destination can scrap information about death’s list being spread from character to character and instead we have a research montage often found in movies after the mid-aughts. Rather than finding an old woman on a hill to tell you a town legend over suspicious tea the character can spend a couple of nights researching news articles and forums about similar accidents. This is something present in the other films but it is used in addition to information being given to characters as opposed to the main source of background information in 3.

Three will always be my favorite that I’ve watched over and over, a good one to put on in the background that usually captivating my attention in at some point. I cannot say the same for the 4th film in the series. While I love 3 and 2 but find 1 to be just alright I’m actually mad about 4. I was pleasantly surprised about 5 after what 4 had to offer, going into it with zero expectations of it being solid due to the mockery that 4 is in its entirety. The 3D of it all is not even the worst of it but if you’re interested in reading a full Franchise Marathon review of the Final Destination films the full post will be up by May 21st. That post will also include a review of the newest film coming out tomorrow at the time of posting this.

The Final Destination (2009)

The 4th installment, The Final Destination, deviated from the conventional title, opted into the 3D craze of the late aughts, and took the deaths to a new level—for better or worse. The director is David R. Ellis and writer Eric Bress is most notable for not being the creators that brought audiences movies 1-3 of the franchise. For the purposes of this post and just for the convenience robbed from watches I’ll be calling The Final Destination Final Destination 4 or FD4. Wong dropped out due to scheduling conflicts and Ellis apparently wanted to work on the project in part because of his desire to do 3D (yuck, I could do a whole project on how 3D is the biggest cinema flop). This movie isn’t terrible by any means, for C-list horror to go see on a date night in college it is among the better options.

In terms of this franchise FD4 is a stinker, corny and formulaic to a point that is insulting, ultimately becoming a boring plot. The deaths are overtly gruesome but the combination of the CGI and the effects to make the film 3D make some already unbelievable deaths all together ridiculous. Every death is a little silly while also feeling exploitative of the gruesome nature, showing detail that doesn’t seem anatomically accurate but like CGI met 80’s slasher makeup. This animation style was common around this era, that time period when CGI was more readily available to different productions but wasn’t advanced enough yet (in tech and in film technique) to be passable and keep a viewer immersed in the building horror.

To top it off the lead character, Nick O’Bannen portrayed by Bobby Campo, who has the premonition isn’t as likable but unlike in 3 he doesn’t have characters around him that are making him more palatable. Everything feels like cookie-cutter Final Destination, like the recipe but done too formulaic to capture the actual good aspects of the dish. Like the 3rd film FD4 opens at the central accident, a NASCAR race at McKinley Speedway, focused on a  college friend group. They’ve decided to visit the race instead of going to see a new movie in a movie theatre, a foreshadow for later events. The blonde, frat-douche archetype, Hunt portrayed by Nick Zano, is openly rooting for crashes to happen, hoping to see these gruesome scenes.

Nick’s girlfriend, Lori portrayed by Shantel VanSanten, calls Hunt out for wishing the drivers crash, appalled. The girl in between them, Janet portrayed by Haley Webb, is also appalled by Hunt, a general disgust towards his perspective. Throughout the film it is obvious when a shot exists only to have an excuse to incorporate 3D effects and that’s even in the opening track shots, attempting to create the feeling the cars are coming at you. Nick comes back to the group with snacks and soda, noting the wooden bleacher bench they’re sitting on is cracked.  Hunt offers Nick a swig of his smuggled in boos, his binoculars being hollow and containing a flask for a lens. This draws the attention of a couple in front of their group, Andy and Nadia portrayed by Andrew Fiscella and Stephanie Honoré respectively, and they ask for some.

Hunt tries to decline by explaining it’s not binoculars but Nadia grabs them and takes a swig, and Hunt does nothing about this but sulk, he’s all bark with no bite. A cowboy with a hat comes and sits in front of the group, blocking Lori’s view, and Nick asks him to move down in the stands—something that comes up in a big way later in the film when determining the order of their deaths. A security guard doing rounds in the stands is a black man, George portrayed by Mykelti Williamson, and upon seeing George an asshole in a puffer vest with a chain and a Swastika tattoo, Carter portrayed by Justin Welborn and his wife, Cynthia portrayed by Lara Grice, make racist comments intentionally loud enough for George to hear.

Carter whistles a confederate anthem as George approaches and George is that guy so he stops and tells Carter to remove his feet from the bench in from of him. The couple is visibly offended that George dared to give them a warning and leave so they both put their feet up in a weird show of defiance to George’s authority. The exchange sets up a future death but goes unnoticed by those around the people involved and it’s unclear if anyone even picked up on anything.

Completely unrelated to the exchange back with the group Nick notices the bench they on is broken, seemingly being made worse by the fast cars going by on the track. He looks up and notices the cement structure’s roof is also cracked, sprinkling dust every time the cars roar by and he asks Hunt how old the track is but he has no clue. Back down on said track the pit crews quickly tune up their respective vehicles in between laps. Someone walks by the area that cars are worked on and drops off a piece of equipment next to a mechanic work cart. Atop the cart are various tools and bolts along with a container of motor oil, and the piece of aforementioned equipment falls on the cart and knocks over the container.

The force knocks the lid off as the container falls and the oil begins spilling out onto the side barrier and down onto the pit stop station. No one notices this happen so the oil continues spilling, everyone unaware of the chain reaction that the falling equipment caused. A car speeds out of the pit stop and slides in the oil which causes him to spin out a bit, worrying the onlookers, but he’s able to course correct and get back into the race. The incident causes Janet to worry however and she asks if it’s safe for them to be sitting next to the track in the stands. Hunt brushes off her concern and points out the fence that separates them from the track, claiming it would protect them from any danger on the track.

Screws on the fence begin to loosen, undetected by anyone and debris on the ground start to be picked up in a gust of wind. This gust carries the paper directly to Nick in the stands, landing on the cracked bench beside him, stopped only by his leg. This catches Nick’s attention and he examines the paper discovering it is a memorial to all of the drivers lost at the track, instantly wiping the content smile off his face. He looks up and sees someone’s shirt says “Life a bitch and then you die. Any questions?” across the back, making him more concerned about the safety of the stadium. He tells Lori that he felt someone touch him, personifying death in FD4 like something physically haunting them.

Back at the pit crews cars continue to stop in for tune ups and a mechanic leaves a tool in the back of one while rushing. The crew miscommunicates and sends the car off before it’s ready, causing the screwdriver to be left in it. The screwdriver falls out of the speeding cars and bounces into the camera, a noted attempt at 3D effects to enhance the fear of a scene. It feels like a cheap jump scare in conjunction with the building chain reaction taking place, your attention focused on that and not anticipating a screwdriver flying at the camera. Nick senses the vibe  of danger the second the tool is on the track, and the inevitable quickly approaches as the cars make it around the track heading right for the sharp tool.

The tool obviously shreds a tire upon impact which is another cheap attempt at using 3D that detracts from the intensity rather than adding to it. The car with the shredded tire spins out of control and crashes into the other speeding cars which causes a rouge tire to fly into the stands. The crowd had stood when the crash occurred and Nadia is smashed by the flying car tire as her boyfriend Andy watches in shocked horror. As this happens the crowd realizes the impending danger and begins rushing out of the stadium, a mob forming in the stands. Those not running are too stunned to move and watch the track in horror as the crash intensifies and the situation becomes more dangerous.

An entire car, caught ablaze in the crash down on the track, flies through the air over the fence and into the crowd, crushing some still sitting frozen in fear. Seemingly no direction is a good direction to run in the mayhem of the crowd, all rushing frantically to look for safety. In this mayhem wood benches are cracked and snapped, leaving wood sticking up in more than one instance. The racist couple is chopped in half by flying metal flung out into the stands from an explosion on the track. A mother from earlier that the group’s attention was drawn to in the stands falls in the crowd rush and is stampeded on the concrete steps, stopping her from leaving. She turns over just in time to see a flaming engine flying through the air that lands directly on her, crushing her body against the stone steps.

Shocked Andy had been too stunned to move, starring at his girlfriend’s body. He snaps out of it after another explosion and starts to run out of the stands. Unfortunately he trips and falls backwards directly onto a wood spike that goes in through the back of his neck and out through his mouth. 3D is used to make this more of a jump scare and it works better than the uses of the effect in the build up to the accident. George thinks he found a way out and yells towards the stampede for people to follow him, which Nick decides to do, running back across the stands to the other tunnel exit with less people rushing out of it.

The crash continues to worsen on the track, another car entering the pile up at full speed ahead that creates even more explosions. The new round of explosions causes another engine-shaped ball on fire to fly into the stands and this time it crushes the cowboy against a cement pole. This happens right as Nick is crossing the stands and occurs right in front of him, stopping him in shock against another cement pole. People are crushed by falling cement chunks from the crumbling infrastructure, made unstable by the ongoing crash on the tracks and crowd fleeing.

Lori and Nick stop to look for Janet and Hunt before proceeding to George on the other side of the stands. They see them trying to get out through the jam packed tunnel and call out to them to follow. Hunt grabs her and pulls her along but before they are able to make it across to the exit they are crushed by the falling cement from above, crushing both of them. George, Lori, and Nick continue to the exit after briefly pausing in shock but more cement infrastructure falls on the crowd exiting through that tunnel and separates Nick from the other two. Another explosion happens from a car that landed in the stands back where the group came from and the fire engulfs George and Lori while propelling Nick backwards onto a broken piece of metal that stabs through his chest. This shot is another decent use of 3D to enhance rather than irritate, and shows the spike coming out towards the audience with Nick’s reaction full on. That shot allows a quick transition through Nick’s eye in a That’s So Raven fashion not unlike other FD movies back to him sitting in the stands pre accident.

Now back prior to the screwdriver caused crash Nick squeezes Lori’s thigh and she asks him WTF is going on. Nick predicts what Hunt will say about his binocular flask but they brush it off as him knowing about Hunt’s stash. Still in shock he says that a cowboy will sit down right before said cowboy does sit down but Nick isn’t done and then predicts that the mother in front of them will put tampons in her kid’s ears as makeshift ear plugs. The group is now freaked out and listening to Nick, asking how he knew what would happen. Nick tells his friends they have to get out of there and Hunt immediately says no way because he’s bet $500 on the race. Janet and Lori are pretty receptive and also concerned when Nick expresses concern.

Andy overhears Nick talking about a crash happening and interjects that it isn’t funny to say that which catches the attention of most of the people seated around them. Nick becomes more panicked and goes to rush out of there past Hunt who stands and stops him from leaving. They get into a back and forth that causes the cowboy to move and Nick to trip on the benches, sending the pair falling atop Andy and Nadia. Andy gets up ready to fight and isn’t stopped by Hunt who tries to hold him back but Nick is able to grab one of the kid’s duffle bags and throw it at Andy. Nick runs up the bleachers and looks like a punk ass honestly but understandable given what he knows is about to happen. Now the kid’s and mother are involved and they run towards the exit with their mother chasing after them.

Andy tries to swing as Nick runs up the steps but is held back by Hunt who falls backwards before all of the mentioned parties rush out of the stands towards the exit. In this rush they spill a drink on the racist couple and he stamps his feeties, throwing his drink down. This mofo decides to chase after the group in retaliation for the drink mishap and his wife jumps up behind him, going to follow. He tells her to stay in the stadium and he continues out of there after the group. The whole group of eight make it outside just as the screwdriver is about to fall on the tracks. They start to question Nick and he tells them there’s going to be a crash which Hunt brushes off, saying there’s always a crash. George intervenes to ask about the crash, concerned about Nick’s claims and what he could have planned.

The group waits for Nick to answer but as he’s about to the sound of the crash begins behind them in the stadium. Absolved he tells the group that it’s the crash he’s talking about that is unfolding inside. People rush out of the tunnel into the front area where the group is as flames erupt behind them through the tunnel. Hunt is upset he’s missed the crash and says it’s the only reason he goes to these, “redneck,” events and then tells the racist guy no offense. The racist guy is not paying attention though and starts to head towards the exploding tunnel because of his wife but George stops him. The racist guy (TRG) fights George because he’s stopping him from going inside and Nadia asks the group if they’ve lost their minds.

Just as Nadia yells this at the group a stray tire is shot into the air from an explosion in the stadium. It flies across and smashes into Nadia from behind, taking out the upper side portion of her body as Andy turns to see what happened. Everyone in the group is horrified and someone says, “Ew,” to the mess of what was once Nadia splayed out on the pavement, smashed and twitching. That disgusting scene cuts to black which then quickly snaps to 3D x-ray like animations of previous Final Destination deaths. It shows the skeleton view of these deaths and is  an interesting way to pay homage to previous films despite the lack of connection to the other installments aside from the name of the racetrack.

The friend group of 4 ends up at a coffee shop called Death by Caffeine sitting at a table with, “it’s coming,” carved into it while the news plays in the background, a story about the crash at the race track. They are stunned into silence and eventually ask Nick to expand on his premonition. Each of them has their own take on the circumstances and what to do now: Hunt feels they survived because they deserved to and wants to move on while Janet is concerned why they would have survived and not others. The news reports that 52 are dead and a memorial will be held tomorrow and Lori believes they need to go. Nick doesn’t want to and Hunt believes they are suckers for not having their luck. Hunt resolves to flip a coin if they go and asks Janet to kiss it which causes her to respond in a way that reveals they used to go out. Nick catches the coin as it is about to fall back into Hunts hand and he shares that they should make the most of their second chance at life.

Lori and Nick do go to the memorial where they more officially meet the other survivors from their group and TRG threatens George, blaming him for his wife’s death. Later that night Nick has a nightmare about George’s front door which is also a premonition that is followed by a gust of wind that knocks a photo of the couple to the floor and a letter opener falls and stabs Lori’s face in the photo. No clue what this is supposed to mean especially because she is way, way later in the order behind Janet and Hunt as the very least. Considering the death order in the premonition it would be wise to anticipate TRG is next up since Nadia was killed outside of the track in a similar fashion to how she died in the premonition. He doesn’t know this however and shows up to do a hate crime on George’s property.

It isn’t George’s time however and a series of careless choices causes a chain reaction in TRG’s tow truck and he dies being drug down the street while on fire. While this is happening the song that goes, “Why can’t we be friends?” plays which is just ick-inducing. It felt too on the nose of a song choice that also didn’t fit the vibe, it disrupts any tension that the scene might’ve been able to scrounge up and eliminates any possibility for fear or trepidation about a freak accident when it was so asked for. Janet recognizes the man on the news the next morning which makes the group aware of someone in their survivor group dying in a weird incident.

Before this marinates fully it’s the end of that day and the mother, Samantha portrayed by Krista Allen, is trying to get her hair done despite her stylist cancelling on her. She’s in a rush after picking up her kid’s from sports and is one of those customers and makes a stylist stay late to do her hair. After multiple near death or heinous accident occurrences Samantha finishes her hair appointment. After she pays she goes to leave and turns to tell her rowdy sons whom played a role in causing the near death experiences at the salon that she has her eye on them. When Samantha turns back around the lawn mower outside catches a flat rock that one of her son’s threw at a sign earlier and throws it towards the salon. It goes through Samantha’s head leaving a hole where her eye used to be as she falls the ground, now dead. This is really awful and I can’t imagine what kids in this situation would go through after something like this. I hate this one and it’s also cringey as fuck with the whole “I’ve got my eye on you” transition into an eye related death.

Nick’s friend group is back together at his and Lori’s apartment looking at a print out of an article about Samantha’s death. Nick and Lori are concerned because 2 people from their survivor group have now died and they found groups like theirs online—at this point it’s the FD drill to skip any building of the lore to get to gore-filled and fantastical death sequences. They also have insight in how to survive and how to change the order of deaths but despite this heads up knowledge Janet doesn’t believe them fully and leaves. Hunt also leaves for douchier reasons like carpe diem at the country club but regardless this allows for them to have some pretty silly death sequences play out. Rather than building a story with this group coming together to try and defeat this force that is death now hunting them down these morons leave and end up in their own special hell-traps.

The couple decide to go to the site after their friends are not interested in being involved in finding a way out of their situation. They are confronted by George who’s still doing security on the grounds, now still a crash site. After explaining what’s up George lets them review the security footage that helps jog Nick’s memory of his premonition so they can determine the death order. This is interspersed with replays of the 3D deaths that are quite unnecessary in my opinion, and feel like a double-dip of a death sequence in the film, there’s just too much focus on those without them feeling real. It just looks kind of silly with the 3D layered on the CGI, it’s doing too much. The group resolves to intervene in the deaths to break the chain and identify that Andy is up next. They see his work vest in the footage, left behind on the bench, and they go to his work to get him involved also.

Nick is not stoked about the mechanic shop, seeing dangers every where and actual danger existing when Andy releases the lift holding up the vehicle he’s working on, the car caught just in time before crushing him. The manager kicks the group out because they’re visitors and concurrently a chain reaction is set off in the shop starting with a spit can placed haphazardly on machinery. The group is now outside a suspiciously thick metal fence with Andy on the other side of it hearing them out on their wild sounding theories. He explains to them that he just wants to put his life back together after losing Nadia in the accident. George opens up that about the loss of his family, saying his wife and daughter died in a car accident and this conversation is interspersed with shots of the can rattling closer and closer to the edge.

The can of liquid finally falls from one machine onto the mechanics of a tow line and causes it to spark and crack, now broken. Nick warns the group he’s getting a bad feeling just as the machine crank breaks and send the van it was holding on a ramp barreling down towards the fence they’re standing at. It stops, out of wire just before hitting Andy who walks out from between the car and fence now convinced he’s not meant to die at all. The actual accident then transpires which involves the tow wheel falling on a canister of pressed air that shoots out at Andy and propels him off his feet and into the weirdly thick fence. For lack of a better term his body is diced into cubes through the fence which hopefully killed him rather instantly. This death is gnarly and just looks a little silly and cartoonish with the layers of effects and what the death itself is. The special effects style is 80’s level realism meets computer generated “enhancements” in attempts to make it realistic.

The group stays while authorities arrive and try to determine whether Janet or Hunt died first so they can prioritize getting to the next person. He can’t remember so they decide to split up and he goes to find Hunt who is apparently at a country club in a pool cabana tent hooking up with a random woman. This just jumps right into full on sex scene without warning or lead into, nothing in the earlier movies even suggest this is something that might happen so it’s pretty jarring for FD4 to just go for it like this. Hunt is weirdly rude and odd to the woman he hooked up with and immediately hits on another outside of the tent while Janet is running errands around town. Hunt gets into beef with a kid at the pool and messes up his phone, making it impossible for the group to reach him and he puts the squirt gun from the kid into a utility box that accidentally turns the pool drain on.

The clues and visions lead them to believe they are in danger around water which would be not so scary for Janet if she hadn’t decided to go to a car wash. George and Lori are driving around town trying to get to Janet in time to intervene in her death and stop it. The car wash malfunctions in addition to her sunroof malfunctioning, trapping her in her car with rollers while filling the open sun roof with water from a busted pipe along the ceiling.

While Janet’s car fills up with water threatening to drown her Hunt is hit with a golf ball that sends his lucky coin flying down the pool drain. He jumps into the pool after it and gets pulled down onto the pool drain by his butt, suctioned to the pool floor unable to get to the surface and breathe. Lori makes it to Janet in time to save her but Hunt isn’t as lucky and his internal organs are sucked out through the drain pipe and burst through the drainage system as Nick arrives at the pool.

Back at the car wash Lori wonders what will happen to her and George now that he’s next up but George argues that saving Janet could’ve ended the list. On the other hand he says he’s ready to go if it’s his time which cuts to his house again but this time he has a wine glass on the table next to his Alcoholics Anonymous book and he throws his chip on the table. He breaks down while contemplating a drink and cut to night time, Nick and Lori are “safe-proofing” their apartment. This means taking heavy objects off of high shelves and wrapping knives in cardboard.

Liquid spills on newspaper and doesn’t drench certain words that Lori and Nick take to be clues that George is in danger. They go to his house and find him hanging but he’s alright—apparently he’s tried to kill himself the entire time between them saying goodbye and now. He’s been unable to kill himself which they take as a sign he’s not in fact next like they’d originally thought. Due to not being able to think of another reason for him not being next they chalk it up to the list being over and pop a celebratory bottle of apple cider. The cork is a 3D that shoots at the camera from an unnecessary birds eye angle.

Not long after Nick is packing a bag and Lori calls from the coffee shop telling him of her plans to see a 3D film with Janet. The couple is headed to Amsterdam shortly, seizing life after their brush with death. After hanging up Nick sees that a man has survived from the accident that he recognizes from his vision, the cowboy. He has another vision, informing him things are not over and he rushes to the hospital to try and intervene in the cowboy’s death because he’s actually next.

Above the cowboy a medical tub is overfilling with water and the ceiling can’t take the weight, water falling through to the cowboy’s room. They confirm in the elevator that George will be next if or when cowboy dies which looks likelier as he crawls across the wet hospital floor with live wires from inside the ceiling now hanging down over the water, the ceiling caving under the weight sending tiles and debris falling. Just as Nick and George find the cowboy’s hospital room the floor gives out and the huge tank-like tub crashes through the ceiling and lands on top of him.

Meanwhile Janet and Lori are at the mall to see the 3D movie they mention at the racetrack in the first scene. Lori sees construction that makes her nervous but she brushes this feeling off, still under the impression things have ended. Back at the hospital George tells Nick he feels deja vu as they cross the road and as he’s explaining this he’s hit by a speeding ambulance which obliterates him upon impact. Again, it’s over the top in the worst ways and leaves George as a puddle of former-human looking mess in front of the ambulance unceremoniously.

The splash of blood on the ambulance symbol fulfills the vision that Nick had when he watched the news, implying everything happened how it was meant to. Back at the mall Lori makes a big deal about sneakers she buys, feeling like a bad product placement that is trying to be self aware that it is one but also setting up for an upcoming death sequence. Construction at the theater continues which presents a plethora of dangerous opportunities from saws to nail guns in close proximity. A floor manager calls lunch and the construction crew drops their tools and leaves everything as is, unattended. A window covering falls slightly and the sunlight coming in catches a pair of glasses a crew member left behind and caused a pile of sawdust to be burnt by that stream of light.

Outside of the construction zone Lori’s shoelace of her new sneaker gets caught in the escalator as the women make their way to the theater level of the mall. She’s able to free herself in time to get off but it foreshadows events to come as well as the background being littered with “Love Lays Dying” advertisements that cause Nick to have a vision that the chain reaction at the construction site will cause the theatre to explode and kill the audience. This very situation continues building behind the scenes as Nick makes his way onto the scene. Nick finds Lori in time before an explosion and pulls her out of the theater juts as Janet is explaining why she will stay in the theater. The theatre does explode then, sending nails into Jane t’s head and a piece of metal frame through her abdomen.

The initial explosion sets off additional explosions in the mall that smash through the escalator to expose the inner mechanics while Lori and Nick are on it. She gets pulled into the gears, now out of control and unstoppable by them. Lori’s leg is crushed and blood gushes out of her mouth as Nick attempts to hold onto the railing to keep her above the gears. He’s unable to pull her out however and Lori is ground in the gears. The vision of Nick reaching towards her body zooms into his eye and then out like FD premonitions like to do and Nick has seen this one as George is explaining his feeling of deja vu and what his wife said it means.

With more time and foresight Nick goes directly to the initial explosion site just as the fire is raging towards the collection of chemicals that will cause a combustion. He tries to pull the fire alarm but it’s broken and then tries to put it out with a fire extinguisher but that too malfunctions and breaks before the fire is completely gone. He throws it and it knocks a makeshift table with a nail gun unsteady causing the nail gun to begin to slowly slide off of it. The fire pipes up again just as it hits the ground and fires nails at Nick that pin his arm to the wall and break additional barrels of flammable liquid next to him.

Lori feels death nearby and brings it up to Janet while the liquid behind the screen at the theatre makes a beeline for the fire, avoiding Nick as it goes. As if this isn’t wild enough already now Nick lifts a long piece of wood that is on fire towards the sprinkler system in hopes it will start it up and put the fire out. The liquid trail catches flame just as the sprinkler is set off and the barrel is lit up but quickly put out once the sprinklers drench the room. Janet is satisfied with herself that Lori was wrong about impending danger as the movie continues. Nick although wet and pinned to the wall is alive and the scene fades to black.

A new scene picks back up with 2 weeks later across the bottom, a normal street that Nick is walking along. He notices a loose mechanism on a lift and points it out in hopes they address it, pointing to his injury and reiterating safety first. At the cafe Janet, Nick, and Lori are having a farewell coffee before the couple goes on their trip. All around the shop Nick notices signs that related to the accidents. There’s an ad for the country club on a bulletin board and NASCAR racing is playing on the tv.

On the table where it say’s “it’s coming” that has been crossed out and beneath it someone has scratched “it’s here” and Nick moves his arm to reveal that. Nick asks what if they didn’t change anything and what if they were meant to be right there all along just as a chain reaction from the lift outside causes a semi truck to go through the cafe window, killing them. The deaths are not shown in detail but 3D x-ray imagery like the intro takes over and their deaths are shown (in clearly dramatized fashion) while the credits start up.

Final Destination 5 (2011)

Final Destination 5 (FD5) returns to the name setup, attempting to distance from the vibes of FD4 and offer something more in line with the franchise. Directed by Steven Quale who worked with James Cameron on Titanic and Avatar and written by Eric Heisserer who co-wrote The Conjuring 2 and won an award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 89th Academy Awards. This is arguably night and day different from the duo at the head of FD4 and it shows with creative sequences that harken back to the FD vibe present in the first, second, and third film.

The intro pays the usual homage to the franchise’s other installments, relying heavily on 3D but a style that is easier to look at. Tony Todd’s name is prominently displayed which is nice to see and the items crashing through glass range from prosthetic arms, a nod to FD2, and a rogue air canister which references FD4. It goes on notably long however and is something I remember hating every single time I watch it simply because it drags on for so long.

The scene fades from hardcore flames and metal music to quarter zips and plaid button up clad employees at a parking lot buffet table. It is corporate as all hell and feels intentionally so as Sam Lewton portrayed by Nicholas D’Agosto and Peter Friedkin portrayed by Miles Fisher chat about Sam’s plans for his future. Peter wants him to choose once and for all between being a chef and working at their company climbing the corporate ladder. Their back and forth reveals that Peter is Sam’s boss but also friends and Sam takes the advice well as Molly Harper portrayed by Emma Bell arrives.

Molly is clearly not stoked to see Sam and he immediately confronts her about her cancelled plane ticket to his brother’s wedding. She tells him she’d plan to tell him after this upcoming weekend but he demands to know before their work retreat. Molly breaks up with him and reminds everyone why dating coworkers is messy. As this train wreck occurs Peter’s own girlfriend comes up, Candice Hooper portrayed by Ellen Wroe, and goes full on PDA. Peter is not pleased and reminds her this is a business retreat and to keep it professional, citing her status as an intern as a core reason. He does mention “naked team building” after their curfew however so still willing to break some rules on the work trip.

Peter and Candice’s interaction cuts away to Olivia Castle portrayed by Jacqueline MacInnes Woods being dropped off by a guy in a van. She looks like her morning is still part of her night but also freshly done hair and makeup somehow. She’s still in night out clothes and as she walks by she flirtatiously says hi to Peter and Candice turns to follow her, asking if she’s slept with every local hipster. They exchange a back and forth tinged in misogyny and sexist remarks aimed at pushing the other down on the group totem pole pf women. Olivia calls Candice out for being a nepo hire in her internship role to which Candice insults her weight despite Olivia being skinny.

Olivia changes takes her top off in front of Candice, beginning to change before walking off with her bag. Meanwhile Isaac Palmer portrayed by P.J. Byrne approaches Molly at the table buffet and tells her she looks not so chipper. He tells her he’s a good listener who’s available to talk then takes a call and shushes her from responding. He is trying to sus who’s called him and if it’s a girl named Kimber he met recently. Peter advises Sam just apologize to Molly to fix things, even if he doesn’t know what Peter believes that’s what to do when in doubt with ladies. Dennis Lapman portrayed by David Koechner arrives in his car and both Peter and Sam rush over to greet him eagerly, him not knowing Sam’s name and calling him Stan instead.

When Sam corrects him he takes it as a challenge and does a weird dominance test on Sam then demands that they hit the road ASAP despite 1 person being late.  Sam rushes off to grab the missing team member who is Nathan Sears portrayed by Arlen Escarpeta who’s having a confrontation with factory crew members. Nathan tries to explain to Roy Carson portrayed by Brent Stait and the rest of the crew that he needs the day off to go on a retreat but they are upset that he’s some newer, inexperienced guy who recently got brought in as the assistant plant manager.

Nathan tells Roy he doesn’t even want to go but is following orders as Sam comes running up and urges him to hurry it up. Roy tells Nathan he has 15 years experience to Nathan’s college degree and questions why he should even listen to Nathan but they’re broken  up. Sam asks Nathan why Sam doesn’t fire Roy but Roy explains he’s union and will win him over, giving us insight into Nathan’s style. Sam tells Nathan he got a job at a restaurant in Paris that will be full time but he’s hesitant. They set this aside however and get on the bus, the retreat commencing.

On the drive Sam looks out the window and sees a logging truck passing by, a welcome and light nod to FD2 and arguably the most famous death from the franchise. He isn’t alarmed by it but shuffles somewhat in his seat. They approach a bridge under construction and begin to cross, passing over metal plates Sam takes note of the dangers around the construction site like a hole in the bridge and boiling hot tar for the road. They brake hard on the center of the bridge and the jostle causes Sam to cut his finger on the chair and a song, “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas plays, a slow guitar heavy song that catches Sam’s attention.

A gust of wind strong enough to knock a hardhat off a worker’s head and it jostles the entire suspension bridge. Sam announces he feels something is wrong just as a saw slicing through the concrete road of the bridge causes a crack to form. This crack spreads instantly through that section of road, crumbling portions of it and sending shockwaves that cause some of the suspension wires to snap. The portions of the road that are crumbling send cars down into the waters below, and Candice is the first of them that dies when she falls off the bridge as the side gives way and she is impaled by a boat mast. This death reminds me of the Rob Zombie Black Christmas movie where he’s impaled by the tree at the end but this one is worse because it’s 3D. It feels sillier than the moment calls for and Peter looks on horrified as Isaac comes out of the bus bathroom, unaware of the events unfolding.

The bus falls through a space in the bridge and he hits the water head on, crushed by the force of the falling bus. Olivia loses her glasses and falls down, when she catches up she has to make it across a beam high above the water but is knocked off of it as the bridge continues to fall apart. She slides off the back of the beam now in half and survives this fall into the water. Unfortunately a car falls into the water directly on top of her right after this and Nathan is killed by a swinging suspension wire. More cables begin to snap and Dennis is covered in boiling tar as he hangs onto the side, then falling to this death after burning. Peter is able to jump from the falling middle to a stable side and Sam makes the jump as well just as the middle collapses.

Falling metal pipes impale Peter from behind and his body falls to the base of the bridge and splatters him upon impact. More materials begin falling including metal sheets that slice through Sam and kill him as Molly reaches down for him, her fate uncertain and the first time that we actually see that in the premonition. The premonition ends with Sam’s death and he’s back on the bus before he cuts his finger. The obligatory FD freak out ensues and Molly follows him off the bus without much protest followed by Peter and Candice. Olivia, Dennis, Nathan, and Isaac also get off the bus but everyone else remains on it and dies in the crash that starts shortly after their departure.

Similarly to earlier FD installments Sam is questioned and treated as a suspect who had something to do with the accident rather than just a victim. The breakup is called into question as a motive for Sam causing the accident but the agent, Jim Block portrayed by Courtney B. Vance. Despite the interrogations Sam is released and the news reports that 86 died in the accident which was likely the result of the highway improvement project that weakened the bridge. Of the victims 17 were from the company and 8 employees survived, which is the group that is followed in FD5.

Everyone attends a memorial and Sam has been out of touch recently. Isaac confronts Sam but Sam says he can’t think of an answer or reason for his premonition. William Bludworth is at the memorial service in the cemetery in a spiffy suite and tells them to be careful because Death doesn’t like to be cheated. He walks away whistling and leaving Sam feeling uneasy.

The scene at the memorial cuts away to a stadium where Candice is practicing gymnastics alongside her teammates. A chain reaction ensues that leads to fake fake-out that leads to a real death when Candice has chalk blown in her face on the uneven bars. She misses the landing and is scorpion-ed in half, her spine breaking out of her back and her legs breaking as they go over her head. She appears dead on impact and unfortunately Peter is sitting in the crowd, attending to support his girlfriend.

This accident obviously brings Peter into the fold, now believing that Death is after them and the reason Candice died. Sam and Peter sit to talk at the stadium and Sam thinks he sees Bludworth hovering around a hallway, watching them, but he disappears before he can confirm. Cut to the office and Molly is packing up belongings of their deceased coworkers and informs Sam that all the calls are being re-routed given the circumstances. Olivia approaches and is concerned about receiving additional pay for bereavement time.

Peter is trying to pick back up his work as a distraction but is struggling. Dennis gets a call to handle a facilities manager task and he’s so detached that he doesn’t realize that person is dead before he tries to pass off the task. Isaac is more sad to miss out on creeping on the women he worked with than that they died, stealing change from a dead coworker’s desk. Nathan comes up from the floor with beers for Sam and he admits he stole the drinks from Roy. Peter brings hard liquor and they all agree to day-drink together.

While they do this Isaac goes to a spa he has a coupon for while he continues calling women. The coupon covers physical therapy but he assumes that it is for a happy ending, partially due to his own biases that he thinks Asian spas are all fronts. The massage is a regular one that airs on the side of chiropractic rather than relaxing. Intercut with his experience at the spa is the hangout at the office and Olivia gets a call that her ride is there right before she knocks over a frame that shatters only over her face starting near her eye. This is an obvious sign that goes ignored as the remaining coworkers cheers to starting over as they finish their drinks.

Peter talks about the unlikelihood that Candice would die doing something she did a lot but ignores the fact that gymnastics is fairly dangerous. Peter is upset when the group tries to comfort him which transitions quickly to him throwing his glass at the wall but it’s actually at the camera to utilize 3D which takes some of the impact out of both versions due to the fast shot that feels orchestrated. Dennis immediately calls Agent Block to report Dennis’ outburst, Block still at the scene of Candice’s accident.

Block notices the drip in the stadium that helped start the chain reaction and does effective detective work to look past the obvious at the scene. Back at the spa Isaac’s treatment turns to the 2nd portion which happens to be acupuncture and while he’s on the table a chain reaction is sparked. Incorporating acupuncture as one of the deaths in this installment is one of those finally moments in a franchise. This and the next death are ones that feel like they were pulled directly from message boards in the best way.

Despite acupuncture seeming like the way he dies it leads to his death instead, falling off the table and onto the needles while a fire forms beside him. There’s a fire fake out that results in his actual death by fallen statue from a shelf above him. It smashes his head instantly, killing him in a really gruesome looking fashion.

Sam tells Molly his plan to move to Paris and start over, choosing the path of being a chef rather than staying in corporate. They get news of Isaac’s death and go to the scene, seeing Bludworth there also. Despite him working as an ME they interrogate him for being present at the crime scenes but he counters he’s doing his job, revealing he’s the coroner. They ask what’s happening to them and he asks them why they think he knows anything but Sam counters that he warned them, which implied he did know something.

He tells them he’s seen the same thing happen before to people who’ve survived accidents dying afterwards. Bludworth calls them a wrinkle in reality and Nathan asks if that means they will have to die and he just responds that they shorted Death but that they could let someone else take their place, so there’s balance. He does warn he doesn’t make the rules but only cleans up after the game ends. He’s off back to worth with a wave of his hand when he describes the “this” of their situation being what he cleans up.

Sam finally tells them that Molly survived through his premonition, which they assume means she survived the accident. Peter is offended that she was saved and not him or Candice but Nathan still isn’t convinced that Death has a list that they’re now on. Peter takes Nathan’s lack of belief as insult due to Candice’s death and storms off. The other 3 head off in the other direction, letting Peter have his space.

Somewhere else in town Olivia is at a doctor’s office, checking in to get laser eye surgery to correct her vision. She cites the accident as a reason to finally get eye surgery and disposes of her glasses in a donation bin. This is the other death that felt like it was lifted off a fan forum. Olivia is so nervous she’s shaking which makes the impending incidents crappier, and is one I feel bad about. Her eye surgery goes awry after many skin crawling scenes of surgery prep, including her eye being held open. The doctor is literally reading instructions about the machine and her nerves cause her to pop an eye out of a stuffed bear.

Across the room water cup falls on the outlet the machine is plugged into. Similar to TD3 with the tanning beds this causes the machine to malfunction and turn the laser up above the safe threshold. This causes the machine to malfunction with the extremely high laser, even burning Olivia’s hand when she tries to cover her eye. The injuries leave Olivia scrambling to get up and out of the office but she slips on the plastic eye from the bear and falls out of the glass window.

Olivia falls to her death, landing on a car, and sending one of her eyes rolling towards the camera. This is a 3D like effect and a car comes through the parking lot, running the eye over. Since Sam and Molly arrived at the office just as the accident happened, attempting to warn  her she is next. Agent Block is there to investigate Olivia’s death and informs the couple that 5 different systems had to go wrong for the accident to occur, expressing disbelief that that is likely or possible. He tells them they’re suspicious because more than 2 deaths have occurred following their accident. He also tells them he knows they didn’t do anything but believes they know more than they’re letting on.

Despite the officer wanting to help they’re hesitant to share anything, but Sam breaks down and tells him the truth. They believe a force of some sort is after them which stumbles Agent Block. Sam and Molly are back at his apartment following the incident and he’s trying to make more sense of his premonition and seeing if there was an actual order that the deaths have been happening in. He confirms that they are dying in the same order as his premonition.

Elsewhere in the company Nathan is watching everyone listen to Roy on the factory floor, becoming more irritated. Roy confronts Nathan that his hours are cut but Nathan counters everyone’s hours are cut because production is down. Nathan worries that a hook will fall and crush them so he pushes Roy back out of the way, but unfortunately Roy is still knocked off the runway when the hook takes out a section of the runway he’s on. He falls onto the hook which hooks him under the chin and causing him to bleed out while hanging from the hook.

Upstairs Peter comes to talk to Dennis and is informed their office is closing, just their department however and not the entire plant. Dennis is a complete asshole about it, shocked he’s laid off and not people in the factory side. Peter tells Dennis that Olivia and Isaac are dead but Dennis doesn’t even know who Isaac is at first. He thinks it’s guilt related but Peter tries to further explain that no one is safe because of their fate defying survival. Dennis immediately calls Block and tells him about Peter’s behavior.

The group goes to see Nathan at the plant and they think that he intentionally killed Roy because he saw the death incoming. Nathan admits he did kill him and Peter says he should have his years now that he killed him if the theory is true about Death’s list and balance. Molly asks who is next and Dennis walks up to ask what happened but before he answers a wrench falls onto a machine belt and is shot through the air, impaling Dennis as everyone is looking at him. Sam yells he was the next one and the others are like “no shit” before the camera switches to Dennis head, eyes now missing from the wrench.

Sam believes that whatever saved him on the bridge doesn’t want him to die and wants him and Molly to continue their lives together. Sam then heads out to work to start his shift and is scared of all of the accidents that could happen in the kitchen. There are open flames, sharp objects, grinders, slicers, and more that could take him out. This is job perfect for Final Destination due to all of the opportunities for fake outs and creative deaths to portray.

Molly arrives to have dinner with Sam, him offering to make her dinner after their tense circumstances. Peter sees the happy couple from outside, celebrating Sam following his dreams. He knocks on the window and Sam opens the door and he laments that his days have been rougher than everyone else’s involved, which I would grant him. He greets Molly with a sinister gaze and his intentions seem obvious to everyone but Sam and Molly. Peter acknowledges that he’s next and then Sam and confesses to them that he tried to take out a random person to save himself.

Peter ultimately didn’t kill a random person, saying he couldn’t do it. However he feels that no one deserves to die as equally as much as Molly doesn’t deserve to live over the others. He pulls out a gun and points it at Molly but before he can shoot Sam flips the table which causes him to fall backwards. Molly and Sam have a running lead and a chase ensues through the kitchen. Agent Block has arrived at the restaurant and Peter shoots him in the back but still plans to kill Sam.

Molly tries to get Peter to leave since he’s safe with Block’s life now but he explains he has to kill her since she’s a witness to his crime. He says he doesn’t want to spend his new life he just got stuck in prison. He shoots at Molly who’s able to run out through the kitchen and Sam jumps on top of Peter as he runs by. Peter’s gun is knocked onto the lit stove during the scuffle and the 2 begin to fight using various items like utensils against one another. The gun continues to sit in flames while Peter tries to push Sam’s head into the fryer.

Molly jumps in the battle and when Peter goes after her again Sam stabs him through the back with a rotisserie rack. They go to leave and the lights flicker which they take to mean that he absorbed Block’s life from killing Peter. As if to confirm this is the case the gun in the flame on the stove goes off, shooting just past the couple and hitting a jar instead of them. They hug each other, relieved and feeling celebratory.

Like many FD before it however this fades to black that then fades to a scene with “TWO WEEKS LATER” along the bottom in simplistic font. The camera is focused on a plane in a boarding area at an airport and the scene jumps to inside the plane where Sam and Molly are putting their carry ons away. She asks to have the window seat which puts him in the middle, but he accepts and goes to put another carry on in the overhead bin across from them. In the background Carter’s voice can be heard yelling that he’ll remove Alex and then Alex yelling back that he’ll remove himself.

The camera cuts to the battle that took place during boarding in FD1 just as Alex is being carried off the plane. This time however the perspective is from the back corner row that Sam is standing in. Up until this point in the movie a time period had not been confirmed but it also hadn’t been not confirmed. If you rewatch with this in mind you can pick up on details that this might be taking place a little earlier than around the time of the movie’s release in 2011.

For starters everyone is using flip phones and there isn’t reference to many of the other FD accidents. Something prevalent in FD films 1-4 is harkening back to previous accidents (ones in movies and just referenced) as a plot point and tool to explain things. Rather than having that in this film they rely on Bludworth to inform them about a possible force, Death, coming after them. He plays the role of the internet, other survivors, or research in this film.

The bridge collapse in FD5 is before any of the FD accidents have happened and also solidifies Bludworth as more involved than previously thought. He mentions that he has seen similar things before which is assumed to be about the other FD movies but it is not. This also confirms that FD5 despite the return to the title norms is a prequel in the franchise. Molly and Sam watch as Alex and the other survivors are carted off and he brushes it off as a disturbance on the plane. Over the radio the announcer explains the lights have been dimmed and says something in French, another hint at the flight they’re on.

Sam looks at his ticket as the plane is taking off which reveals that they are on Flight 180 that took off May 13, 2000, the accident of the first film. He starts to feel weird and puts on headphones he plugs into the armrest, which makes me wonder if that is a thing today. He leans back, trying to relax, but the radio plays “Dust in the Wind” which is this movie’s motif song. His eyes pop open just as the flight begins experiencing difficulties like signs turning off and on and turbulence.

The first round of turbulence that just scares them in FD1 occurs and Sam panics. He is able to calm himself down again however when it stops and a flight attendant reassures him. He then cuts his thumb on the armrest similarly to how he cut his thumb on the bus before the bridge collapse. Someone else asks the attendant what happened earlier and Sam overhears her explain that a kid got off who’d freaked out, she says he had a vision of some kind. This is final, final confirmation if the connection still hadn’t been made to FD1.

Sam sees the wing and engine explode and the plane begins to come apart in the sky. Everyone in a panicked frenzy reaches for masks, the side coming off next to Molly and Sam. She’s sucked out of the hole in the side and is then pulled out of that hole and into the wing, snapping her body in half upon impact and sending her remains flying in the air. The plane then explodes like it did in Alex’s original vision and in the sky by the airport. A piece of flaming debris pulls off and flies down back towards Earth.

Cut to a memorial at a drive bar for Roy that Nathan is attending. Someone he talks to at the memorial says it’s for the best and the man tells Nathan that the company did an autopsy because of insurance. In that autopsy it was found that Roy had a ticking time bomb in his brain that would’ve killed him any day it burst. Hearing this Nathan asks, “Any day?” and the guy say, “Life’s a bitch” while he walks away. Just as he leaves Nathan at the bar the falling piece of Flight 180 debris crashes through the bar roof and crushes Nathan. His wrist and hand, severed in the accident, fly at the camera to end the movie. It is the last attempt to incorporate 3D in a movie that didn’t need it.

The ending title card counts back from 5 to 1 and then shows scenes from the previous movies. The movie had been advertised as the final, final destination aka the final film in the franchise. Obviously we know this isn’t true because the new film released in theaters on May 16, 2025. It is a prequel but not prequel at the same time, feeling like it will possibly tie together more accidents in the plot line. This movie’s montage ends with Tony Todd walking away from the camera at the memorial service in the cemetery and his voiceover comes on, “You all just be careful now,” to end the movie on a black screen.

It sucks so fuckin hard that Tony Todd has passed away now, this felt like he’d brought the stride the franchise needed with more screen time and his character intertwined with the lore. FD5 also provided possible cheats like killing someone else in your place and stealing their years which seemingly is something that works. It also could be that Nathan skipped his death and it then came back ground to kill him at the end since Sam and Molly dying in the crash would restart their order. It was never made clear if Molly actually survived or if this was a situation where the person with the premonition didn’t die last.

Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)

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