“Final Destination” is the tale of Alex, a teenager traveling with his high school class to France. He has a frightening premonition that the plane will explode and everyone will die and guess what? It does. But before the plane takes off, Alex quickly exits and drags five of his friends with him. He must now deal with the deaths of his classmates and the guilt at having survived. We soon discover that each of the survivors, including Alex, was supposedly MEANT to die in the plane crash and are marked for death. Only Alex can foresee who might be next. Some of these “accidental” deaths border on the totally ridiculous as one student is offed with toilet water. And I’m not making that up. Just try not to laugh. The deaths get far more ridiculous as it seems normal household appliances end up as the culprits — watch out for killer kitchen knives, evil electrical wires and pscyho cans of turpentine to go on a murderous rampage. Oooooooh, scary cans of turpentine!
I found the first half of this film truly frightening as it dealt with the real life issues of the deaths of Alex’s friends. There’s a funeral sequence that is staged much like the haunting images at Columbine. The scene is even accompanied by exceedingly bad guitar folk music for true authenticity. Here is where the film really had potential. Had this idea been further explored “Final Destination” could have risen above the crop of current bad teen horror movies. Unfortunately, like most horror films, it starts out great, then goes downhill with a predictable ending. Final Destination is from X-Files writers Glen Morgan and James Wong and contains some truly smart writing and original action sequences. It also packs all the tired cliches into the entire last half of the movie, which left me ultimately disappointed.
