Rapid Review: Final Destination (2000)

“In death there are no accidents, no coincidences, no mishaps, and no escapes.”
– Bludworth

SYNOPSIS: After a teenager has a terrifying vision of him and his friends dying in a plane crash, he prevents the accident only to have Death hunt them down, one by one. – via IMDB

I popped this in looking for some old school cheese, and I wasn’t disappointed. These movies were never going to be great, ever, but they can provide some mindless entertainment, and were definitely worth throwing in at the beginning of the series, before they got super terrible. I think this is one of those instances where it should have been a standalone, but with more effort done to it so it wouldn’t be forgettable without the slew of sequels. I remember this movie was so big when I was younger, it was everywhere, so you must know how many times this was seen at movie nights, etc. Anyway, pretty simple story coupled with some semi-sketchy acting would result in your average horror, and Final Destination does not deviate much from the formula. This is not necessarily a bad thing. There were tons of creative deaths (at the time), spans of cringe-worthy dialogue, Devon Sawa at his height of fame as well as some Ali Larter thrown into the mix. I had fun – exploding planes, beheadings, rogue buses, constant freak accidents? Yep, Final Destination had it all, as well as some silly romance permeating the story, and all that random, 90’s teen anger that has always been in the older movies, captured by Kerr Smith. I don’t know, everything about this movie screams 90’s teen horror, and that is okay, but definitely not as good as some of the other horror/shasher films we got that decade (though we got our fair share of super sketchy, too). The story, in my opinion, could have done more with itself, but chose not to, so you get a relatively standard horror flick at the end of the day. The special effects in this movie ran rampant, although they are certainly not the worst in the franchise, it is something that turns me off in a movie – an overkill of effects. Especially when they too dodgy and half-assed. I don’t actually have too much to say about this, and I am sure that the large majority have seen this movie, so you should all know how you feel about it, more or less. Some good, some bad, some downright sketchy, so Final Destination.