Rapid Review: Final Destination 5 (2011)

“You were supposed to die on that bridge. You’re not supposed to be here. You shorted death. So you let death have somebody else in your place, and you take their spot in the realm of the living. All the days and years that they have yet to live. And they take your place in death. Then the books are balanced.”
– William Bludworth

SYNOPSIS: Survivors of a suspension-bridge collapse learn there’s no way you can cheat Death. – via IMDB

This was the only film in the franchise I had not seen up until the gory marathon I had recently, so I didn’t really know what to expect. While much better than the last hunk of junk in this franchise, there is still a lot wrong with this one. But, it really is am improvement, forgettable at the end of it all, but better. It returns back to the fun aspect, and manages to weave some silly romance through it, too. At least it didn’t linger on this too long, but it did for long enough to get a bit annoying at times. The acting is a massive improvement over the last film, that’s for sure, and it looked better, though the effects are still not great, and still trying to hard to sell that 3D thing (check the gif above). I did enjoy the bridge collapse at the beginning, while heavily edited and not as good as the plane crash or the highway pileup, it is relatively impressive and gory, and such weird deaths, too. The movie follows the same formula as all the other movies before it, coming in with someone foretelling a crazy accident, warning others, saving some, and then the survivors start dying, and then everyone is trying to find a way to cheat Death again. It works. It’s just been done a million times, so it starts getting annoying. Bludworth is such a consistent character, and I like how he is always being brought back. Final Destination 5 finds yet another potential way for the victims to fight Death and attempt to win their lives back, but it is not something that is a light decision to make for a simple solution. What I really did enjoy about this movie is how it successfully tied the entire franchise together neatly and cleanly, and did not feel like some rushed cop out, or some cheesy way to make a buck. It came full circle and handled that much better than most movie franchises, so I would like to give credit where it is due. Yeah, I don’t really have much more to say on this, so I think that will be it. Final Destination 5 is an alright watch and a decent entry into this series, that was doing mostly fine until The Final Destination came into play, but managed to close on a stronger note. These movies are worth checking out at some stage, and make awesome movie night material with friends/other halves, because there is just to much to rip off, have fun with, and laugh at. Definitely a return to form, and one I did not see coming.

As for the poll results of last week, we have the movies of this franchise ranked as follows:

1. Final Destination (2000) – it would seem the original reigns supreme
2. Final Destination 2 (2003)
3. Final Destination 5 (2011)
4. Final Destination 3 (2006)
5. The Final Destination (2009)

So it would seem that last week’s pile of crap film is the least liked. Thanks for those who dropped by to vote!

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.