FINAL DESTINATION REVIEW (5.5 KNIVES OUT OF 7)
- Slash it
- May 2, 2021
- 11 min read
Updated: May 3, 2021
Hi, my name is Jared, and welcome to Slash it. Thank you for checking out my Final destination review Final destination is a movie, unlike others before it. It was released on March 17th, 2000. This movie is a unique movie unlike others you’ve seen based on its interpretation of death and what it actually means, (I'll spoil it more later on but just for the introduction I’ll leave it at that.) Not only was this movie directed by James Wong, (Williard, trick or treat (1986) ) it also has Tony Todd or you may better know him as Candyman from the Candyman series. This movie is one of those movies that you watch for the first time and it instantly becomes something you can at least look at and admire for its creativity and genre-pushing. Some parts of this movie would definitely be changed in a post 9/11 world but otherwise, it still holds up to even today's standards on what exactly can make a horror movie stand out compared to the many come-and-go horror movies of the last 20 years. Final destination while it occasionally feels outdated, the overall tone and feeling that the movie gives you, is one that makes it feel as if this movie is what pushed horror movies into the more experimental years that were the early two thousands. Final destination was the perfect end to the pre 9/11 American horror movies, in terms of what they could actually show, and the entryway to what would come next.
Since this is the first review I’ll be telling you exactly what you can expect our review to look like and what our numbered reviews are based on. First, the categories that we look at for the actual review are, the credits, story, scariness, the kills, and the characters. These are the major categories but not the only thing we look at before giving the final verdict. Oftentimes things like dialogue, tone, if it feels outdated, and how cliche it is. Making our reviews as clear and understandable as possible is as important to us as anything. When we review a certain movie we will make sure that our reviews aren't overlooking certain aspects of a film, for example, if movie A is trying on purpose to be as cliche and overdone as possible we won’t subtract any points for them being cliche. If a movie isn’t trying to be cliche but is a cliche we will take points off for the lack of originality. The story will only really be judged on how cliche it is and how attention-grabbing the story is. If the story is compelling enough to keep the audience entertained you will get a good score. If you haven’t read the welcome to slash it post (which you should there is a lot of information there you will absolutely want to know) how we rate our movies is out of seven knives, the reasoning for this is it makes it easier for you to quickly glance at the score and know whether it's good or not. One to three means the movie is bad (one being the worst), four means the movie was okay. Five through seven means that the movie was good and amazing. This keeps it very streamlined so for example, if you were waiting in line at the box office and you weren’t sure what movie you should see, you can check our site and immediately know which movie you should see, that's why I’ve chosen to use this specific rating spectrum.
OVERVIEW
Final destination is a movie that did everything right but still fell slightly short of perfect. The film does a phenomenal job at being creative and innovative with how it kills and the overall story was handled, but there were a few times where my suspension of disbelief gets ruined which I’ll explain in greater detail later. From the beginning of the film up until the moment the story truly begins, some of the dialogue is quite cliche and feels fake, but later on, the writers found their stride and truly gave us some amazing monologues especially a monologue from the legend himself tony todd who plays a mortician in this movie. The use of his character is one of the highlights of this movie and the rest of the franchise. The other monologues in this movie come before major surprises which I won’t be spoiling in this section. Not only was the dialogue good the majority of the time in this movie, the direction and shot choices are very impressive for a horror movie. Many times throughout this movie there were times where something was in the shot that would later foreshadow what would happen before you are even fully aware of what was going on. Final destination deserves what it got solely due to its impressive originality, specifically due to the way its victims got murdered (which I’ll explain later on down the list, Jump to the kills section if you so desire.) The tone of this movie is one that is very unique and hard to replicate and has never been replicated by any movie I've ever seen.
CREDITS
The beginning credits in final destination are some that set the tone for the rest of the movie and give you a slight understanding of some of the key elements of this movie without you understanding why they are showing you certain things. There is a fan, airline books, toy airplanes. There are also things that are indistinguishable which makes it feel as if some of the things we are seeing aren’t as important as they actually are. The credits set a tone for the film that encapsulates the film incredibly well. The atmospheric music that plays is one of the best uses of music to fully give you the sense of what type of movie you are about to watch. The ending credits are very late nineties early two-thousands, the final scene of the movie abruptly ends and the credits come kicking in with the pop-punk of the early two thousands plays over the very minimalistic credits. The ending credits are nothing super special and are very plain, while there is nothing wrong with having nothing special in your credits, comparing the ending credits to the beginning credits are nowhere near each other in terms of tone and feeling. I think the credits do an okay jump at the end of feeling kind of like the closer but it feels slightly weird when we just saw the really amazing credits from the beginning of the film.
STORY
The story is where the final destination really hits its stride. It’s original, unique, interesting, and overall a very compelling film that doesn't stop reeling you in from the very beginning. ( I’m going to try my best to not spoil much stuff here but there isn’t a lot to be spoiled anyway) I'm going to do a spoiler-free story review than a spoiler-included review so people who haven't watched it can still read this part of the story without getting it ruined for them. The best way to put the spoiler-free review is that the story begins almost immediately after the credits and it doesn't stop until it's over. This movie is a uniquely packed movie, running at only an hour and thirty-eight minutes. Devon Sawa ( Idle hands) and Ali Larter (house on haunted hill) play Alex browning and clear rivers. Their relationship is one of the most interesting parts of this entire movie as they are the main people figuring out exactly what is happening surrounding the unfortunate incident at the beginning of the film. This movie originally started out as a spec script for an unused episode of the x-files, so for all you x files fans who are curious about checking out this movie I would do it in a heartbeat. James Wong and Glen Morgan co-wrote this film, James Wong wrote four episodes of the X-Files and fourteen episodes of American Horror Story. Glen Morgan on the other hand is the credited writer on sixteen episodes of X-files and an uncredited role in Trick or Treat (1986). The writers on this are very experienced and very very talented, and their work together which spans many years, meshes incredibly well together and it shows up here in final destination. This is the end of the spoiler-free review of the story so from this point on I will be spoiling parts of it. Skip on to the next section if you do not want to see any spoilers. Okay so… the movie starts with Devon Sawas’ character, Alex, leaving his house to go to the airport with his classmates for a school-sanctioned trip to Paris (which by the way that must be one cool school if the entire class of people learning french get to go to Paris but anyways). The whole class makes the way to the terminal and they board the plane. When they board onto the plane, Alex sees a premonition, which is the term they’ll later use to refer to these types of instances, that the plane was going to blow up. He inevitably freaks out and tries to stop the plane from going off, causing one of the other passengers, and a side character for the rest of the movie, to get into a fight with Alex. This causes the airplane security to remove them from the airplane and causes a few of his classmates and two of the teachers to get off the plane as well. One of the teachers goes back on the plane after security lets one of the teachers proceed with the rest of the group. As they are waiting in the terminal for their plane, outside the window we see as the plane blows up causing the glass windows to shatter into the terminal. This is the major part of the story that sets the stage for everything else that would happen. After this point, death tries to kill every one of the people who managed to get off the plane, starting with tod, Alex's best friend. After tods’ death, the teacher dies, leaving the four people we are with for the majority of the movie, carter, clear, billy, and Alex. After a while, Alex figures out that death is killing them in the pattern they would have died on the airplane. That’s where I'm going to stop the plot analysis because after that is when I believe that the movie gets very smart. I will reiterate this point, that final destination is one of the most original horror movies I’ve seen and it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
SCARINESS.
Final destination is not the scariest movie ever made. The way final destination presents itself is almost thriller-esque if it wasn't filled with as many deaths as it is. There are none of the typical jump scares and it’s particularly squirmy or edge of your seat intense. It’s mostly a popcorn movie made for you to sit in front of the screen and watch as people die in some crazy and interesting ways. This movie is not about you, the audience being scared, but for you to feel empathy and a sense of being scared through the character you are watching. The reason you would want to watch this movie is not to be scared but rather it feels more like a movie you watch when you want to watch popcorn and a friend. There isn’t much more to talk about in regards to how scary this movie is, but Final destination is the kind of movie that you would want to grab a friend, a bag of popcorn, and sit down and watch.
THE KILLS
Okay, this is where final destination reaches its full potential. The kills in final destination are some of the most creative, innovative, and straight-up terrifying ways of dying that anyone could ever think of. Later in the sequels, they do tend to get a little worse in terms of how scary they are but it all begins with the way the kills were written in this film. Like I did in the story section, I will include a spoiler-free version first and then a spoiler version so what’s next is a spoiler-free version that anyone can read. The kills here, while they can sometimes feel over the top and a little unbelievable at times, it does make up for it by just the way it will occasionally trick you into trying to guess which of the few ways it set up that the person was going to be killed by. The way death tries to kill the victim in the particular scene is often very gruesome and very unexpected. Another very special thing about this film and kills is that because it feels like it’s a slasher film without the killer, it uses the presence of wind as a way of introducing to us that death is near and wanting to kill its next victim. Because the difference between this movie and the others is that death itself is the bad guy. Alright, I’m going to move onto the spoiler section of this video (don’t worry I won’t spoil every kill just two that are very interesting and show a good overview of the kills) So please move onto the next section of this video if you are not interested in any spoilers. Okay so the first kill I wanted to talk about is actually the first death post airplane. This is a very simple kill but also has a certain flaw that made me lose my sense of disbelief. So the character named tod, goes into the bathroom and starts to shave, he goes to the bathroom and as he is doing that there is this blue soapy looking substance that starts leaking out of the back of the toilet, it follows him around the bathroom, there is a shot where the substances literally turn straight towards him instead of following its natural progression, from there he slips on the substance and strangles himself on some wire that was overhanging the shower (which I’ve never seen used before near a shower but maybe it was common in the nineties). This is the part that I had a hard time believing, after he dies, the soapy substance just retreats itself back up presumably into the same place it leaked out like it literally straight retreats backward which just looks so weird and is incredibly jarring because it comes out of nowhere. The next kill I wanted to talk about was the one with the teacher who got off the plane. To make this very long and complicated kill short, the tv in the room she was in, explodes slicing her neck open, after that happens she ends up falling to the floor and trying to get a towel off the knife rack when she does that a knife falls out of the rack and impales her straight into the chest. This kill is actually quite well done and a perfect example of the type of kills that final destination is known for.
CHARACTERS.
The characters in this movie that aren’t Alex or clear are very two-dimensional and aren't creatures of variety. It feels kind of like if the characters were written to only be purely two dimensional and not actually to be fully-fledged and developed characters, while I can’t really blame final destination for this since that was kind of what was expected of lower budge horror movies from the nineties, it doesn't hold up to the standard of how horror movies tend to be written nowadays. The bully character (carter) is mostly just the bully character and doesn't have much of a personality otherwise, and the goofy best friend character (tod) is almost entirely just the goofy best friend character. While the characters in this film do tend to struggle with being cliche or two dimensional you can overlook those flaws to a mild degree just by the use of tony todds character. He was by far my favorite part of this movie and his monologue in a certain scene is still one of the best monologues in a horror movie that I’ve ever seen.
RATING AND GOODBYES
Well, this is the moment you’ve truly been looking for, my rating for the first Final Destination film. This was a film I had an incredibly hard time choosing exactly where I thought it deserved to be and because of that it took much deliberation in my mind to choose, but my rating for final destination is….a 5.5 knives out of seven. I subtracted some points for its lack of scariness and its slight cliche but where it lacked in those aspects it soared in story and originality which makes Final destination a film like no other. Well, that’s the end of this review thank you for checking it out and reading all the way to the end. If you got here I really appreciate you and like always, Treat every day like it's Halloween.
SOURCES
DEVON SAWA
ALI LARTER
GLEN MORGAN
JAMES WONG
GENERAL INFORMATION
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