Some Thoughts on the Final Destination Movies
A few weeks ago, my friends and I watched Final Destination 3 during our weekly Discord hangout. I had never seen a Final Destination movie before, and even though I was only half paying attention, I caught enough to ask myself, “Hey, is there something here?” So I watched the first Final Destination and now you’re reading an article about me watching the rest of the franchise.
The Final Destination movies are stupid as shit. What little mythology there exists is ridiculous, it goes beyond formulaic in that there’s basically a literal formula, and much of it feels like, “Whatever, it’s a horror movie.” But I found myself charmed regardless and when I wasn’t being charmed, I was being fascinated. It always had my attention, which is something I can’t say about many series, let alone horror franchises. And I have a blog, so I can get into why!
Quick note: I will be referring to The Final Destination as Final Destination 4. Because it wasn’t.
The Final Destination Films Are a Contender For The Most Late ‘90s/Early 2000s Ass Franchise to Have Ever Existed
I’m not necessarily talking about the values of these movies. Truth be told, while I think they lean a little left (more on that later), I’m not really sure what the values of these movies are, assuming they have any at all. Rather, I’m talking about the aesthetic, and more so, the kinds of characters who occupy these films.
The first Final Destination was released on March 17, 2000, and it was filmed during the summer of the previous year. You can tell just by taking one look at the character Carter, the broody jock who randomly decides he hates protagonist Alex for reasons that were never particularly clear to me other than the movie needed someone to call bullshit on Alex and his premonition.
The late ‘90s. Nu-metal blaring on the radios. Woodstock ’99 burning. A lot of white kids, many of whom were rich, were very angry due to a number of socio-economic reasons as well as a rising space to vent and be exposed to a number of new horrifying ideas via the emerging internet. (Whether or not these reasons justified this class of angry white kids is for another article.) Take all these factors, pretend you’re in the late ‘90s, and write a horror movie. You’re going to wind up with a character like Carter, who at one point is literally driving around in a muscle car wearing a Nike pullover jacket and listening to “Into the Void” by Nine Inch Nails. It’s almost too perfect.
Nine years later, we get Final Destination 4, a film where the opening premonition takes place in a legally distinct NASCAR event (or a lower rung on the ladder, I don’t know how racing circuits work), one of the people destined to die is a massive racist, and we get the dumbest jock character the franchise will produce in the form of Hunt, who winds up being disemboweled by a drain pipe in the bottom of a country club pool, all of which is happening in the most orange and teal of orange and teal.
We’re deep in the Bush years, baby. (Also, when I said leans left, this is what I meant.)
These first four movies are firmly planted in the rot of the early 2000s Bush aesthetic and culture. Of course, horror movies are frequently a reflection of the times in which they were made, but the Final Destination movies, particularly the later ones, are also a child of the generation of executives who leaned much harder on internet driven consumer data and the kind of research that will drive the worst of Hollywood decision making. Look no further than the fact that the last two movies in the franchise lean heavily on 3D gimmicks that don’t translate well when you’re watching them in 2D on a 4K television in the 2020s. The point being that these movies were made specifically to reflect the times in a way that a lot of more low key horror movies weren’t.
Moreover, on an aesthetic level, look at Final Destination 5, the last movie of the franchise (for now) and the first one to be made during the Obama administration. Out is the orange and teal and in is the muted green color palette that many people my age associate with Call of Duty.
It’s a remarkably Bush-y franchise, until it abruptly isn’t.
Thinking about it now, I’m dreaming of a world where we get a new Final Destination every few years. Much like how James Bond would fight drug dealers in the ‘80s and then oil barrens in the 2000s, I want to watch Death kill dumb jocks, and then I want to watch it kill dumb MAGA dipshits. A man can dream, can’t he?
The Final Destination 4 Tone Dilemma
The best bad films are made with pure intentions, or at the very least, they’re not trying to be bad. Someone set out to make a good movie and instead, they ended up making a disaster. On the opposite side of the equation, there are few movies that are more lame to me than movies that try to be bad on purpose.
The first kind of movie is exceptionally rare, and that’s why movies like The Room are such gems. So most of the time, the best case scenario as far as enjoyable trash is concerned are movies that are in on the joke, but in a way that’s not too intrusive. A private understanding that the audience and the movie want the same thing, but an understanding that isn’t spoken out loud. It’s communicated, tonally speaking, with a wink or a nod.
Most of the time, the Final Destination movies do a pretty good job of finding that balance. In particular, a lot of the winks come in the form of clever editing, effective comedic timing on a lot of the kills, and ridiculous scenarios that are played perfectly straight. Most of the time.
I should hate Final Destination 4 for running afoul of that balance. It’s a movie that’s very self-aware and, by Final Destination standards, takes every opportunity possible to let you know that it’s self-aware to the point that it becomes actively intrusive.
Yet, I don’t.
Final Destination 4 wants you to know that it’s in on the joke, but the ways in which it tries to communicate that to the audience are so un-funny and ineffective that, at least for me, it comes around and becomes funny again. The final act taking place in a 3D movie. The characters being the least fleshed out of the franchise but also the most over-the-top. Every single line of dialogue that comes out of Hunt’s mouth. The fact that the racist character I talked about in the previous section is literally credited as Racist. The aggressiveness in which it leans into the 3D gimmicks.
It’s trying so hard, and none of it works. In fact, it doesn’t work so much that I laughed my way through the entire movie. I was laughing at it, but that’s still a response, so on some level something about Final Destination 4 works. Yet I think it’s easily the worst movie of the franchise and I’m probably never going to watch it again.
I don’t even have a conclusion here. I’m writing all this because I genuinely don’t know how it makes me feel and I was hoping that doing this would lead me to some revelation. It didn’t.
The Best Thing About the Franchise is its Bare Bones
Formula is one of horror’s greatest assets, and one of the factors that frequently gets in the way of its own greatness. The Exorcist happened, and now every time you see a demonic possession in a horror movie, you know everything that’s going to happen next. A similar point can be made about anything involving ghost hunting or cabins in the woods or many other horror movie premises. The details change, but the structure doesn’t.
This, if I’m in hot take mode and I’m being admittedly a little reductive, is my issue with a lot of horror franchises. Particularly those that revolve around a particular villain.
Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees and all them were genuinely scary when they first started out. But then time took its toll, and the vast majority of them eventually got reduced to increasingly poor films and punchlines. Granted, none of these movies were ever supposed to be taken that seriously in the first place. (And the studios sure as shit didn’t take them seriously either.) However, there was a power they had, and that power gets diluted every time Freddy or Chucky delivers some dumb punchline and it’s not clear whether or not the movie’s in on the joke.
I know that everything I’m saying, to some, is the point. These movies know you want to watch young people die and they’re aware that it’s a ridiculous thing to want to see. But these franchises are defined by the rules and the lore of their characters. You see Freddy, you know that someone’s going to need to fall asleep to fight him. (Or… maybe. The Elm Street rules are, shall we say, fluid.) Michael Myers is going to chase you to the ends of the Earth and if you’re traveling through Texas and you’re really unlucky, you might run into Leatherface. These characters have limits, and character limits mean restrictions.
What’s great about the Final Destination movies is that it cuts out the middleman, both literally and figuratively.
There is, of course, a formula. A premonition, followed by a cheating of death, followed by characters trying to trick death and figuring out the order of the deaths, followed by them seemingly succeeding before it’s revealed that they really didn’t. It’s not a franchise that’s free of restrictions, but unlike a lot of the other franchises, they could take place anywhere at any time and the deaths are only limited to what you can imagine in a given real world space.
The problem is that the franchise rarely took as much advantage of that freedom as it could have. (At least not until Final Destination 5. More on that next section.) You can cut the first movie some slack and a lot of effort always went into the opening premonition. But after that, the scenarios and the spaces get a little too normal. Or at least, nothing uncommon outside of suburban America.
But should they so choose, and if budget allows, they have the option to go anywhere they want. The same cannot be said about most horror franchises.
Ranking
Alright, enough of this analysis shit, let’s do some good ol’ fashioned ranking from best to worst.
1. Final Destination 5 (2011)
Final Destination 5 is pretty much everything you could want this franchise to be.
It takes the most advantage of its premise in terms of the creativity of its kills (the opening bridge collapse, the acupuncture scene, the LASIK surgery), it rides the balance I was talking about in the first section perfectly, the 3D gimmicks don’t get in the way, some of the characters who suffer the most brutal deaths are the most actively awful, and, most importantly, it explores some of the deeper themes one could read into the premise.
There’s some time spent trying to explain the rules and a lot of shenanigans in regard to figuring out how to cheat fate. But there’s also an exploration of how much you think your life is worth compared to other people, mainly with the introduction of a new aspect of the lore that dictates that you can cheat death if you offer someone else’s life in lieu of your own. On top of that, there are some themes about the struggle to define a meaningful existence. It’s not nearly as deep as I’m making it sound, but it is there.
Also, unlike the previous film, it doesn’t look like total shit! That’s always a plus.
2. Final Destination (2000)
The debate between this one and Final Destination 5 was tough.
The argument for this one is that in a way, it’s the purest distillation of the franchise. Shallow teens played by adults getting killed in increasingly intricate and brutal ways much to the audience's delight. It knows it’s funny, but it doesn’t hit the gas too hard. And as a millennial, seeing that super gelled-up ‘90s hair brings back so many memories.
However, I went with 5 because it takes what the first movie does and takes it to an extreme. It is, in other words, very much a case of Final Destination walking so that Final Destination 5 could run.
Still, this is a great dumb movie, and had I’d seen it back in the day, I would’ve been sold on it being a franchise right then and there.
3. Final Destination 3 (2006)
5 and 1 nail the tone. This one and the next don’t quite get there.
There’s some fantastic stuff in Final Destination 3. A rollercoaster is a truly inspired choice for the opening premonition, this movie kills off some of the most obnoxious characters of the franchise, and it certainly shows a flash of creativity when it comes to its kills.
That said, Final Destination 3 wants to be in on the joke a little too much. Of course, all these movies have a goofball streak, but this one asserts itself a little too forcefully for my taste.
4. Final Destination 2 (2003)
Whereas Final Destination 3 is a little too comedy forward, Final Destination 2 is a little too self-serious.
I know that sounds insane to say, what with the chain death and the ending. But it’s also everything in between. It wants you to feel something when Ali Larter dies and a lot of the deaths are supposed to resonate just a tad more than they usually do. Or at least it’s hard to escape that feeling when a teenager dies via a giant heavy glass plate falling on top of him in front of his mother.
It’s still dumb fun, mind you. But it wants more than you want to give it. Also the opening car pile-up is phenomenal.
5. The Final Destination (2009)
We talked about this one above. I just want to say that, truly, I hate how this movie looks.
