Alice Oscura, Featured Writer
Disclaimer: The following contains major spoilers, and a compilation of well-known facts posted in articles online and details from interviews gathered from the cast and crew of the film
There’s nothing scarier than an unseen enemy and definitely nothing scarier than the inevitability of death itself. This is the main premise of the Final Destination film franchise. Death has a plan and a design for all of us, and when it’s your time, there’s no way to cheat death. The first film was released on March 17, 2000. Now, 25 years later, the franchise has released its sixth film, Final Destination Bloodlines (2025).
The main plot of each film pretty much follows the same pattern. A group of people usually survives a mass tragedy, all thanks to the one person designated as an Oracle of sorts. That person sees the tragedy minutes before it is about to happen and is subsequently able to decipher the pattern or order in which the remaining survivors will die by observing the signs around them. The survivors, having temporarily cheated death’s design by disrupting the tragic event, cause death to come back around to reclaim its victims using some of the most peculiar and gruesome methods.
Final Destination (2000) was directed by James Wong (The X-Files) and co-written by Wong, Glen Morgan, and Jeffrey Reddick. Word on the street is that Reddick wrote the script for the film after being inspired by an article that he read about a woman who was on vacation and received a call from her mother advising her not to take her flight the next day because she had a bad feeling about it. The woman switched her travel plans around and soon found out that the plane in which she had booked her original flight had crashed.
The film stars Canadian actor Devon Sawa (Idle Hands, Chucky the TV series) in the lead role of Alex Browning. High school students of the French class are getting ready to board Flight 180 bound for Paris, France. Alex and his friends are excited and eagerly find their seats on the plane. However, Alex immediately experiences a terrifyingly real vision of their plane exploding just after taking off. His reaction causes panic, and a fight erupts between Alex’s best friend Todd (Chad Donella) and fellow classmate Carter (Kerr Smith). This results in Alex, Todd, Carter, his girlfriend Terry (Amanda Chaney), Billy (Sean William Scott), and their teacher, Miss Lewton (Kristen Cloke), being escorted off the plane for causing a disturbance. However, one passenger leaves of her own accord and that’s another student named Clear Rivers (Ali Larter). From the waiting area, with the plane in clear view, everyone witnesses it take flight only to explode into a fireball in the night sky mere minutes after takeoff.
What takes place following the mass tragedy is unhinged, to say the least. Alex becomes the school pariah and is labeled as a freak. Even his teacher, Miss Lewton, seems terrified of him. However, loner Clear Rivers seems to find a kinship with Alex, feeling grateful for having escaped the explosion because of his premonition.
The audience soon learns that the survivors merely bought a little extra time as Death comes knocking once again. The survivors begin to fall one by one in the exact order that they were meant to die on Flight 180.
The ingenuity and strength of the film lie in the build-up of its tense atmosphere that is laced with heaps of paranoia and a sense of foreboding for the inevitable outcome. The plot stood out against the backdrop of popular horror films of the era where the audience can identify the killers whether human or supernatural.
Another aspect that makes the film so attractive to the horror fan base is the ingenuity and shock factor related to the exaggerated Rube Goldberg-esque methods employed for the satisfyingly disturbing kill sequences.
The passage of time has not depleted the effect that Final Destination has on its fans as well as newcomers to the horror genre. It’s still a solid watch and is one of the more stable horror franchises to date in my opinion. Currently, fans can enjoy bingeing all five previous franchise films by streaming them with either a MAX (formerly HBO) or Amazon Prime Video subscription.
Dark Alice’s Score: 7 out of 10
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Alice has an old soul and a curious mind. I believe that anyone can be a hero and that the good guys should always win! I dislike cruelty to animals and think that they have far superior qualities to humans. My motto is there is no future without the past. I also have a weird penchant for Paranormal TV shows even though the slightest sound makes me jump. I enjoy writing reviews and throwing in fun facts to pique the readers’ curiosity. My ultimate goal in life would be to become a published writer one day. Read More