Horror Movie Reviews
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Title: Final Destination (New Line Platinum Series) (2004) |
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Review of Final Destination (New Line Platinum Series)
- Horror tale with a twist Final Destination tells the story of teenager with strange premonitions about death and the mysterious accidental deaths that follow his life. Directed by X-Files veteran James Wong.Running Time: 98 min.System Requirements:Starring: Devon Sawa Ali Larter Kerr Smith Tony Todd and Seann William Scott. Directed By: James Wong. Running Time: 98 Min. Color. This film is presented in "Widescreen" format. Copyright 2000 Warner Home Video.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 794043506123
Product Description
- While hardly a spiritual upgrade of the slasher film, this high-concept teen body-count thriller drops hints of The Sixth Sense into the smart-aleck sensibility of Scream. Helmed by X-Files veteran James Wong, who cowrote the screenplay with longtime creative partner Glen Morgan, Final Destination is an often entertaining thriller marked by an unsettling sense of unease and scenes of eerie imagery. It suffers, however, from a schizophrenic tone and a frankly ludicrous premise. A high school Cassandra, Alex Browning (Devon Sawa of Idle Hands), wakes from a preflight nightmare and panics when he's convinced the plane is doomed. His ruckus bumps seven passengers from the Paris-bound plane, which immediately explodes into a fireball on takeoff, but fate hasn't finished with these lucky few and, one by one, death claims them. Wong brings such a funereal tone to these early scenes of survivor's guilt and inevitable doom that the already far-fetched film threatens to veer into unplanned absurdity. Thankfully, the tale loosens up with a playful morgue humor: one of the victims winds up the splattered punch line to a grim joke and elaborate Rube Goldbergesque chains of cause and effect become inspired spectacles of destruction. Final Destination is a pretty silly thriller when it takes itself seriously, and the filmmakers play fast and loose with their own rules of fate, but once they stick their tongues firmly in cheek, the film takes off with a screwy interpretation of the domino effect of doom. --Sean Axmaker
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Comments for Final Destination (New Line Platinum Series)
- Posted on 2008-07-14
JAMES WONG, OPUS 1
** 2000. Written and directed by James Wong. Six students and a teacher manage to escape a plane crash thanks to a premonition of Alex Browning, one of them. A few weeks later, Death starts to kill the survivors one by one. FINAL DESTINATION is basically a stupid movie about a good idea. There isn't here only one smart scene or idea, it seems that the director wanted to please the teen audience by delivering another pimply shocker and that's all. In these perspective, a film like Peter Jackson's The Frighteners (Director's Cut) which handles some of the themes of FINAL DESTINATION is a masterpiece! This one is unfortunately already forgotten.
Score: 2
- Posted on 2008-05-28
Final Destination Review
A well-made and exciting film, which is enhanced by a suspenseful score by Shirley Walker.
Score: 4
- Posted on 2008-05-01
breath takeing
this was a really great movie when i first saw this movie when it came out in 2000 in the movie theater i was like wow my heart stoped beating i could'nt really eat my popcorn cause the movie was so dramatic,thrilling and breath takeing. When i saw the plain explode that really terrified me it looked so real then other plain movies it was like it was captured on tape that really had me at the begining then it gotten even better continuen the movie, this was a very amazing movie.
Score: 5
- Posted on 2008-03-05
Good Premise, Decent Execution (Pun Intended)
For a seven year old movie with TV-quality special effects, a fairly straight-forward plot, and skin-deep characters, I should have disliked this movie, but I didn't. It just works.
The premise is that a bunch of friends escape their date with Death when one of them has a premonition the plane they are boarding for a class trip is going to explode after takeoff. Death is not so easily avoided though and commences a person-by-person manhunt, taking out each friend in the order they would have died on the plane. Simple idea, but compelling, as you wonder every time one of the characters plugs in a hairdryer, gets in a car, or shaves if Death will manipulate the situation to finally kill him/her. In fact, the true genius of this film is that ambiguity blended with very creative "accidental death" scenarios when the Grim Reaper does finally strike.
Normally, I would have given this film 2 stars for all its flaws, but the ingenuity of the way it is executed pushed me to three. Worth renting. Not sure I'd buy though.
Score: 3
- Posted on 2008-01-27
The 'OMEN' -like setup (a grisly death every 15 minutes or so) rolls along like a funhouse ride!
Here's one that won't be shown on transcontinental flights anytime soon. FINAL DESTINATION, a great piece of cinematic junk food, opens with one of the most frightening depictions of airplane disaster you've ever seen, and if you can get past that, you'll be shoveling the popcorn in, begging for more.
Devon Sawa and his really white classmates board a plane for an end-of-the-year field trip. Among them are "Dawson's Creek" star Kerr Smith as your garden-variety jock jerk and Ali Larter as that most head-scratching of movie constructs, the gorgeous geek who's obviously the coolest chick in school. Sawa has a vision of the aircraft going up in flames, so of course he causes a scene and gets himself, his buddy, Smith, Smith's girlfriend, Seann William Scott and a teacher thrown off. Larter follows -- because she's got second billing -- and Smith throws a hissy fit until they see the plane become a fireball in mid-air. Sawa rationally concludes that they were all supposed to die, and that Death will soon be tracking them down.
Is he psychic? The movie doesn't seem to care, so why should we?
And here's where we get down to the nitty gritty: Death dispatches pouty starlets and mouth-breathers with a creativity we haven't seen since Jason Voorhees left the cineplex. A groovy variation on the teen-slasher movie, FINAL DESTINATION turns even the most mundane household items into torture devices. Director James Wong has a blast making us second-guess what he'll use to off his characters, and we wouldn't dream of spoiling any of the jolts for you. It's also nice to see a post-SCREAM thriller get laughs not from a more-ironic-than-thou aesthetic, but from horror-movie camp laid on as thick as your grandma's fruitcake. (Seconds after a friend is decapitated, a straight-faced Larter tells Sawa, "Get your head together!")
The DVD extras play like a slumber party, with kooky interactive games helpfully revealing the date of your death (to the hour) and the amount of clairvoyant ability you possess, as well as the story of a real-life psychic! (Cue the "Twilight Zone" theme.) On a more intriguing note, the filmmakers include a documentary about the test-screening process, and how it saved FINAL DESTINATION from being as pretentious as the latest Michelle Pfeiffer snooze-fest. We're all for directors keeping their work pure, but let's get real: no one would mistake FINAL DESTINATION for an art film. It is, however, loads of trashy fun.
Score: 5