Movie Review: "Final Destination 5"

Seen on: August 12, 2011

The players: Director: Steven Quale, Writer: Eric Heisserer, Cast: Nicholas D’Agosto, Emma Bell, David Koechner, Tony Todd

Fact of interest: Actor Cory Monteith appeared in “Final Destination 3” as a student at McKinley High School… (the geeks should get the joke)

The plot: Death sets its sights on a group of people who miraculously survive a tragic bridge collapse.

Our thoughts: One could make the argument that, for horror franchises that go on for multiple films, the fifth film is generally considered a low point (case in point:"Friday the 13^th Part 5," where Jason isn’t really even Jason, or "Nightmare on Elm Street," where Freddy has a kid).

This is most likely due to the fact that by that point, the plot devices and storylines have pretty much run their course, and it’s usually the point where (as in the examples above) the makers desperately try to change the formula but pretty much end up negating what was set up before.

As fans of the "Final Destination" series know, the films follow a group of people who survive a great disaster thanks to the "premonition" of the protagonist. Alas, death has other plans for this group, hunting down each of them, one by one, in elaborate, Rube Goldbergesque sequences. It is up to our hero to intervene, figure out the pattern the plan, and eventually interrupt it.

But here's the problem with the fifth movie: in "Final Destination 5" (and this is not much of a spoiler considering it was already explained in the trailer), the simple way to win is to just kill someone else and take the rest of their life in exchange for yours. Sounds easy enough, right?

Sadly, this concept just totally undermines the entire lore of the first four movies. It is one thing to introduce a new twist to a franchise, but in “Final Destination 5,” the filmmakers just totally broke the rules. What's worse, this change of procedure only ends up as an excuse for the writers to create lazy ways for their characters to escape their fates. The original formula wasn’t broken, so there was no need to try and fix it.

On the brighter side, the deaths, although maybe not on par with some of the more inventive ones in the franchise, are still a lot of fun to watch from setup to the gory finale. The 3D effects are very well used as well, and the film benefits from a generally fast pace. Fans of the series are also going to love the “twist ending,” which turns out to be a fitting way to (hopefully) tie up the series.

Freaky quote: "I've seen it all before!" - Tony Todd

The final word: All in all, "Final Destination" is not a horrible movie, although it's definitely not on par with its predecessors. That said, if you are just out to see some ooey gooey chunkage splatting at you in gory 3D, then this is a fine way to spend your movie money! Too bad Death is getting a little sloppy these days. Must be the economy...

On the web: http://finaldestinationmovie.warnerbros.com/index.html

Article by Danny Alves