An entirely unnecessary five-page Manifesto about Final Destination

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a long running franchise seen for the first time, must be in want of a marathon. There is no better way to get into the right mindset of a series than bingeing it, so that’s what I did with Final Destination over three days this week. Throughout the early 2000s I was still quite scared by horror movies, but I still went in on a lot of the teen slashers of the time. Final Destination, however, passed me by except for one death from the first movie that I now remember seeing while channel surfing. Valerie Lewtons prolonged dance with deadly appliances didn’t hook me back then, but now I have strong opinions about the whole franchise and the ridiculous ways it offs its characters.

Anyone unfamiliar with the franchise, here’s the basic hook: Imagine a Rube Goldberg machine, or alternatively someones fun quarantine project that your aunt shared on Facebook, but at the end someone gets killed in an incredibly gory way. If that sounds like your brand of dark humor, take this as a recommendation to go check the franchise out, they’re all fun movies at their core. However, I was surprised by how much more went into these films, so here I am, diving a little bit deeper into what makes a good Final Destination movie, maybe someone at New Line will hire me to write a reboot. I present to you, the essential elements of Final Destination and each movies ranking:

The Signs

Every Final Destination film has the same structure. It begins with a big, deadly catastrophe that, aided by a vision of the future, our heroes survive, only to be picked off later, one by one. The opening is where the franchise goes full disaster movie, with huge setpieces and ample use of pyrotechnics (or outdated CGI). But before the carnage, extensive foreshadowing is required. At this point, the lead character notices the first ill omens before the full on vision that will allow them to escape later on.

The original sets the bar high when it comes to the foreshadowing. During the lengthy opening credits a fan blows the pages of a history book to pictures of demons, guillotines and ominous messages. Alex’s mother, full of ignorance and potentially to blame for this entire thing, rips the tags off her sons suitcase, his father reminds him that his whole life is ahead of him. Religious cultists pass out leaflets, planes are getting cancelled for bad weather, pretty much everything screams “Don’t get on that plane!” And that’s the feeling we want. The coming catastrophe won’t arrive out of nowhere, it’s part of deaths design, so death is already around.

Only the carnival in Final Destination 3 manages to surpass the original when it comes to foreshadowing. The first image we see is a creepy tarot reader automaton pointing to the Death card. How do you top that? The setting is so perfect for the films purpose, happy screams from carnival rides turn sinister through judicious use of background music. Again, students talk of the lives ahead of them. “It won’t kill us to get a deep-fried Snickers and a Coke.” Yeah, but what comes after will. This is another thing that sets the whole lead-up to the catastrophe in this film apart, the sheer amount of times they manage to namecheck death in the most innocent ways. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is such a deliciously ironic statement in the context of a Final Destination movie. And then there’s the giant devil statue, voiced by the mortician, just giving the game away, telling everybody they’re going to die. It’s perfection.

The other three movies in the franchise are guilty of wasting time here. Two serves up some creepy imagery during the credits, but the focus is on reiterating the premise and story of the first film, something the characters are going to have to learn for themselves later anyway. Once they get on the highway, there’s some decent work, but overall the foreshadowing is pretty basic. Four and five both entirely waste their credits sequences by making them an effects reel based on earlier kills in the franchise. Five then devotes a good chunk of time to character development, but the foreshadowing only starts after the movie has already gone for ten minutes, which is disappointing. Not as disappointing as four though, which just doesn’t foreshadow anything at all and instead just jumps straight into the mechanical details of all the things that will prove deadly in the moments to come.

Ranking:

1. FD 3
2. FD 1
3. FD 2
4. FD 5
5. FD 4

The Catastrophe

And then we get to the actual catastrophe. The menu items are a plane crash, a highway pile-up, a roller coaster malfunction, a racetrack collision and a bridge collapse. These sequences are integral to the central appeal of the franchise, by keeping the films, quite formulaic within the franchise, separate from other teen horrors through a healthy injection of disaster filmmaking. 

One and three boast wonderfully intense sequences. The plane crash seen from inside the plane might feel somewhat pedestrian when viewed through the lense of what came after, but it still impressed me. The sequels clearly got an upgrade in the visual effects department, but what James Wong accomplishes by mostly just shaking the camera around an airplane cabin is very effective. He definitely tops it in three though. The rollercoaster sequence expertly moves through every single scenario you could come up with if you were deathly afraid of them. What? Me? No, I moved past that particular fear somewhere in my early twenties.

But really, the catastrophe is where prolific stunt performer and director of Final Destination 2 and 4 (and Snakes on a Plane) David R. Ellis really shines. The highway collision is so effective, it has made an entire generation of motorists never want to drive behind a log truck again. Even before I had seen these movies I was aware of this. Again, the key is in all the different permutations of possible perils that could kill you in a highway collision. You could flip your car, you could fall of your bike and have it slide into your crumpled body, or you could just cop a good old American log in the face. Ellis makes sure you really feel the speed, really see the wet road so that when the tires start screeching there’s no question about anyone making it out alive.

At least some of that is still on display in four, but here he makes the mistake of treating the opening catastrophe like one of the Rube Goldberg death machines that makes up the other half of the franchises appeal. It’s not their time yet, those come later, as much as there can be a later in an 80 minute film. The other problem with four (and five) is the problem that so many horror films faced between 2009 and 2012: 3D. At the time some of them probably got through by the gimmick alone (The first 3D movie I saw in cinemas was My Bloody Valentine 3D, and while it definitely was an underwhelming experience, I do remember chuckling at some of the 3D moments.), but I can’t name a single one of them that truly holds up on the strength of the 3D effects. Even Avatar looks noticeably 2009 at this point. But here at least four scores some points on the intensity of the fast cars, while the bridge collapse is slow and a lot of people just die by falling in the water. Nobody developed a fear of bridges in 2011.

Ranking:

1. FD 2
2. FD 3
3. FD 1
4. FD 4
5. FD 5

The Survivors

It’s certainly not unique to Final Destination that better characters will make for a better movie, but there are certain character traits that set a good Final Destination ensemble apart from your usual teen horror victims.

First, you need slightly more of them. Ideally, when the carnage starts you want to have at least one or two distinct characters that do not get rescued by our hero with a vision, to drive home the point that this wasn’t just a dream. Same reason why almost all of the films have a memorial scene. The gold standard of these pawn sacrifices is definitely the French teacher in the original, who keeps prompting his students in French, even as the plane explodes. The flame that burns twice as bright… Mr. Murnau, tu vas nous manquer.

The more important thing, however, is that each and everyone of the survivors will, whether they want to or not, have to face the inevitability of their demise within the next ninety minutes. These films are absolutely obsessed with death and my man James Wong understands how to milk that premise for everything it’s worth. Almost every character in Final Destination 1 and 3 has a distinct reaction to the absurd situation they’re stuck in. Some are played to heighten the dark comedy, like Lewis in part three, who feels so invincible in his youth that he goes out in an insane testosterone fueled taunt, which makes for one of the most entertaining deaths in the entire franchise. 

But more often than not, the characters engage in what Roger Ebert called “sophomoric but earnest discussions of fate.” None of them are exactly Nietzsche, but in the variety of characters grappling with their impending doom, the franchise, at it’s best, finds exactly the right amount of introspection to elevate the elaborate accidents above merely dark comedy. It’s a kid dealing not only with the loss of his brother but also the isolation from his best friend, whom his father blames. It’s the school bully having to face the fact that one of his victims saved his life. It’s Mary Elizabeth Winstead clawing for every bit of control over her life that has just been brutally ripped away from her. Seriously, there’s scenes in three that might just as well be from an indie darling drama about survivor’s guilt.

One and three are the strongest at this, but it’s present in pretty much the entire franchise, with the exception of the eternal unloved stepchild, part four. I guess in 80 minutes it’s tough to put in good characters when so much runtime has to be dedicated to dripping water lines and other safety hazards, but the Neo-Nazi dropping the N-word really does it no favors. Five deserves special commendation for a valiant effort to take the franchise away from teenagers and adolescents and put it into the hand of (still young) adults. It mostly works quite well, but the new rule that you can dodge death if you kill someone limits the possible reactions somewhat.

Finally, since we’re talking about the characters, it bears mentioning that the Final Destination films also have a history of colorful background characters. Front and center among these is of course Mr. Bludworth, the mortician/carnival devil, who seems to know quite a lot about deaths designs. And yet, despite his helpful hints, everyone seems to end up dead in the end anyway. Others are there to add flavor to the different death-vignettes, like hook-arm man in part two, or the Russian tanning salon manager in three.

Ranking:

1. FD 3
2. FD 1
3. FD 5
4. FD 2
5. FD 4

The Clean-Up

Finally, it’s the meat of the franchise. Death remedying the flaws in his design. Between the creative deaths and the disaster at the beginning, it really only takes these two to make something that is recognisable as a Final Destination movie. (So why the six page manifesto? Because life is short and there’s nothing better to do in quarantine.) In general, if you survive the initial catastrophe, there’s three different ways to die, broadly speaking.

The first is the Final Destination trademark. You go to an innocent appointment, maybe at the doctors, maybe you’re inspecting a construction site. Unbeknownst to you, somewhere in the vicinity, water has already started leaking, windows have been shutting themselves, electrical appliances short out and start behaving in ways they’re certainly not meant to. Meanwhile, all around you are signs clearly signposting not just your death, but also how it’s going to happen. And there’s no stopping it. It’s elaborate, it’s surprising, it’s funny. These sequences must be so much fun to write, as they often boil down to something quite similar to an episode of a crime show, red herrings left and right and more often than not what ultimately causes death is the first thing the camera lingered on.

The second, somewhat connected variation involves the victim monologuing through the entire sequence. These ones are the most entertaining to me, because they marry the already darkly comical death contraptions with the death obsessed characters. 

Finally, these movies know about the importance of varying the pace, so from time to time someone gets to go quick and relatively painless, often by fast moving vehicle.

It’s tough to rate the films on these, since they are entirely isolated components which vary in quality within films, so I’ll just give my five favorites, in no particular order.

1. Ms. Lewton - FD 1: The first perfect death in the series. This is the only bit I had seen before my marathon. Everything falls into place here, including the knife.
2. Evan - FD 2: The sheer amount of deadly hazards Evan survives before we realize that the fridge magnets spelled out EYE at the very beginning of the sequence is just beautiful.
3. BBQ Kid - FD 2: Of the short ones, this is the best one, narrowly beating out the bus from the first one.
4. Lewis - FD 3: If I had to pick the best death in the franchise it’s probably between Lewis “Fuck Death” monologue and…
5. Candice - FD 5: This is the classic Final Destination death in its purest form. The acrobatics gym even frames the whole thing in front of a captive audience of one.

Conclusion

Like I said, you could probably make a recognizable Final Destination movie with just an opening catastrophe and some inventive deaths. But they actually tried that with four and it turns out that 3D graphics can’t sufficiently substitute extensive foreshadowing, a thematic obsession with the inevitability of death and fun characters. Five proves that there are new directions the franchise can be taken in by putting it into the hands of adults with established lives, even fours experiments with more openly meta concepts apart from self-referential details (and a whole cast of characters named after black and white horror actors and directors) don’t exactly feel out of place with the franchise as a whole. But there is a certain style to Final Destination that filmmakers ignore at their own peril.