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The Final Destination
Aug 29, 2009
Your mother made this movie! She was right towarn you about aerosol cans exploding, ceilingfans falling in lethal death spirals and lawnmowers spitting rocks that can knock you brainsout!One Word Review: GOOD
The Final Destination 
is a
“
chick flick
”
. I apologize for gender-categorizing in advance, but thismovie is not a horror movie, but only disguised as one. You need to recognize this up front. Italso is the reason this movie is #1, instead of the inhuman and tasteless
Halloween II 
.
The Final Destination 
is based on the belief that dreams do come true. In most chick movies, this
drives the romantic quest for “Mr. Right”, true love’s destined soul mate which they have to find,
against tremendous odds. This romantic ideal explains the huge market for psychic hot linesand other fortune-telling industries helping girls steer their lives towards that final destination ofthe perfect guy, the partner that was always meant to be. This movie turns this quest into,unfortunately, a final date with Mr. Death.
The masculine equivalent is the belief that “sh*t happens”, so deal with it. Knowing the futurespoils the game, demeans the victory if it is “fixed”. Why bother to compete? As
the boorishHunt (the jock babe-
hound) states, “If I’m dying, I’m going to get laid!” This after the girl pleads,“would it kill you to be sensitive?”
 
I have grown up in a world filled with warnings, from my mother to my friends to my spouse, allfan
tastic “things to worry about”. The BBQ will blow up, the lap top will catch fire, the tree
branch will fall on the house, the driver that
won’t stop at the crosswalk. We live in fear of accidents, primarily from our mother’s over 
-protective gene and active imagination. Every oncein a while your mom is proved right with another report of a sad accident in the news. Yes itdoes happen.
Now, with this movie, we have all the worst “things to worry about” happening in 80 minutes, up
close and in 3D. There is a chain of destiny that will not be denied. You cannot cheat death.
Once you buy that premise, the movie trips along like a workman’s compensation training film,
showing all the horrors that could happen on dangerous job sites. The accidents are sudden,gory and spectacular, all the more so in 3D.This is a treat for fatalist philosophers, blood-splatter analysts and romance lovers, believing intrue love and death out there somewhere, if you believe hard enough and never give up hope.
The Story
The story centers on a car race, where one section of the decaying grandstand is destroyed in aspectacular crash. One guy, our hero Nick, has a vision of this horror and warns his friends whofollow him outside and they escape the inferno. The audience (us) is treated to his vision, upclose as the chain of unlikely events from the cracked bench to the oil can spill, to the tool left inthe car as it tears out of the pit and so on until the tires start flying, the engines fall into laps, theconcrete blocks collapse onto squirming bodies and the rebar sticking out from the rubble spikesthrough our
hero’s forehead.
 Oh, wind back, it was a dream. So they run out, death leaps the fence and 52 lives are lost.Were the survivors lucky or just destined for another death just as horrible? As we watch thechain drawn tighter around our anxious group of young people, with their whole lives filled withpromise and potential, we wonder if they will survive or is death inevitable.
Can this “chain” be
broken? Of course, this is Hollywood and there would be no point to the movie if it could soinstead, we are treated to a series of improbable but not impossible accidents resulting in grislydeaths in the same order as if they remained in their grandstand seats when the race car startedto fly.Give the filmmakers credit, they did use some imagination in the disposition of the characters.The fiery drag of doom behind the tow truck was very suburbia-savage; the stone in the eyefrom the lawn mower was something my mom told me could happen. Then we see themechanic skewering, the entrails sucked down the pool drain, the drowning in the car wash, thecrushing from the hydro-
therapy tub and the slow “hold my hand” while the escalator meat
grinder chews at her legs.
These were all within the realm of the “possible in a million years”
kind of way. But hey, people win lotteries with these odds so why not this reverse-luck odds-making?Our final threesome of Nick, Lori and Janet survive the longest. In fact, they seem to be free
and clear as they commit to “not taking each day for granted” and so they quit postponing thattrip to Amsterdam. Let’s go now, as you only live once, right? So, one last drink at the local
coffee shop and
 –
 
well they didn’t call this movie
 
“
The Final Destination 
” for nothing. With thisdeath train, you don’t need no ticket, you just get on board.
 
 
The Genre
The Final Destination 
is a horror movie, but as I mentioned earlier, it is also a chick flick. Thisis a RARE combination. Also interesting, this franchise is growing in box office receipts witheach outing. Although this is billed as the final installment, given the performance of this 3Dfeature, this franchise may be like a shoelace trapped in an escalator: no way off this ride.One wonders what kind of audience would be drawn if Hollywood toned down the gore and
beefed up the romance. What if the guy who senses the danger isn’t filled with visions but is a
vampire? What if death is only avoided if you find your Mr. Right? What if you are destined tofinally fall in love and die together? Heck, the possibilities are endless.The odds of another
Final Destination 
are no greater than leaving your thick bottle-lensedglasses on a table, where the sun shines through them to a pile of sawdust which ignites, whileat the same time a gas can overturns on a table and drains on the floor, pushed by a tarp blownopen from a window, catching on a wheeled table and leaving a trail of gasoline from thesawdust to a handy pile of high explosive fuel canisters conveniently stored right behind thescreen of a multiplex theater showing a 3D movie about a disaster, blowing up at the exactsame time as the climactic explosion in the actual movie. Put in those terms, I guess it is prettylikely.
The Overall Quality
The Final Destination 
is a good 3D movie, with better clarity that
G-Force 
for the action scenesand unashamed embracing the cheesy in-your-face effect of nails flying, tires bouncing, snakesuncoiling and so on
. If you’re going to use 3
D, then use the damn effect. There are one or two
“arty” effects, like the burning ember floating across the room to another pile of sawdust, but the
nature of this movie is sudden death, so get ready to duck.The movie itself is well-crafted with the visions adding suspense to the deaths, as we seeenough clues to anticipate something about to happen but it never plays out exactly like thevision. The actors are likeable and able to scream with the best of them. The whole thing worksbecause the effects are crisp and sudden, without the usual admiration of the gore you see in
the “sick” horror genre.
Another reason this movie works is the veneer of reality the director, David Ellis maintainsthroughout the movie. He uses enough camera hints to raise
the audience’s awareness of 
danger all around us, from the poorly-maintained grandstands to the heavy machinery of a bodyshop to the over-heated aerosol hair spray can. I am reminded of the poor fellow who left hishouse, listening to his ipod to retrieve his mail and died as a helicopter crash-landed on him.
Not likely, no. If he wasn’t listening to his ipod, maybe he would have heard the copter coming.
Maybe the whole chain of misfortune could have been prevented with one simple deviation. Butit w
asn’t and he died. Just like the characters in this movie. So you buy the concept and then
enjoy the ride.Read the full news report here. I sensed this ominous effect on the ordinary after the movie when, walking back to my car, I sawa truck parked in front, the man-hole cover open on the sidewalk and thick hoses across thefront of my car. Is this a gas leak? Is the whole block about to explode? Should I turn and run?Actually, I got in my car after carefully stepping around the man hole, over the hoses and aroundthe safety barrier. Then I drove away. I am still alive. But did I cheat death? Did this moviemake me more aware and save my life? Is the clock ticking right now for my date with DocDoom? Ah, probably not. So I bought a lottery ticket instead.
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