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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 36.88%
Worth A Look: 33.13%
Average: 13.75%
Pretty Bad: 11.88%
Total Crap: 4.38%
8 reviews, 112 user ratings
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| Final Destination |
by Scott Weinberg
"Death, it turns out, is a bad sport."
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So you'd probably consider yourself lucky if you happened to walk away from a life-threatening accident, right? Not if you were a character in this movie. Final Destination has the framework of your basic 'dead teenager' horror flick, only this movie has a little more creativity, especially in the gruesome and elaborate death scenes.Alex (Devon Sawa) and a planeful of his classmates are about to fly to France when he begins seeing horrible visions of an impending plane crash. He flips out, and is tossed off the plane with a handful of other students and their teacher. Of course, the plane has a horrible accident which leaves no survivors. The relief the group feels is quickly replaced by dread, as they realize that death is not to be cheated so easily. Fortunately (?) for Alex, he can somehow sense who will be next, and when.
While Final Destination is basically a slasher-type horror movie it is considerably better than most, thanks mainly to a smart script and an underlying sense of actual fear. (Wow, what a novel concept for a horror movie nowadays.) There's really no in-jokey gags or over-the-top silliness, and Final Destination offers a plot with a constant feeling of someone's impending (and usually quite nasty) death. Especially fun are the death scenes themselves, as director James Wong plays each scene to the hilt. It's the kind of movie where you'll be tempted to scream "Look Out!" or "Run!" quite often.
The plane crash scene also ranks quite highly, in terms of shock value. (Right below Alive and Fearless, actually.) It's obvious the filmmakers were out to make a movie that offers equal doses of shocks, thrills and just plain blood. There's an emotional investment that it lacks, however, mainly due to the complete lack of solid character development. (Everyone seems to take the ongoing carnage as rather ho-hum.) The lack of realistic characters doesn't really spoil all that much though, since they're all going to end up in body bags anyway.
The performances are uniformly average. Ali Larter (The House on Haunted Hill) stands out a bit, as the 'outsider' type girl and Seann Michael Scott (the scene-stealing Stifler from American Pie) offers some likable goofiness, until things aren't so funny anymore. Tony "Candyman" Todd shows up for one scene, then vanishes, for whatever that's worth.
A studio horror film that delivers the goods is pretty rare, especially in the field of graphic violence. While this movie certainly generates solid jolts and goose-bumps, there's also some solid gore, which is meant as a compliment.Final Destination is a slick and polished effort which is sure to please fans of the genre, and it may win non-horror fans over as well. It's above-average in the brains department, and I mean that both ways.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=3848&reviewer=128
originally posted: 03/21/00 17:57:47
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USA
17-Mar-2000 (R)
DVD: 17-Jan-2006
UK
N/A
Australia
13-Apr-2000 (M)
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