Director: James Wong
Writers: Glen Morgan, James Wong, and Jeffrey Reddick (story by Jeffrey Reddick)
Starring: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, and Tony Todd
Body Count: 4 (unless you count the 239 people that died in the plane explosion)
Review: "Just imagine, a slasher movie where Death itself is the killer." That might not be exactly how Jeffrey Reddick pitched his story for Final Destination, and that's not exactly how it plays out in the finished version, but it's a good generalization.
After having a premonition that his plane is going to explode, Alex (Sawa) gets into a tussle and he and several of his classmates (headed to France for a field trip) are taken off the plane. Moments later, the plane actually does explode, prompting those around Sawa to suspect that he had something to do with it.
There's no real clear evidence of what gave Alex his ESP vision, but throughout the rest of the movie his skill continues to save his keyster time and time again as Death comes back to claim those who eluded its grasp on the plane explosion, in a variety of clever and not-so-clever ways.
Final Destination works best as a sick, twisted joke--sort of like a bloody and brutal version of Three Stooges gags, with suspension of disbelief being a key factor in appreciating how the survivors of the explosion are offed throughout the movie. There's some great fleeting moments of deep, dark comedy (and the casting of Tony Todd {Candyman} as the spooky, philosophical mortician was a stroke of casting GENIUS) that play out like live-action Roadrunner/Coyote cartoons, but for the most part the movie takes itself much too seriously for its own good.
The movie makes attempts to be shocking in its dispatching of Sawa's classmates, but telegraphs every kill, and this particular cut of the film (I know for a fact that certain bits of FX work were cut out, hopefully to appear on the DVD release) doesn't really have enough over the top blood to make up for the fact that most of the death scenes are pretty lame (with one distinct exception).
The ending, of course, is another wink at the possibility of an on-going story, though I seriously doubt that anyone will be making a Final Destination 2 (webmaster's note: In fact, New Line Cinema is making a sequel! I stand corrected). All in all, it's not bad, but nothing to really scream about.
