So I watched Final
Destination last night, and then this morning realized that it was actually
Final Destination 2 that had been
recommended to me. SO - unintentional theme nights! I
might not be able to watch anything tomorrow - and will almost certainly not be
able to post (I'll be spending 6-7 hours on the road), so I figured I'd write
them both up tonight.
Final Destination 1
and 2
I saw the first Final
Destination a long time ago (it came out in 2000, which is long enough ago
to have freaked me out a bit when I realized that). I enjoyed it, but not a lot
and not enough for it to make a real dent in my general disdain for the late
90's/early 00's horror desert. It wasn't until 2002 and 28 Days Later and The Ring
that I started to feel like what Hollywood was calling horror was worth seeing
again, rather than I Know What You Did
Last Summer or Scream sequels.
(As with anything, there were exceptions: Blair
Witch, Event Horizon, and In the Mouth of Madness, to name a few.)
The point is, Final
Destination was a blip, a nothing. I was vaguely aware that there were
sequels, but I was always generally wary of franchise horror anyway - and
nothing in the first film made me think the follow-ups would be worth watching.
To be honest - wasn't really looking forward to watching it again.
 |
| Me, trying to get up the interest to watch the movie. |
The Medium
I watched both films on Amazon. The first is available as
part of Amazon Prime. Part three is available on Netflix. The others (there are
five in total) aren't on any streaming service I pay for - but are available
for rent. This is where I quietly protest that having rando numbers of a series
is just wrong and all streaming services should go in a corner and think about
what they've done.
The Movies
Alright, let me just get right to it: I enjoyed this movie
this time around. In fact, I enjoyed it a lot. There. Admitting you have a
problem is the first step, right? Yes, the acting is not always (or often) very
good. And yes, the plot is basically an excuse to string together some
elaborate deaths. And yet there's just something about it...
Alex (Devon Sawa, looking like an adolescent Jeremy Renner)
has a dream in which the plane he's on explodes. He freaks out and a number of
people - mostly classmates and one teacher - end up being told to leave the
plane. Which then takes off and promptly explodes. Alex and his classmates
struggle with various degrees of survivor's guilt - and various levels of
dislike of/gratitude to Alex - until it becomes clear that they are all dying,
one by one. Death, it seems, doesn't like to be cheated.
 |
| None of these people end up on the island in Lost. |
That's the basic plot. There are more details - Tony Todd even
lays down some basic rules as a creepy mortician (listen to the Candyman,
kiddies, dude knows what he's talking about) - but they're incidental. What
matters is that death is coming for each of them, and it will stack the deck -
with lots of ways for each character to die - until it gets them all.
Lot of familiar faces in this movie. Part of that is Glen
Morgan and James Wong (writers, as well as Producer and Director respectively)
- they've brought a some folks with them from The X-Files and Space, Above and
Beyond. Tony Todd. Others like Ali Larter, Kerr Smith and Sean William Scott
have gone on to have pretty good careers. I kept thinking "Oh, they were
in this?"
Like any good slasher movie - and make no mistake, the Final
Destination films are slasher movies in which death has just cut out the
middle-man - the kills are the main reason for watching. Yes, it's nice that we
actually do come to care - a little - for the characters, particularly Larter's
Clear Rivers and Sawa's Alex, but the characters are pretty bare bones. It's
pretty hard to get too invested in people you know are going to die - so it's
the lead up to their deaths that becomes the primary point of tension.
That's really the best
part for me, in Final Destination.
The buildup before the deaths. The gas
in the stove top going out, a cup cracking, the camera focusing on knives, and dripping
vodka leaving a trail from the kitchen to the living room and back. I sit
there, leaning slightly forward, wondering which of these possibly deadly
things is it going to be that kills the character? Or will it be all of them?
 |
| All of 'em. Yep. |
I really do prefer the complicated, Rube Goldberg sort of
deaths like that of the teacher, Ms. Lewton (Kristen Cloke). The sudden jump
scares like Terry's death by bus just aren't as much... well, fun.
Knowing death has a plan leads one naturally to thinking
that you can circumvent it, which the characters proceed to try and do. I'm not
always clear on the order of things or who is supposed to be next or why, but honestly
- it doesn't really matter. In the words of Death himself (albeit from another
movie): 'you might be a king or a lowly street sweeper, but sooner or later you
dance with the reaper."
The Bottom Line
Surprisingly entertaining on a second viewing, with a dark
sense of humor and care paid to both creating tension and relieving it. Final Destination is not high art, but
it is a fun ride.
The first rule of slasher sequels is that you always up the
body count and Final Destination 2
fails in this, the most basic requirement. It does, however, have a spectacular
opening sequence featuring a logging track and a highway full of people driving
heavy metal and plastic projectiles full of flammable liquid. It's pretty damn
amazing and manages to outdo the original's plane explosion.
Unfortunately, it's all a bit of a letdown after that.
It's not that it's bad, per se - it's a fairly watchable
film - it's just that the director (David R. Ellis - who would go on to direct
Snakes on a Plane) doesn't have the same deft touch with building tension as
James Wong. He's got the same setup - character has premonition, avoids own
death and saves others, death itself starts coming for them - but the buildup
to each inevitable death is just... I dunno, it almost feels like it's
by-the-numbers. The closest he gets to building real tension is the kid in the dentist's
office - which doesn't pay off at all. The death comes outside of the office
and is basically the bus death from the first movie all over again.
 |
| That log truck opening, though... Let's go watch that again. |
There's a little more universe building, which is another
required aspect of a sequel. There are more rules, more Tony Todd and Ali
Larter's Clear returns. The reasons for people dying are a little more
convoluted than last time, as is the plan they hatch to save themselves. The
deaths are decently done, but in addition to not having much buildup they're
also... quick. Except for the death of the cokehead (sliced by flying barbed
wire) each death is over in a flash, almost before we register that death has
finally caught up with them. I THINK Ellis is trying for misdirection, but it
ends up just - pardon me - killing any tension that he does manage to convey.
 |
| I can't even remember how she got her head in there in the first place. |
There's also very little humor in this film, as opposed to
the constant undercurrent of it in the first one. In fact it's so straight for
so long that the final scene and it's gory denouement seem discordant. A dick
joke at a funeral.
The Bottom Line
I feel like I was maybe a bit harsher on Final Destination 2 than it deserves.
It's an okay film with better acting than the first film and some decent jumps
and deaths. It's just not as much fun as the first one and watching it so soon
after seeing the first made me more aware of the elements I disliked.
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