How ‘The Final Destination’ Became the Most Despised Entry in a Celebrated Horror Franchise
The Final Destination series stands as one of the most consistently enjoyable horror franchises of the modern era. The films feature a catchy premise that reliably involves a group of characters saved from death in the immediate sense, only to find that their reprieve is actually short-lived. As each batch of survivors ultimately learns, death always comes to collect what it’s owed. Despite the series’s mostly stellar track record and enthusiastic fanbase, there remains one installment that most rank near the bottom of the pack.
I’m talking, of course, about 2009’s The Final Destination. The film celebrates a release date anniversary today, which makes this the perfect time to take a look back on what sets this installment apart and why most fans still look at it with side eye 16 years later. Throughout this stroll down memory lane, we’ll look at where the flick went wrong, and we’ll even make a good-faith effort to pinpoint something it gets right.
Before we get into how this picture cemented its reputation, let’s take a moment to brush up on the details. The Final Destination follows lead character Nick (Bobby Campo) as he hits up the race track with a group of pals. While seated in the bleachers, he has a grisly premonition that everyone in the stands is about to perish when a crashed vehicle sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic proportions. Thanks to his premonition, Nick, his pals, and a handful of fellow patrons narrowly escape with their lives intact. But little do they know, death is waiting for them and intends to collect at all costs.
That might sound like a perfect setup for a Final Destination film, and it could well have been. However, most fans actually consider the setup fairly anticlimactic. And seeing as the opening is generally regarded as the most memorable aspect of any Final Destination film, that distinction doesn’t start things off on the right foot.
The inciting event here pales in comparison to the epic setups that other franchise installments deliver. The opening crash and subsequent aftermath are largely accomplished using dodgy VFX work that looked questionable at the time of release but looks even worse with the passing of time. Case in point: The moment where two characters get cut in half by flying race car debris looks about as convincing as the effects you’d see in a low-budget SyFy Channel original, making the sequence feel completely out of place in a blockbuster horror franchise.
Previous (and subsequent) series installments comfortably exist near the intersection of practical and digital effects, allowing the finished product to look equal parts realistic and polished. For this installment, director David R. Ellis opts to rely far more heavily on CGI to maximize the film’s admittedly catchy 3D effects. In shifting the balance so far, the end result becomes cartoonish and unrealistic, and that quickly takes its toll.
Rendering so much of the action in postproduction does little to help the onscreen talent stay grounded in the scene. The abundance of CGI in the opening means that the actors had to visualize most of the spectacle that was supposed to be unfolding around them, which leaves much to be desired from the resulting performances.
Compounding the picture’s shortcomings, screenwriter Eric Bress (The Butterfly Effect) scripts this installment as especially formulaic. The major plot points offer nothing fresh or original to keep the audience guessing. There are no attempts to shake up the formula established by the previous films, which makes this read very much like a poorly executed rehash of what might have been a promising setup. If every other element were on point, we might have different ideas about the adherence to formula, but there are very few elements about this film that stand out as especially effective.
The writing continues to be an issue throughout. The scene where Nick gathers his friends to talk about the consequences of cheating death and their odds of survival reads like a shameless exposition dump. It’s boilerplate dialogue about how they’re destined to die in the order they died in Nick’s premonition, with a halfhearted aside about breaking the cycle. Screenwriter Bress does nothing to make the exchange read as fresh, original, or exciting, but the performers don’t do the material any favors, either. It feels a lot like everyone involved is just phoning it in.
The exposition dump referenced above also betrays another of the film’s fatal flaws: The majority of the characters are two-dimensional and lack human emotions. Nick’s friend Hunt (Nick Zano) reacts to the news that he and his pals are likely marked for death with a complete absence of feeling, which likely does little to engage the average viewer. If his reaction to learning that his days are numbered is that nihilistic, why on earth should the audience care if these people live or die? Plenty of the characters do, of course, die. This is a Final Destination film, after all. Yet, very few of the sendoffs are even half as memorable as they ought to have been. So, what we’re left with are characters we don’t much care about, dying deaths that are plenty forgettable.
As you might remember, I said that I would try to find something nice to say. Well, here goes: The film doesn’t get everything wrong. There are actually a few tense moments featured throughout. The carwash scene stands out as one such example. It builds a sense of claustrophobic unease that culminates in a thrilling and somewhat unexpected rescue at the last minute. The scene I’m referencing is cleverly juxtaposed alongside the far more fatal pool drain sequence where Hunt meets an untimely end. This combination offers the best of both worlds. The car wash scene gives us an intense setup, followed by a short-lived moment of reprieve, only to dash any sense of optimism with a downbeat sendoff immediately after. It slyly plays with viewer expectations and serves as a brief deviation from the predictability with which this installment is often rife.
So, there is. The Final Destination is a film that fails, in no small part, because it loses sight of what viewers really want. Fortunately, the installments that have followed to date have course-corrected and brought the series back to that sweet spot that strikes an enticing balance between practical effects and CGI. If you’re keen to rewatch the film, you can find the entire series streaming on HBO Max!
Categorized: Editorials
