2000 was the year the Slasher Genre died. It started with
Scream in 1996, which spat out a couple sequels, and inspired countless imitators,
which were mostly rubbish. For a sub-genre, four years is a considerably short run (considering
Superhero films have been going strong for sixteen years), but I guess there
were only so many times we could watch teens run away from a killer with a mask
or big hook. After seeing that on screen too many times, what was a teen to do in order to get their fix of Death?
From the creative minds of “The X-Files” came a story that
could have been right out of the TV show. In fact, the idea for “Final
Destination” was originally a concept developed for X-Files but the writer,
chose to run away with his idea and direct the film version himself, and solved
the problem of the tired Slasher genre. Sure, some of the elements were the same; a
group of teens gets killed one by one, but you wouldn’t see a killer in ghost
face mask, a mean fisherman with a hook or even an Urban Legend copycat with an
axe. Instead, this film had a villain you couldn’t see; invisible, ominous,
malevolent and cunning. Eventually this villain comes for us all, but for the
characters in this film, they cheated him once. But Death want’s to finish the
job.
Final Destination was a great idea for a film, playing with
the themes of life vs. death, chance vs. choice, and accidents vs. intent.
Despite its supernatural tone, the opening events of this film were more than plausible.
As it starts, we meet young Alex (Devon Sawa) heading off with his class mates
on a field trip to Paris.
Immediately upon arriving at the airport, Alex has a bad feeling. He can’t
describe it, and even as everyone else is excited about the trip, he can’t
shake the feeling something will go wrong. He starts to see and hear things,
which are in fact signs from Death, that this night and this flight have been
pre-determined as the deciding factor in his fate. For some unexplained reason,
Alex is bestowed with the gift of premonition, and has a vision as soon as he
boards the plane.
From his seat, Alex sees the plane take off, and everything
seems normal to begin with. The flight starts a little bumpy, then it begins to shake
violently, and Alex’s worst nightmares are realised when there is an explosion
on the left side of the plane, sending a ball of fire ripping through the
passenger cabin and blowing the plane up. But then, he wakes up. Back in his
seat before all that began. What happened? Did he dream it? Travel through
time? And why did it seem so real? In the confusion and panic, Alex runs off
the plane yelling to everyone that it’s going to explode. In the scuffle, a few
other students and a teacher are all
removed from the plane. While the argument continues in the airport boarding
lounge, the plane takes off, ascends into the night sky, and explodes. Everyone
falls to the ground in terror and shock, turning their fearful eyes to Alex,
who predicted exactly what just happened in front of them.
A month passes by, and the school is in attendance at a
special memorial service for the students and teachers lost in the plane
explosion. Ravaged with guilt and remorse, Alex is just trying to piece his
life together again, but the survivors who got off the plane all have
issues with him. Carter (Kerr “Dawson’s
Creek” Smith) is reluctant that Alex did not save him and won’t let him
forget that he is in control of his own life. Billy (Sean William Scott) thinks
that Alex can now predict the future of all events and asks questions such as
whether or not he will pick up the girl he’s interested in. And Clear (Ali Larder),
a quiet, lonely girl is just thankful for being alive and lets Alex know that
is because of him.
From here, the brilliant premise of this film kicks into
gear, as Death returns to claim the lives he couldn’t have on that plane crash,
and he will do it in the most devious and evil of ways. Alex’s best friend Tod
(Chad Donella) is the first to go. In the bathroom at night readying himself for bed,
he slips and gets his neck caught in a tie cord in the bath, which then wraps itself
around his throat. He falls into the bath, where the cord proceeds to tighten
itself even more, until he is strangled to death. But to the unseeing
eye, this would appear as if Tod just hung himself. Alex receives a sign that Tod
is in trouble, but gets to his house too late. His friend’s body is wheeled out
by the coroner, with the FBI agents who interviewed Alex at the airport on the
scene. They spot Alex on arrival, and watch him with suspicion.
The next day, Alex meets up with Clear to discuss an idea.
What if Tod was just the first? He describes the feeling of death being all
around him, all the time and needs to know what is going on. As two more deaths occur, looking just like accidents, Alex
begins to unravel Death’s design. He concludes that his classmates and teacher
die in the order they would have died if they stayed on the plane. Convinced he
can cheat Death again, Alex will fight to the very last breath in order to
live. But Death doesn’t like to be cheated a second time and comes back for
Alex over and over, with more ferocity and viciousness each time.
The makers of Final Destination probably couldn’t have
predicted how impacting their little film would go on to be. It was an innovative
entry in the teen horror/thriller genre, establishing it’s own rules and
opening the door way to endless opportunities for people to get killed, and
it’s legacy continued for well over a decade, with four sequels coming out until
the last entry in 2011.
Final Destination is one of just a couple of my teen movies,
which continues to stay with me well into my twenties and even now in my
thirties. As its subsequent sequels came out every two to three years, off to the
cinema I would go, to see what new and twisted ways the filmmakers came up with
to kill people. On that note, the Final Destination series is a franchise of
films (like the "Saw" series) that plays with the idea of death, and the lengths people will
go to in order to stay alive. Death seems so far off and distant for must of
us, and we rarely tend to think about it or remind ourselves that one day, we
will all die. We come to accept that when we’re young I guess, and it’s never
been something I’ve feared personally. I try to just get on with my life and
live it to the full. And this gets the audience to question how hard and long they
would fight for their lives knowing that death was coming for them. But the
problem is we never know when death will come for us. We could have an accident
in the bathroom, get hit by a bus, have our house explode, get run over by a
train or a barrage of other possibilities like the characters in this film
experience.
Final Destination is certainly one of the more original and
creative films of my teens and of it’s era, and continued to shock and entertain
me in it’s follow up films, and if you’ve seen Final Destination 2, like me and
everyone else, you’ve never looked at a truck carrying logs on the freeway the
same way have you?
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