So Far...: The 'Final Destination' Series

Before you go see Final Destination 5, let's take a quick look back at the first four installments to see how the series is going so far. Now, I'm gonna be clear on how these movies work. We meet a bunch of hot, young twenty-somethings who are doing something big. One of them has a vision of something terrible happening with all of them falling to their death. He/she lets them know and they all think he/she is crazy. Then it actually happens. But these people will soon find out that you can't cheat death and one by one, the entity itself get them killed in strange, deadly ways. Now once you're in a Final Destination movie, chances are you won't be back for a sequel. Pretty much, everybody dies in really grumsome ways. Each film has a different scenerio and different people having the vision and I'll take a look at them. Let's start with the one that started it all:

Final Destination   

In the year 1999, Browning (Devon Sawa) is going on his high school trip to Paris along with his fellow students and teachers. So, of course, before the fiight, the student has a vision that Flight 180 will explode when it takes off, killing everyone on board. He gets them forced off the plane and then his vision turns into reality, leaving him, Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), Carter Horton (Kerr Smith), Billy Hitchcock (Seann William Scott), Valerie Lewton (Kristen Cloke), Terry Chaney (Amanda Detmer) and Tod Waggner (Chad Donella) as the only survivors left. That is, until one month later, Ted is strangled in the shower. William Bludworth (Tony Todd) tells Browning and Clear that Death is out to get anyone who survived the explosion and one by one, it happens. The first movie got mixed reviews at the time it was released, but I enjoyed the film. The deaths were clever and inventive and the performances weren't bad, however at times, the dialogue doesn't really work, so I'll give the film about **3/4 (Two stars and three quarters). And now for the second film...

Final Destination 2
Set one year after the first film, Kim Corman (A.J. Cook) has a vision of a pile-up on Route 23, killing everyone on the highway. Of course, she stops her car on the entrance ramp, which stops many people, including a police officer and a pregnant women from entering the highway. When the officer asks Kim why she is not moving, the vision actually happens and it kills her friends in her car. And then, you know what happens to the survivors. Dead. Yeah, this one sounds like the same thing, but what makes this sequel cooler than the first is the deaths. They were much cooler and gorier than the first, the performances are pretty decent to good and Ali Larter reprises her role from the first, which makes this more interesting as she was the last remaining survivor of the Flight 180 explosion. I give the this film *** (three stars) and this sequel convinced me that the series was getting better. Then the third one came out.

Final Destination 3
This one is set six years after the Flight 180 explosion and five years after the pile-up on Route 23. That's all you need to know. Oh, and the vision takes place on a roller coaster. Despite the return of the first film's director James Wong, FD3 was indicating the series was aging. Some of the deaths were pretty cool while others felt lame and repetitive and with the exception of Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ryan Merriman's performances, some of the perfomances was bringing the film down. I kind of blame the writing. It doesn't exactly give these people much to do, just scream and die. Then again, the deaths are really the star of the show. This one gets **1/2 (Two and a half stars). While I felt that one was a little dissapointing, it didn't compare to the one that came next.

The Final Destination
This one was supposed to be the final film, but thank God it wasn't, because this one was the worst of the series. Other than most of the deaths and the use of 3-D, which was a little gimmicky, but still cool, the dialogue is terrible and the way the actors deliver it is terrible. Oh yeah, and the NASCAR opening: LAME!. *1/2 (One and a half stars).

And now here we are. We're at Number 5 and it looks like the game has changed. This time, it's a collapsing bridge and of course, Death's gonna catch 'em. But this one has a little twist: Death can skip you if you take someone's life. I'll review the film soon, so I'll see how that subplot goes. For now, here's the trailer: