Final Destination DVD > Reviews > Destination Death

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Good
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Outstanding

Advantages:	A gorefest, little details that bring the film together
Disadvantages:	No story line to get my teeth into, some of the acting was a bit wooden

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Before I start the opinion on this film I've got to tell you I'm a wuss. Seriously, when I was at school I wanted to be a nurse but the panic that bubbled up in my throat when I saw blood was enough to put me off the idea before the careers officer could say 'no chance' anyway. This irrational fear of blood was also responsible for me not being able to say that I've seen many horror flicks, I watch a film for enjoyment not to feel queasy every five minutes as someone gets a leg hacked off! As I've got older though I can cope a bit better with blood and gore, which is just as well as this film is full of it.

The plot itself doesn't take much explaining. The film starts off as a group of high school students are set to go on a trip to Paris but one student in particular (Alex) is feeling very apprehensive about the whole thing although he doesn't know why. When everyone boards the plane Alex has a vision of the plane starting to break up in mid air and then exploding. He panics so much that he has to leave the plane along with five other students and a teacher, with those left behind thinking Alex is a total nutcase who's ruined their holiday. The plane takes off and then **bang**, it hasn't been in the air for two minutes and suddenly there's a fireball where the plane should have been. Obviously this freaks Alex out and when the FBI arrive on the scene they interview him as a possible suspect, although how they could possibly imagine a nerdy looking 17 year old to have the brains and imagination to create such a catastrophe is a bit weird. But then things get worse. The seven people who left the plane start dying off one by one and although he doesn't have any more visions of what's going to happen, Alex starts to get premonitions and a feeling that something isn't quite right.

When a news report into the crash comes on tele, Alex spots the connection. When the fireball gutted the plane, it travelled in a route that made direct targets of the seven survivors and according to their seating plan they are all dying off in a particular order. All I'll say about this part of the story line is it was stupid, obviously the writers of Final Destination couldn't think of a plausible reason to start killing teenagers so they padded the film out with a silly explanation. End of plot. A quick recap: lots of blood, lots of death and not much story line to get your teeth into.

OK so that's the story. Doesn't look too good on paper does it? It's basically a teen horror flick (think Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer and you'll know what I mean) and I don't usually like these types of film but this one was great. The deaths are... erm... bloody and horrible and the 'jump' factor is high. The film is full of little details which are so clever and really make you interested in the film. A good example of this is when the group are in the airport and Alex is just starting to feel uneasy, as he gives his baggage to the check-in assistant his eyes are drawn to the label she sticks to it which (of course) reads: FINAL DESTINATION: PARIS. He then looks around the airport and looks at the flight announcing boards (sorry, don't know what they're called! lol) and the word 'TERMINAL' fills the screen. They are due to board flight 180 and at the beginning of the film, unknown to Alex, there's a close up view of his digital bedside clock which changes while he's asleep from 1.00 to 1.80. I saw this at the beginning but didn't see the significance of it until I realised the number of the flight they're about to board.

The premonition that Alex has is a graphic picture of what probably happens in a real air disaster. The panic of the passengers and crew, people are getting sucked out of the plane, oxygen masks are dropping down everywhere and eventually a fireball races along the plane torching everyone in it's path. Scary stuff. Devon Sawa plays teenage angst riddled Alex perfectly, as he sees his friends die he goes from being a happy guy joking around with his friends to someone who has the power of life or death in his hands but doesn't want it. His growing friendship with Clear Rivers (played by Ali Larter) is nice to watch but it's really just the token love interest. Clear has lots to say for herself but her character isn't really developed in any way to make her important to the film, she isn't your typical gorgeous main girl character that you usually get in teen horror films but she's fairly likeable. The rest of the cast are your 'bulk up' teenagers who get picked off one by one and all of them die novel and gruesome deaths. And this is the scary part, the thing that kills them isn't someone you can see. It's more an evil force trying to keep to the path of these kids' destiny. They should have died with the other passengers on flight 180 and fate dictates that these survivors must also die, so this evil force kills them off in order the fireball would have killed them. The fact that you can't see whatever's behind the killings is horrible, there's no 'baddie' to focus on: in Nightmare on Elm Street you've got Freddy to look out for, in Scream you've got the bloke in the mask but in this film death just strikes without warning. And death is ugly...

Final Destination had me on the edge of my seat all the way through, not because of the fantastic (sarcasm!) story line but because you always know there's a death coming soon and you're trying to scout out clues as to when it's going to happen and who's going to die. I had to laugh when the detective who's doing a post mortem on the first of Alex's friends to die said to Alex 'I'll be seeing you soon.' Not what you want someone who work's in a morgue to say to you! lol

Thanks for reading.