The Final Destination: Death Needs Attention



 

The Final Destination franchise has sidestepped real-life tragedies while serving as a blanket metaphor for grief and America’s inability to cope with disaster. The first three films serve as a loose trilogy, each (often unintentionally) prophetic and harmonious with America’s general tenor, with Columbine and 9/11 serving as unspoken backdrops for anguish and paranoia. But it’s 2009 and a brand new decade is on the horizon.  Solemn horror based on notions of human life’s fragility would stick out like a severed thumb in the same summer of The Hangover. Now, like a Mike Tyson cameo, you needed a hook. 2007 saw the release of the universally panned, first digital 3D horror film Scar3D, and two years later the genre had embraced the fad completely, with both a Night of the Living Dead and My Bloody Valentine remake utilizing it. 


The mid-to-late aughts flirted with gimmicky cinema repeatedly. 2006 saw David R. Ellis’ Snakes On a Plane - a meme-filled, reshot-by-the-internet audience participation gag that deflated before it was released. Snakes made its money back, but it wasn’t the in-joke hit they expected. Ellis’ next film, Asylum, shares a name with a company notorious for DTV releases and wound up as such. But as digital 3D started to catch on as a fad, both Ellis and the Final Destination franchise had found a new excuse to return to theatres. 


In the ensuing years since the last trilogy, Death has gone quiet - at least stateside.  The previous film at least mentioned the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here, they’re absent, and the Grim Reaper’s looming presence in the US has dissipated. Earlier franchise entries avoided direct ties to current, major disasters out of an overabundance of caution. The absence of global affairs now only comes across as ignorant and crass as its apathetic, self-involved leads. The implication is uncomfortably obvious; Death's work has been going swimmingly across the Atlantic, leaving the West alone. So when he stages a multiple-car pile-up at a race track (loosely based on the 1955 Le Mans disaster) - perhaps due to an overinflated sense of competence - he misses 20-somethings Nick (Bobby Campo), Lori (Shantel VanSanten), Hunt (Nick Zano) and Janet (Haley Webb). Nick experiences a grisly premonition just before tires, rebar and chassis fly into the stands. 





The four friends and others are rushed out of the track as over 50 onlookers are killed. Death wastes no time in cleaning up the ones he missed, decapitating a woman in the parking lot. Earlier entries posited Death as an edgelord nerd, devising the most complex and gruesome games of Mousetrap and Dominoes imaginable. And there was no shortage of major tragedies to pick off survivors. The Final Destination is what happens when Death goes on a temper tantrum.


Like many horror villains, Death’s little flare-up is born out of neglect. In his time away, Americans stopped worrying about dying in a massive accident or attack. They’re comfortable enough to fall back on totems of luck. Hunt carries a lucky quarter, the Racist hangs a horseshoe on his rearview mirror.


That’s not a flippant description of the character. Others listed in the credits include “MILF”, “Cowboy”, “MILF’s husband”, “Mechanic”, “Girl on top” and “George” (Mykelti Williamson). The third film had slasher movie archetypes, this has Cliff’s Notes. Not that the leading cast is given much better; three are blank, attractive slates and Hunt is a horndog.  





When the MILF visits a beauty parlour, she faces countless perils, from scissors to electricity to a falling ceiling fan. When none of those pan out, Death whacks her in the eye with an errant rock run over by a lawnmower. The mechanic barely misses being crushed through an industrial chain-link fence by a van, only for Death to launch a gas canister into his chest. These are cheap shots for a supposed master constructor of mayhem. At barely 80 minutes, The Final Destination doesn’t take any care setting up its traps, rushing to the finishes like an overanxious teenager.  Tony Todd, whose cameos lend the often silly proceedings some much-needed gravitas, is absent. Even the order of deaths, something so critical in earlier entries, is confused and ultimately inconsequential. Throughout, Death is just clamouring for attention - and failing. 


Not that Death’s frustration isn’t relatable. It must be degrading being the Grim Reaper and having to signal insidious warnings that these morons would notice. It’s no wonder he resorts to a T-shirt that reads, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” He’s irritable, rushed and trigger-happy. Imagine being Mors and needing to establish your bonafides to an entitled late aughts frat bro with frosted tips.  


You feel sorry for him. Death was never subtle, but he never came off as clumsy. Here we see the sweaty palms of the nerd setting up his Dominoes, insisting you watch them fall, and when it fails he angrily knocks the rest down. Now, he’s even throwing them directly into your line of sight. Digital 3D was a trend too unwieldy for studios, and the anaglyph DVD looks awkward and unimpressive. The only way to experience The Final Destination as it would have been seen theatrically requires a niche technology. Like many people around the end of the aughts, Death made a bad investment. 



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