Final Destination
Cast
Devon Sawa .... Alex Chance Browning
Ali Larter .... Clear Rivers
Kerr Smith .... Carter Horton
Tony Todd .... William Bludworth
Kristen Cloke .... Ms. Valerie Lewton
Directed by
James Wong
Rater #2 has description and review.
Rater #1
Has Not Seen Movie
Rater #2
8/10. When you go to watch a movie like Final Destination, which is
obviously a teen horror movie, you take your chances. You could get
something genuinely creepy yet tongue-in-cheek, like Scream, or you
could wind up seeing something like Darkness Falls or They. You just
never know. When Final Destination came up on my Netflix list, I
didn't know what to expect. Would it be something original and scary,
or just some lame dud? Thankfully, it turned out to be the former.
Alex (Devon Sawa), along with about 40 others, are all set to take
off on a plane destined for their senior trip in France. Right before
it is set to take off, however, he has a premonition that shows him
that soon after takeoff the plane will crash and everyone on board
will be dead. He and others are forced off of the plane, and, sure
enough, the plane crashes with everyone else on board. While everyone
thinks that Alex caused the accident, he knows that they were
supposed to die on board. Soon, everyone who was supposed to be on
the plane start dying one by one.
Knowing that this was written and directed by the same team who did
Willard, I knew that a lot of the movie wouldn't be just needless
blood, but that there would be some sort of a creepy atmosphere to it
all. And, by gum, there was. Although it wasn't as atmospheric as the
aforementioned movie, and it relied a lot on sudden violence, it was
still creepy. It seems like horror movies today rely on quick jumps
to scare the audience. Final Destination sure had some, but also the
music and the general movie itself was thrilling. When you could see
that something was going to happen, you wanted to yell at the
character to not do so-and-so. Then you sit back and enjoy the ride.
Something else that surprised me was how many special effects were
needed. That was one major drawback. At times, the special effects
didn't look real AT ALL (re: the bathroom scene), or there were too
many when less is more (re: the final, climactic storm). One other
thing that upset me was the constant need to do odd lighting. Because
of the off-again, on-again lighting, it's sometimes impossible to
tell what's happening. In Final Destination's pursuit to become
something ultra-modern, nifty camera movements are tried, but for the
unnecessary reasons. For example, a long, overhead tracking shot is
used when two people are going to the bathroom. Very unnecessary, if
you ask me. I just realized how much Glen Morgan and James Wong are
fascinated with people going to the bathroom. There must be a few
scenes of that in Final Destination, and one quite humorous one in
Willard
I also thought that the movie took too long to get started. We
understand that Alex will see the plane crashing, but for about the
first half hour that's all that's "implied". It's very annoying.
Thankfully, the characters aren't as stupid as they usually are in
teen horror movies, and I did like all of the talk about "death's
pattern", etc. Overall, get on board to Final Destination and it
won't crash.
Rated R for violence and terror, and for language.
Running time: 98 minutes
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