Alex Browning is a high school student who is going on a trip to Paris with his other classmates. He boards Volée Airlines Flight 180, but before the takeoff he has a premonition where he sees how the plane explodes in the air, killing everyone on board. He starts panicking, screaming that there will be an accident, and he is removed from the plane. Several of his friends and some other classmates follow him, including one of the teachers. They don’t believe him, of course,with the exception of one: Clear Rivers, who found his reaction so believable that she also decided to leave the plane before takeoff. Afterwards, they can see that the plane explodes shortly after takeoff. Huh! So Alex wasn’t just a crazy loon after all. Naturally, him predicting this beforehand makes him suspicious, and he is interrogated by the FBI. Suspicious or not, it’s pretty clear he doesn’t have anything to do with the accident, and he is just one of the lucky people to be alive. Or…that is, until the survivors keep getting killed in freak accidents. It seems Alex has disrupted Death’s plan, and the lives are now being claimed in the order they would have died if they hadn’t left the plane.
Final Destination is a supernatural horror film from 2000, directed by James Wong. The screenplay was written by Wong, Glenn Morgan, and Jeffrey Reddick, and it was based on a story by Reddick that was originally written as a spec script for an episode for The X-Files. The movie became a financial success despite receiving mostly negative reviews from the critics, making $10 million on its opening weekend. There has since been 5 other films made, with the 6th is heading to the theaters later this month.
What makes Final Destination, and all its sequels for that matter, so entertaining is it’s rather simple premise that still opens up for so many ideas. How many ways are there to die? More than we could possibly fathom. Everyday situations, household items, everything can literally turn into a death trap if the circumstances are right. And while the film series could have become too repetitive, it still manages to serve up so many inventive ways of how people could die in the most unexpected ways possible. In this first movie, the first death provides the classic formula for many of the deaths: several things happen which makes you constantly wonder how the person will get killed off, often with a few red herrings thrown at us as well. Many of the deaths are shown in a slightly cartoony way, sometimes with a bit of gore (although no excessive amounts). Storywise, the suspense mainly lies in how our protagonist, Alex, tries to figure out a way to beat Death while getting help from Clear, the only one who truly believed him right from the start.
Final Destination is a fun popcorn horror movie, where the many ways to die in otherwise normal, everyday situations is the fun part. And while this movie probably didn’t have the same effect as Jaws had on its beach-lovers, I can guess it at least gave a few people the jitters if they were traveling by plane shortly afterwards..
Director: James Wong
Writers: Glen Morgan, James Wong, Jeffrey Reddick
Country & year: USA/Canada, 2000
Actors: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, Kristen Cloke, Daniel Roebuck, Roger Guenveur Smith, Chad Donella, Seann William Scott, Tony Todd, Amanda Detmer, Brendan Fehr
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0195714/
