If every terrible feeling you ever had — every lurch in your stomach during a bit of plane turbulence, every sinking feeling on a subway train that’s going just a little too fast, every tightening of your chest when driving behind a huge semi truck — always came spectacularly, horrifyingly true, you might be in a “Final Destination” movie.
The first film in the franchise, directed by James Wong, was expanded from an unproduced spec script for an episode of “The X-Files” written by Jeffrey Reddick. It follows a group of teenagers who, after avoiding a fatal plane crash on a school trip because one of their classmates has a premonition of the disaster, discover that Death won’t let its plans be foiled so easily. That film has since spurred five others, all known for the Rube Goldberg-esque kill sequences that occur when Death returns to claim its victims in increasingly bizarre accidents.
With the latest film, “Final Destination: Bloodlines” (directed by Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky), now in theaters, we have a premonition of what you can expect to see in any given “Final Destination” movie. You might even say we’ve seen it all before.
Opening Disaster
Foreboding Song
Before disaster strikes, a musical cue indicates to our oracle that something is amiss. In the first movie, the prophet is on the toilet in the airport bathroom and, upon hearing John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High,” remarks with a quivering voice, “He died in a plane crash.” The films are filled with little omens like this, both blatant and subtle — though usually blatant. And though my paranoid friends tend to stay away from these movies, I think these omens make them a worrier’s ultimate fantasy: a world that is brimming with signals alerting every bad thing to those who are observant enough to catch them.
Tony Todd
Since these films feature a rotating main cast and an invisible villain, Tony Todd as the menacing mortician William Bludworth is one of few recurring characters in the franchise. He usually only shows up for one scene, using that distinctive low, gravely voice of his to rattle off warnings to the kiddos, always cold and slightly removed and with the air that he knows more than he’s letting on. His presence in terms of screen time is minimal, but in terms of impact is profound. Todd died last year at the age of 69, but it’s a treasure to see him one last time in the newest film, and with a slightly bigger part to play (and a tribute in the credits).
Blood and Guts
Squeamish viewers, beware: There’s no shortage of gore here. It often reads as more blithe than brutal, though. The contrast between the ordinary, everyday objects and the fountains of viscera they create is stark, and the mismatch lends the grisly deaths an air of farce, the kind of kill you can’t help but chuckle at in disbelief. I have a special fondness for the especially ridiculous effects used in the fourth and fifth entries, which were made for 3-D and consequently involved chunks of weirdly smooth computer-generated flesh flying directly at the camera.
Chain Reactions
The Rube Goldberg death machines are perhaps the most essential element of any “Final Destination” film, the boldest line on their calling card and their main pop culture association. They are also part of the reason the formula can be endlessly riffed on: Rather than relying on traditional weapons to deal the final blow, almost anything can be lethal, and in combinations you’d never expect. Spaghetti + fire + ladder, for instance, or tanning bed + slushie + improperly secured CD rack. It’s always clear that Death is looming, but its unusual and endlessly creative methods keep the viewer on their toes (and provide a good bit of humor).
A Misguided Plan to Cheat Death
These are essentially slasher films, with the added twist that the villain is Death itself. And since our protagonists can’t run from Death the same way they might from Michael Myers, they have to come up with other ways to evade the big bad. Mainly, this is in the form of trying to read the aforementioned omens. But in later installations, these bids at cheating death a second time get increasingly complicated, like the idea that an unexpected birth might cause Death to rewrite its plan from scratch, or that by killing someone else one can take whatever time that person had left.
Dangerous Liquids
As the means of death get more and more ridiculous — and the chain reactions get longer and longer — there’s one ingredient you can always count on: a trickle of some liquid going somewhere it shouldn’t. Whether it’s water from the shower that slicks the bathroom floor, alcohol from a cracked glass that shorts out a computer or gasoline leaking out of a tank that causes an outsize explosion, fluids are frequently deadly. The characters might have a more successful plan for cheating death if it just involved some paper towels.
Misdirections
The films get increasingly meta as the franchise goes on, playing with the savvy viewer’s expectations. Elements that seem dangerous don’t come into play at all or they factor in much later than expected, like a screw on a high beam that a gymnast dances around for an agonizingly long time, or a tense dentist appointment that ends up being harmless. In some instances, like when a character enters a commercial kitchen, so many possible murder weapons fill every corner that it makes you realize that the world is one big death trap.
Famous Last Words
“You’re dead!” “Who’s next?” “I’m not going to die!” Any of these phrases, plus an expletive or two, are the kinds of things you’re bound to hear from the lips of someone who’s about to get slammed by a bus or flattened like a pancake by a billboard. The way action movies have their quippy one-liners delivered by the hero before he open-fires on the bad guys, the “Final Destination” movies have their ironic dialogue delivered by the hero before Death open-fires on him.
A Final Twist
Every great horror movie needs an ultimate twist of the knife, and this series is no exception. Even as the characters relax into the denouement, finally going on that trip to Paris or reuniting with friends in the city, that tightening of the chest always returns, leaving both the viewer and the character right back where they started, but with an even clearer sense of just how bad things can get. The unshakable feeling that something terrible is just around the corner remains. In real life, blessedly, we’re mostly wrong. In these movies, that gut feeling is almost always right.
