Movie Review: Final Destination 5
I have a theory about why Death works the way it does in the Final Destination series: it’s bored. It gives someone the ability to see what’s going to happen, and then sees what he does in order to survive (or she, in the case of Final Destination 3) and/or save the lives of those around them, before squashing them like a bug and moving on to the next group. I present this theory because, well, after five movies, the actual film series hasn’t bothered to give an explanation at all. In essence, Final Destination 5 is the same film repackaged yet again; nothing here adds to the “lore” of the series, nor does 90% of the cast offer anything memorable. But, there is one thing this series does and does well: find new ways of bumping everyone off. And until the third act, Final Destination 5 does not disappoint.
Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) is having a bad day. His girlfriend Molly (Emma Bell) just dumped him, he works days at a cubicle under hard-nosed, slimy manager Dennis (David Koechner), his night job in a kitchen might have him getting shipped off to Paris (What? And leave all this behind?), and he just had a vision that the bridge his bus is on is about to collapse and lead to his horrible, bloody death. Naturally, just like the previous installations, he’s able to save, well, some of his co-workers (we have to keep the expendable victims manageable, so we can forget their names later), only to find out that unlike what the Terminator series taught us, the future is set. Thus follows the inevitable bone crunching, eye-lasering fun the series has always offered up.
Normally, being repetitive isn’t a bad thing. After all, Saw, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street offered up pretty much the same formula for years. And what is so interesting about the Final Destination movies is that it is unrestrained by the chains of a proper villain. For Jason, you have to wander into the woods alone with impure thoughts and a bag of illicit substances. For Jigsaw…well, I only saw the first two Saw movies, but if those were any indication, you had to be a fairly horrible person to begin with. Heck, for Freddy to get you, you still had to sleep (or have lived) within spitting distance of Elm Street. But with Death being an incorporeal force with a mean streak, everything around you could kill you, at any time. It doesn’t matter how improbable the event, it will find a way.
I said earlier that it’s possible Death is simply bored and wants to shake up the universe a bit. This goes a long way towards explaining two things. One, Death really hates people. It’s not enough for someone to simply fall off a building or get clonked on the head. No, Death has to make sure when you die, it has be in the most excruciatingly painful way possible. In other words, Death is a real jerk. Secondly, Death, like screenwriters, suddenly realizes that it’s all fun and games to set up elaborate death traps early on, but once you start getting towards the 90-minute mark of the film, it’s time to just start chucking people to the wind. Out of all the initial survivors in this film, we get three nice, long, leisurely set-up death sequences with decent enough pay-offs (the best one involving a trip to a day spa and the worst way to experience alternative medicine), and the rest…well, just sort of happen. Gee, you’d almost think Death was getting tired if his own game and just wanted to move on to the next group of generics.
As a fan of the slasher genre, I understand there is an unwritten rule that character development in a film like this is not simply secondary, but almost patently unnecessary. Even so, what development exists is so hollow that the only memorable thing about most of them is how they die. There are some exceptions to this: Isaac (P.J. Byrne), Nathan (Arlen Escarpeta), Koechner, and Peter (Miles Fisher). Byrne is great fun to watch playing the sort of office scumbag you hope never to work with. Escarpeta’s relationship with Roy (Brent Strait) as at-odds union employees is the only halfway believable one in the film (and he’s the first one to play with the solitary new idea this installment adds to the series) and Koechner…well, forget that his character’s name is Dennis, he’s playing himself, which is never a bad thing. And Fisher is Tom Cruise. I really know of no better way to describe his performance in this movie. He tries to play suave at times, goes quietly crazy at times, and then goes wildly crazy at times. I was half-hoping there would be a scene with a couch somewhere in the movie for him to jump up and down on. I would have said the performance was unintentional, but one of his earlier credits was, in fact, playing Tom Cruise in Superhero Movie. It really is uncanny how he can nearly capture Tom’s mannerisms without missing a beat. I do say this as a good thing…but it also doesn’t help that girlfriend Candance (Ellen Wroe) looks like a young Katie Holmes if you squint the right way. Oh, and Tony Todd shows up again for a little bit. He’s about as unhelpful explaining things as his character’s ever been.
Jacqueline MacInnes Wood in Final Destination 5. © 2011 – New Line Cinema.
It isn’t all bad though. Final Destination 5 is entertaining in a CG blood-spurting way. The opening bridge scene is possibly the best sequence in the film in more ways than one, followed closely by the spa bit and a decidedly unpleasant vision correction “mishap” (it is probably the most cringe-worthy moment not only of the movie, but of the series as a whole). And the 3D is actually handled very well. Unlike conversions, this one was shot with 3D in mind, and it is obvious…unlike conversions which tend to flatten far backgrounds to a single plane, depth in the opening outdoor scene is remarkable, with distance noticeable even between branches in the trees on the horizon. And indoor scenes are also shot to take advantage of the depth, most notably the kitchen scenes and those in the factory. Of course, as befits the 3D horror genre, things aren’t complete until eyeballs and sharp objects pop out of the screen at you, and the movie has that in spades. If Kung Fu Panda 2 was one the best achievements this year in natural 3D, Final Destination 5 is the big winner in the gimmicks department (so far anyway). I’d tell you to watch closely for the scene where blood splats right on the camera, but I sincerely doubt you’d miss it.
So, as a film, Final Destination 5 ranks the least of the series…the freshness of the original is long gone with no attempt to reinvigorate the formula; the sheer wink-and-nod hamminess that made Final Destination hilarious has been toned down to mere “splatstick” dark humor; and the characters are so tepid I couldn’t remember half the names until I looked them up on the web not more than an hour later; and yes, the CG blood still looks incredibly fake. But, for pure, unadulterated slasher fun (and for some sly nods to fans of the series), and reference quality 3D cinematography, it’s decent. To be honest, I was a lot happier watching this exact same movie remade a fifth time than I was watching Transformers remade a third time. For one, it was a lot shorter. And, well, I did get the willies driving home from the theater, looking around at the intersection in case the traffic light decided to slice me in half. Guess it did something right.
Seth Paul
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