I caught a lot of crap at work for “liking” the Final Destination series. Primarily, this is coming from a guy who proclaims his favorite movie ever is the original Saw, so I consider his opinion moot. Given the unevenness of the series, I would say “tolerate” is a more appropriate verb for my feelings on these films. That seems fair since Final Destination films seem to range from pretty good, like the original, to the offensively stupid, such as a large chunk of part 3 and all of part 4. Since the various writers and directors of the previous four films seem to have moved on, Final Destination 5‘s writer Eric Heisserer and director Steven Quale have almost a blank canvas to create on.

The synopses part of these reviews almost seem rote now but if you’ve seen any of the previous films, you know the gist. In this case, Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) has a vision of a cataclysmic bridge collapse on the way to his company’s team building retreat. He manages to get everyone off the bus only for them all to get made dead via collapsing bridge decks, swinging suspension cables, or random sailboats. Fearing his premonition, Sam manages to get his girlfriend Molly (Emma Bell), friend Peter (Miles Fisher) and other company folk off the bridge before it collapses. From then, they all die. This is not a spoiler. This is expected for this type of film.

With five films in the can now, the main hook of the Final Destination series is undoubtedly the deaths and the almost far-fetched yet somewhat conceivable ways that people can die. On that front, FD5 is almost tame in respect to some of the other films as many of the deaths are fairly straight-forward bad luck such as the flying wrench to the skull or crushing blow to the head from Buddha. Only one sequence really sticks out as the typical Rube-Goldbergian style that the series is built on. This scene though in a gymnasium is full of misdirection and red herrings (not sure that this applies here but we’ll go with it) that make the final outcome completely out of the blue, especially since this part was featured heavily in the trailers.

In the review for FD3, I remarked: “it is clear for me that what makes a Final Destination good as opposed to just mediocre are the characters.” FD4 (or THE Final Destination if you must) was shit because it completely disregards characters entirely for stupid gross-out gory moments and deaths. FD5 though walks the thin line not seen since the second between characters you actually care about and over-the-top death scenes. Here we have a good few minutes to get introduced to the characters and their histories and dynamics before they are almost playing on death’s swing set. While it might seem minor, the fact that Sam and Molly are on the rocks or that Olivia is self-conscious about her glasses are far more beneficial than just padding the film’s runtime. Unlike the last film, we can connect with these characters to some extent and can appreciate their relationships or worries which make their inevitable deaths just a bit more impactful.

It certainly helps greatly that we have professional actors in the film as opposed to the bottom-of-the-casting-barrel detritus that turned up last time. I don’t know why but I am a fan of D’Agosto, probably stretching back to his performance in Election. #pbf’s unrequited love Emma Bell is no slouch either as the love interest and final girl of the group. And Jacqueline MacInnes Wood is quite fetching. And a good actress to boot! In fact, all of the cast including Courtney B. Vance and David Koechner are believable in their respective roles even though Vance’s random agent seems a bit ridiculous since he is trying to blame a natural bridge collapse on Sam.

Vance’s role seemed to be a not very well conceived callback to the first where Alex is suspected of involvement in the airplane blowing up. That worked, to an extent, in that film but the notion that a mild-mannered guy could cause a freak natural disaster bridge collapse is stretching things a bit. There are other underlying callbacks to the first with the mentions of Paris and occurrences of the number 180 but there was no moment where the survivors figured out how their situation tied into the first film which was almost a staple in this series (the last film notwithstanding to my recollection.) Yet, without giving too much away, the final sequence ties in nicely with Devon Sawa and Kerr Smith from the original in a way I was pretty happy with.

At this rate, there isn’t too much new that can be done with these films but I was pleasantly surprised with how effectively Heisserer and Quale are able to balance the characters with the expected death scenes. Given that this was an online rental, I did not have the benefit of 3D while watching it but the effects sans one dimension were great (especially with the opening bridge collapse) so I was not missing too much. If I had to pick, I’d probably put this entry on par with part 2. It’s amazing how having realistic, albeit someone douchey, characters can make a mindless movie like this so much more enjoyable.

I will admit that I did not have entirely good expectations going into this one. Our own #pbf referred to this as garbage, and he has not seen THE third film in this series. I had seen a few positive reviews for THE Final Destination though so I figured maybe it was an acquired taste, much like Mountain Dew: Live Wire. Oh, dear God was I wrong. So, so wrong … I knew in THE first ten minutes of this film that it would be given THE “honorable” crap category. THE other seventy minutes were merely confirmation that I can judge a stupid movie by its even stupider fucking cover.

At this point in THE series, Final Destination has merely transformed into a Mad Libs for “horror” films. ________ (Proper Noun) has a vision of ________ (horrible event) before it happens. He/She manages to extract ________ (number) people from THE disaster before it happens. ________ (Proper Noun that rhymes with Seth) comes after them all in ridiculously over-THE-top ways. Roll credits. It is bad enough when there is no shock or surprise in a movie. It is another when that movie seems to exist solely to show you how much THE human race sucks.

I must formally apologize to James Wong and Glen Morgan for criticizing FD3. After all, they created characters as deep as the ocean floor compared to this movie. I honestly cannot remember any of the character’s names, not because I didn’t hear them enough, but I just did not give a damn. I liked that the first film took a while to get the to big disaster. The second and third films were not as in depth but it was still grounding to see our characters in normal life before (Proper Noun that rhymes with Seth) comes knocking at their door. This movie though has the big foreseen disaster before the opening credits! What the ________ (Word that rhymes with duck)!

Considering that this was the shortest film in the series thus far, with probably as many kills mind you, regular movie goers likely thought they were in for a treat when Death’s vengeance came roaring back again and again with little time between. Since I’ve suffered through all of these movies in three days (for you, dammit!), I felt like I was watching a Faces of Death video with mindless, stupidly staged kills back-to-back-to-back. It’s bad enough that a few of the deaths were recycled from the earlier movies but the fact that everything was so rapid leaves no time or reason to contemplate on what has just happened. Literally, one character is mowed-over by a vehicle and the other character in the scene simply turns around and moves on. Compare that to Terri in the original when she was hit by a bus out of nowhere that I was floored by. No time for such nonsense here.

I would assume that this moderately budgeted movie had to trim some fat to make up for the spectacular 3D graphics. Of course, I watched this on DVD on my regular folk TV so the 3D was nonexistent. The main character’s visions of the upcoming deaths though were rendered in fantastic graphics that I have not seen since the age of PSOne. Literally, a snake or nail or whatever coming at your face looks just as real as Final Fantasy 7. Since the effects were so pricey, gone are any decent, or even marginal, actors. Instead, we get a bunch of nice-looking 20-somethings who couldn’t act their way out of an iCarly lunchbox. But, their role is merely to die in horrible, yet laudable, ways so perhaps that is what the filmmakers were going for.

Yet, I cannot believe that David R. Ellis, director of the comparably Shakespearean FD2, would sign on to such crap. Every man needs a meal ticket and I guess this was his. I am fully willing to accept a horror movie with shit actors, shit characters, and shit effects. But I was not quite expecting that from this admittedly mediocre series as it plays like the straight-to-video version of a Final Destination sequel, complete with one (1!) reputable actor in Mykelti Williamson. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about this film.

It’s not apparent during the first viewing of Final Destination 3, but there is something missing which greatly strips out a lot of enjoyment compared to the previous films. Well, of course, there are plenty of graphic deaths and gore so that is present and accounted for. There is a skimpy callback to the first film, so nothing out of place there. And even Tony Todd returns, in voice at least. So what is it that the returning team of Glen Morgan and James Wong forgot in this installment? Where should we start?

I wonder if Morgan and Wong approached this as a semi-remake of the first film. We start with a bit of bonding time between control-freak Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), her boyfriend (inconsequential actor), his friend Kevin (Ryan Merriman), and his girlfriend (another inconsequential actor) at their high school fling (?) which takes place in an amusement park. We meander around, meet some other ill-conceived characters who were created just to die horrifically, and then the big catastrophe happens as a roller coaster flings its passengers off the track to their DOOM! Of course, this is all realized by Wendy to be a frighteningly real vision who simply stands at a safe distance and yells to stop the ride that her friends are on. Wake me up when this stops carelessly retreading previous events.

Oh, damn. I missed the whole movie. Upon rewatching it, it is clear for me that what makes a Final Destination good as opposed to just mediocre are the characters. The main duo of Winstead and Merriman are decent enough but they seem to just flit by on the audience’s expectations of the good guys who know what is going on. They don’t really stand out other than when covered in blood-spatter. This happens often. It is somewhat disconcerting though that the creators of the original seemed to be too caught up in how to make the death scenes cooler than how to write secondary characters that resonate even a little like Billy or Carter from the first. Even most of the fodder from part 2 are more developed than just the doomed angry jock or the doomed angry Goth couple from this film.

Hell, the fact that two of the victims are kept in secret may have been an interesting angle if not that one of them is someone we have never seen before and thus don’t give a shit about. I may be on the opposite side of the spectrum here, but in order for a movie about people being killed to be interesting, I have to be at least passively invested in the characters. Maybe I’m an old fashioned kind of guy that way. After the opening scene, everyone other than Wendy and Kevin disappear unless it is time for them to be fed some glossed-over exposition about the events of the original or to be killed. This is fine and dandy except for the fact that you aren’t really sure who just got their head bifurcated by a truck engine because you only saw him in two scenes. If all I wanted to see were random deaths, I’d keep an eye out for Kenny on South Park (not the UFG one).

I am glad that Wong managed to curtail some of his more artsy tendencies as there were about 200% less crane shots in this film as the first. In fact, most of the scenes are directed competently except for some of the more lacking talent in the cast. Now, I’m not saying that the original was on par with Weekend at Bernie’s say, but it was manageable. Some of the scenes here though were just painfully awkward (especially with Winstead, I hope she does better in The Thing remake/whatever) and it is just another reminder that the series had devolved into little else than random deaths with a bit of exposition sprinkled in for flair.

It is disappointing that this movie was lacking so much that made the original semi-memorable even with the returning creators and excellent music again by Shirley Walker. I don’t hold out hope that the next one will be any better.

The original Final Destination is no grand pinnacle in cinema, or even horror films, but it does a few things right. Its follow-up is again no grand treasure, but a pretty effective continuation of the first and one that tries to loop back into the mythos of the first. Final Destination 2‘s main draw is the focus on elaborate deaths no doubt, but it almost taps into some of the humanity of the first. Moreso than those killer logs in the first act anyway.

The big forewarned death scene in this film is one of the best action/horror/carnage scenes ever in my opinion. If there is anything Mythbusters has taught me it is that a car is not likely to explode unless it is loaded up with a few hundred gallons of gasoline and some primer cord. I don’t think the makers of this film saw that episode. It’s still pretty awesome though.

Anyways, Kimberly (A.J. Cook) is on her way to a spring break blast with a few friends in tow when she has a vision of a massive traffic accident which claims the lives of dozens in pretty gnarly, if improbable, ways. A bunch of oddly bouncy logs break from a flat-bed trailer. They impale drivers, crash into other cars with fiery explosions, or simply cause massive fireballs out of non-flammable diesel gas. Whatevs. But it’s a dream. Or is it? If anything, FD2 has one of the more rewatchable eight minutes of film ever if you are entertained by senseless violence. I am, if that hasn’t been made apparent yet.

After Kimberly “saves” the lives of a few people by blocking their entry to the death’s interstate (her poorly established friends notwithstanding), the saved laugh and scoff at her premonition. “Ha, what a looney! She thinks she saved us from imminent death even though we clearly would have died if we were on that road. Witch!” It’s not as much crap as Devon Sawa gets in the first one, but that’s one thing that always bothered me about these films. Let’s outright blame the person who saved us from being mincemeat the first time. Brilliant strategy!

Director David R. Ellis and a smorgasbord of screenwriters do their best to emulate the tone of the first film but to no avail. The characters are not as deep, the scenarios are outrageously over-the-top, and they even bring Ali Larter back from the nuthouse to guide these poor souls as they get eviscerated by whatever Death (or God or whomever) throws their way. There were some moments in the first film that threatened to be deep philosophical discussions but that was mostly glossed over when a new body hit the floor. There is not as much depth in the conversations here.

This time, instead of pondering the whys about death, Kimberly, Clear, Officer Burke (Michael Landes), et al. are busy figuring out why things are different this time around with Death going in reverse chronological order when claiming its victims. The explanation that these victims were indirectly tied to those from the first is pretty out there but actually ties in nicely with the first film. But since the characters are not as complex as before, they are offset with death scenes that make up for it. Truth be told, most are actually pretty cool especially a couple in the back half of the film. Although, for characters who should have died in a massive car accident, they have no qualms about getting into a car again. Weird.

So, the action and the Rube Goldberg-y (this is mentioned in every other FD review so who am I to argue?) death scenes are quite enjoyable. As well as the gore; there is a fair amount of gore. But, the story feels rusty in just the second installment like a wheel about to fling off and tear you a new one. It’s not as solid a supernatural flick as the first, but it has its moments all the same.

Who would have thought that a spec script for The X-Files TV show could launch one of the bigger horror franchises in recent years? Apparently someone at New Line Cinema did and the result is lots of dead people by way of some rather bizarre methods. After four movies (and a fifth with Emma Bell! coming soon), no one goes to see a Final Destination movie for the characters or the acting. We go to see how morbid writers can concoct a way for someone to die. But it wasn’t always that way.

According to the DVD commentary, Final Destination (originally titled Flight 180) was written with adult characters but changed to teenagers after the rampant popularity of the Scream series and all of its successful copycats. It is a shame then that the original FD is lumped in with the likes of other teen-based horror (or as Roger Ebert calls them: Dead Teenager films) as co-writer and director James Wong and writers Jeffrey Reddick and Glen Morgan create a tale that may feature young adults getting dead, but one that has more promise than your average I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel.

If you’ve ever seen any of the films, you should know the story since it seems to get brought up every single time. Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) seems to be a slightly neurotic kid anyway. He has a premonition of the plane he and many others are on blowing up. He freaks out. Seven people get tossed from the plane. The plane explodes, killing everyone on board. This is not the film to watch before taking a long, cross-Atlantic flight. With the same series copying the basic gist so often, it is easy to forget just how effective the opening scenes were when I saw them in theaters eleven years ago. Unlike some of the later sequels, Alex’s tension is effectively built-up, not just thrust upon the character in a random foreshadow-y way.

After the debris settles and the survivors go home, Death comes knocking at their door in the order in which they would have been received. Alex and the apparent love interest Clear Rivers (yep, real character name played by Ali Larter) find out that Death cannot be escaped, only temporarily sidestepped. The rest of the movie features the remaining characters killed in oddly complex ways, but nowhere near the chinanery that is pulled out in the next few movies. The deaths are pretty impressive from an effects standpoint but are as simple as death by a falling sign or flying shrapnel. Nothing too Rube Goldberg-ian yet.

The most impressive part of this movie is the characters: specifically that they are almost real characters, not simply one-dimensional “teenagers” peppered throughout the movie for the purpose of upping the death count. The story largely facilitates this as we have a good fifteen minutes or so for the characters to “bond” or at least interact before the shit hits the fan. Even though we never really know why Carter (Kerr Smith) is such a dick to Billy Hitchcock (Seann William Scott) or why Clear is such a weirdo loner, the characters click enough to never really make those questions stand out.

Perhaps it can be chalked up to this being Wong’s feature film debut, but his direction, specifically his shot choices, were quite bizarre. There is hardly a scene in the film that does not have the camera dramatically panning or attached to a crane and it becomes tiresome quickly. Even while seeing this in theaters before I even realized such things, I was bothered by the sheer number of overly-artsy shots employed here. But, that is easy to forgive, as FD is an all-around solid horror film even if the blood and gore quotient would be dramatically increased in later installments.

It may have been molded similar to other interchangeable teen horror flicks but Final Destination was a bold experiment in the genre that shows one does not have to seen the main villain to be effected by it. Combine the largely effective characters with a good story and excellent music by composer Shirley Walker and you have a worthy film, even if New Line/Warner seems to want to kill any goodwill that entails.

Black comedies can be a hard combo to pull off, especially with the events that transpire in Very Bad Things. Comparatively to potty humor, black comedies (at least the good ones) tend to have an actual plot with real characters because that is really the only way that such a movie could work without an over reliance on bodily fluids. The danger comes from the delicate need to straddle the line between laughable and horrible that a black comedy must attempt. Writer and director Peter Berg is a talented guy and fortunately he is able to meld the two elements well, most of the time at least.

As Kyle and his friends escape sunny California for Las Vegas for a bachelor’s party (that sounds vaguely familiar), things start normal enough with some standard bickering in the car, especially from brothers Michael and Adam, Kyle getting shit for his soon-to-be wife’s controlling nature, as well as lots and lots of drugs and alcohol. When Michael (played by Jeremy Piven just like every other Jeremy Piven role I’ve seen) is part of a tragic accident with a stripper, a wet hotel floor, and an precariously placed towel hook, the five friends are at a loss of what to do. Real estate hot shot Boyd (Christian Slater) manages to talk them out of calling the police and “handling business” themselves before things are further complicated by another visitor.

Truthfully, having not seen the movie before, I expected the clean-up stage of the story would take a good chunk of the movie but largely that is dispatched in the first act. The rest that follows deals with the five friends and how they react to their participation in these titular ‘very bad things.’ The middle part of the movie is the most compelling and has real weight to the performances, especially of Piven and his on-screen brother Daniel Stern as both have mental breaks as they try to deal with the deaths they were apart of. Oddly though, this is where things come off the rails as it turns away from being a black comedy to a dramatic character story with very little humor. I am twisted enough that I enjoyed the satiric depravity of the deaths/murders in the beginning and ending of the film, especially as another party is brought into the festivities and I liked the character elements of Adam’s guilt pouring like sweat from his body as he tries to get back to normal life. I just wish these two halves were integrated better.

I cannot figure out why I can never recognize Jon Favreau in a movie but his character Kyle is good, especially as he is given more to do in the story and not being overshadowed by Slater, who is fucking insane. As the anti-voice of reason in the group, Slater’s Boyd gives motivational speeches that are bullshit yet somewhat believable especially given the context of the story and the rising body count. Boyd suffers in the middle of the film as well though as he becomes more reasonable (not totally though) instead of having that crazy look in his eye after someone has just died. Going back to the fine line between the horror and the humor, too much one way or another could easily cast the rest of the movie in a bad light but Berg walks that tightrope fairly consistently, even if the movie is segregated too much between the acts.

As long as a movie is honest about it, I have no problem with things being twisted and mean-spirited. The story itself is somewhat nonsensical but then again, I can think of a few other movies with plots about covering up a murder so at least Very Bad Things put a new, sick twist on things.

Reports are coming in that Andrew Koenig, son of Star Trek’s Walter Koenig, was found dead in Canada. Andrew played possibly one of the best named characters on a show whose main star was a devout Christian in real life, Boner Stabone, on Growing Pains. His father is reporting that it was an apparent suicide, but the cause of death has yet to be officially determined. Read more at the random news site I decide to link in this sentence.

Phantasm is bad ass and piss poor at the same time. But it is a good kind of piss poor.

Jody and Mike are brothers who have lost their parents. Mike is younger, 13. Not wanting to be alone, he follows his brother everywhere. Mike follows Jody to a funeral of his friend Tommy, and sees the funeral director, who is simply called the Tall Man, pick up Tommy’s coffin by himself and put it back in the hearse rather than bury it. This suspicious activity, coupled with odd visions and noises, start to freak Mike out, and in standard horror movie fashion, his brother doesn’t believe that these things are actually happening. Well, until Mike shows him a severed finger in a box. The two (along with Reggie, an ice cream man) discover that the Tall Man is taking bodies, bringing them back to life as dwarf slaves, and taking them to another planet. The gateway to this planet is in a room in the mortuary and is between 2 sliver poles. Yeah that’s right. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

This film actually is pretty good for the most part.  The main plot of the movie really is not discovered until late in the film and it does a pretty good job of not foreshadowing anything. It is certainly not the usual horror plot that you have become used to. The movie starts out in a rather jarring fashion by just throwing the title at you with menacing music before anything happens. There is a death less than 2 minutes in to the film. Right away you get the impression that this will be a freight train of horror. Sadly you get a train wreck of obligatory and boring exposition. It drags for a bit, but it does make the randomness of the events to follow that much more interesting. There are some parts of this movie that did make me jump a bit. Considering this movie is 30 years old, that is pretty impressive. I would be remiss if I did not mention the sweetest part of the film: the sphere. You see, the Tall Man, (Angus Scrimm) employs this metal sphere with blades and a drill in it to kill intruders. We get to see it kill a man in probably one of the best movie deaths ever. The sphere sticks itself in to this one fella’s forehead, and as the drill bores a hole in him, it spews his blood out the back of it like a fire hose spewing water. The man falls to his death and promptly pisses himself and the floor. Oddly enough, this is one of the worst edit jobs, as the gallons of blood seem to have disappeared after he hits the ground. This scene apparently warranted an X rating, but an L.A. Times Critic talked the MPAA down to R. The acting is pretty bad, but you don’t really mind it. The movie is so bizarre, you kind of pay more attention to the story. Angus Scrimm actually does a pretty good job of creeping you out as the Tall Man. Don Coscarelli wrote,  directed, edited and was even cinemeaographer of this thing. He also wrote and directed all of it’s sequels, which also, is bad ass.

If you have not seen this film, which is largely considered to be classic, give it a watch. It is certainly not without it’s flaws, but it ultimately outweighs those flaws with it’s successes. It certainly surpasses a lot of garbage that has been released in the 30 years that have gone by.