Review of Final Destination 5 (2011) by Jeffhammer — 31 Aug 2011

Eleven years ago Final Destination took horror fans in a fresh new direction. The film had gruesome death scenes (not nearly as bad as the later installments.) But fate -and whether one could escape its plan- was where the real intrigue lied.

Final Destination 2 traded character development for sillier death scenes, but at least some were mildly possible and interesting. I had the foresight to avoid what I felt would be ridiculously bad films in the third and fourth installments of the franchise.

Something told me this one would be different. The film is directed by James Cameron's understudy, David Quale; who admitted the last films didn't live up to the first two. Quale claims to have attempted to use what worked in the first films to construct his fifth installment.

One would think at the very least this film would have made brilliant use of the 3D technology that was, of course, extraordinary in Avatar. Horror movies are possibly the best genre for 3D -because you're meant to be jumpy- but this film attempts to ease us in through credits that slowly come closer and closer to the audience, but it becomes rather boring.

Moving forward, Quale decides to splatter our cool 3D shades with blood and guts rather than use the technology to scare us. Sure... the bridge scene was nice, but after that the film stumbles from poor dialogue to atrocious acting to fantastically unbelievable death scenes.

I know there are those who will say I should have seen that coming. Maybe they're right, but the first film wasn't nearly as grotesque and was written much better. Even the second installment looks very believable in comparison.

The deaths are way too much, I wanted to scream at the screen in my best Mortal Kombat voice "finish him" (already). We always get plenty of plausible ways for characters to meet their demise, but instead we see something like a character getting their head knocked off by the torso of a deer being propelled by a tornado.

Who am I kidding? That would be much too interesting for this film. One or two scenes should have surprised us by taking one of the more obvious deaths. Sam and his friends are mostly played by relative newcomers, but along the way, we meet some nice characters.

Tony Todd (Candyman) is back as the coroner. He actually has a few terrifically ominous lines. And David Koechner (The Office) plays his usual oblivious character well. As a fan of the original I did enjoy the plot twist, which does something that I can't remember ever being done before.

In the end, this installment may have done what it set out to do; make a better movie than Final Destination 3 or The Final Destination (the fourth film which claimed to be the last.) If the filmmakers wished for anything more however, they should have spent as much time crafting dialogue and story as they did dreaming up 1,000 ways to die.