Silly and unintentionally hilarious

Rating: Null/10 (6 July 2003)

When this movie was screened at a movie marathon held in my school I laughed out loud, garnering me a few weird stares from my fellow schoolmates, who were actually pretty terrified by the nonsense that was going on on-screen. I laughed for that reason too, but more importantly, I found this movie extremely hilarious.
Perhaps it is my sadistic sense of humour, I don't know, but it's funny how the producers of this stupid, brainless "horror" movie could think of such creative ways to kill off their irritating characters whom nobody really care about. A good example would be the death of the teacher, whatever her name is. That scene nearly killed me, pun fully intended, especially when she needed help to actually get herself totally killed.

"Final Destination" had a great premise. It just had an extremely lousy and predictable execution. What could've been a truly terrifying movie about the inevitability of death and the suffering one goes through living with that knowledge became a rehashed, one-dimensional joke of a movie that had elements of previously and equally bad slasher movies in it. Its greatest flaw was its cardboard cut-out characters. With the exception of Devon Sawa and Ali Larter, the cast looked like they were picked from unwanted extras who failed to make it to the latest teenage flick. The characters irritated the living bejesus out of me because they were whining so much that I just wanted them to get killed already and put me out of my agony of watching such stupidity. The jock was predictably cocky, his girlfriend predictably bitchy, and the rest of them? Don't even remember.
The only good part about the movie is Devon Sawa and Ali Larter. Sawa is a good actor whose talent was wasted on playing a silly character, while Larter, whom I've never seen before prior to this, was surprisingly convincing as Clear Rivers ("Clear"? What kind of a name is CLEAR?!). She was pleasantly understated and provided a nice break from Alex's perpetual high-strungness, so to speak. The chemistry between them also helped to make the love angle that just HAD to be present a tad less sickening.

Still, it was obvious that this movie existed for no reason other than to rake in the cash at the box office, which should explain the extreme gore factor. Somebody should tell the producers that sometimes, the thing that scares most is not what one can see, but what one cannot see. Our imagination is a powerful tool. They should learn to make use of it.