The first part of the Final Destination

Rating: 7/10 (22 February 2006)

STAR RATING: ***** The Works **** Just Misses the Mark *** That Little Bit In Between ** Lagging Behind * The Pits
As he boards a plane on a class trip to France, Alex (Devon Sawa) begins to have premonitions that the plane and everyone on it will meet a terrifying end. As a panic attack sees him and some other trip members hauled off, it is not long before this is exactly what happens. But it seems the hands of fate that saw the deaths of all those on the plane has not stopped at the survivors and Alex and the rest of them soon find themselves in a terrifying wrangle with the hands of death itself.
Despite the very interesting and original concept, the FD movies were ones I'd failed to pay much attention to until weirdly enough the promotional poster for Part 3 made me want to go see that, but I thought it would be a good idea to get acquainted with Part 1 (and maybe Part 2) first and with this first movie making an appearance on Channel 4 at the weekend (obviously on the back of the new film) I took my chance.
This is an interesting idea for a horror movie, because unlike the usual phantoms and boogeymen characters in these films must overcome, here the protagonist is the very phantom force all of us will tangle with at some point: death itself. It's a real, believable evil and the original concept is used very effectively, even if I found some of the plot developments a bit predictable.
The movie also suffers from a naff character in the shape of Sean William Scott. But from title to idea, this is a clever movie indeed, with some typically inventive death scenes for this genre. ***