Death's Predestination

Rating: Null/10 (11 January 2001)

"Final Destination" is a riff on the Christian concept of predestination-the idea that God infallibly guides those who are destined for salvation. In this film the idea is that all persons are infallibly predestined to die at a certain time in their life.
The movie starts out promisingly. A planeload of high school students and advisors are headed to Paris for a senior trip. While waiting for the plane to take off, one of the students has some premonitions that they are going to crash. He causes a commotion, and as a result six of the students and one advisor are kicked off the plane. Then they watch in horror as the plane explodes after takeoff.
Most people who don't die in a plane crash go through survivor's guilt. But because they have cheated death, the seven survivors here must instead dodge all sorts of deadly mishaps.
"Final Destination" doesn't know whether to take itself seriously or not. Unlike the characters in "Scream," who discuss horror film references while trying to dodge various slashers, the characters in "Final Destination" are not given a humorous moment. "Final Destination" writers Jeffrey Reddick and Glen Morgan do name most of their characters after horror movie staples: Browning (after Tod Browning of "Dracula" and "Freaks" fame), Val Lewton (after the director of "Cat People") Shreck (after Max Shreck, star of "Nosferatu") Hitchcock, Chaney, and so on. But my guess is the young people the film is targeting won't make the connection.
It's hard to tell if whatever humor the movie has is intentional or not. When death targets the characters, so many bad things happen at once that I was reminded of the character in "Li'l Abner" who walked around under a cloud. The main character keeps hearing the song "Rocky Mountain High" (because John Denver died in a plane crash) before someone is about to die, but at the end of the song is being played by a Paris street musician-not likely.
In 1959 Rod Taylor starred in a "Twilight Zone" episode, "And When the Sky Was Opened," as one of three astronauts who return from a trip to outer space, then discover they weren't supposed to survive. When "Final Destination" began I was hoping it would move in the same direction as that episode. Unfortunately, it doesn't.