Good opening scene... but forget about the rest

Rating: Null/10 (6 April 2002)

I actually wasn't going to watch this movie, I had the TV on while I was doing something else and this movie came up. I was hooked, however, by the plane crash scene in the beginning, which must be the scariest, most horrific, most realistic scene of this type ever. The story about its being a dream that comes true after the dreamer and some other passengers leave the plane and are therefore saved, this was also interesting, as well as the fear, instead of gratitude, that the dreamer inspires. Maybe this was not such a bad movie after all.
Ah, but in the end it was. All of a sudden it becomes a supernatural teen slasher movie, with Death playing the part of Freddy Kruger, Jason and other famous slashers. After the first survivor dies, the dreamer protagonist works out that by escaping the plane they have cheated Death, who does not take kindly to this, and therefore sets out to finish his business, by killing the survivors one by one, in true slasher movie fashion. Our hero not only deducts this, but he is also more or less warned about this by an odd mortician who may or may not be Death himself. And then he works out Death's "design" (a favorite word of the scriptwriter), by guessing who will be the next victim, and how the victims can be saved if someone else intervenes on time. If this sounds terminally ridiculous, it is because the movie well... is silly indeed. Even those who loved the movie cannot deny that every word I've just written is true.
The problem here is an indigestible mixture of things that just don't work together; it is like a pizza with meringue and cheese topping. There is nothing wrong with a good slasher movie, if your tastes run that way, but good slasher movies never take themselves seriously, something fully understood and taken to the limits by Scream, a top example. Final Destination, however, takes itself dead seriously (sorry, bad pun). Its mixture of profound speculation about the possibility of cheating death and the slapstick nature of the death scenes is just self-defeating. Since Death cannot wield the knife himself, everybody just has to die in an accident; not just any accident, they have to be particularly bizarre and convoluted, and (unintentionally, I suspect) hilarious.
Anyway. If it is shown on TV, you can watch the opening minutes. Then you can find yourself something else to do.