A Nutshell Review: Final Destination

Rating: 6/10 (20 May 2007)

I watched Final Destination 3 without watching the first two, so thanks to DVDs, I'm going to make amends. The most I know about the first Final Destination was that explosion onboard an aircraft was one of the most realistic ever, and probably had this movie banned from inflight entertainment systems.
Alex Chance Browning (Devon Sawa) has a fear of flights, and in his class outing to Paris, he had a premonition about the flight going boom, and created enough a ruckus to have him thrown out of the plane, together with a few of his friends and teacher. Naturally he becomes guilt ridden, and prime suspect when the plane explodes mid-air without a clue as to why (following the actual TWA flight 800). Together with Clear Rivers (what a name, played by Ali Larter), they discover that if they were destined to die in that flight, then Death will soon be on his way to complete his mission, in the order that they were supposed to go.
It brings to mind that our deaths are probably pre-ordained the moment we are born, and death has designed the way we have to go too. The premise is that should you beat that design, then you get a second chance. But are we up to that? Nope, because we want to see how the cardboard characters get sent on their way. However, the deaths presented here aren't really horrific or designed with grandeur, probably because they don't age so well over time. They do seem rather gimmicky in today's context.
Not expecting an adrenaline rush each time the characters die or beat death, the plot does get slowed down because of the romance bit between Alex and Clear (and most ended up on the cutting room floor), so they do come across pretty jarringly. And the group size for death is relatively small, so you don't go beyond that number, including survivors. It's a pretty decent thriller, but a reminder that the nature of these thrillers is that they age quite badly over time.