Original, if Slightly Dated, Thriller

Rating: 10/10 (10 February 2019)

It's surprising that the first film in a long running series still remains one of the most beloved as, in a series known for high amounts of gore, the death scenes in the film seem a little less memorable in comparison. However, Final destination delivers on all of the campy thrills we have come to expect from teen horror movies, and it does so in a marvelously original fashion.

What has now become an iconic plotline with horror fans, the film follows a group of high school students who escape death after one of them has a premonition of a plane crash. Inspired loosely by the real life story of a real life story in which a woman avoided death because of a gut feeling she shouldn't get on a plane, the movie manages to grasp at some genuine tension in it's earliest moments. As the film progresses, it begins to devolve into a more campy sense of dread, as you begin to await the deaths of the remaining teens.

Devon Sawa turns in a capable performance as the lead, and he is backed up sufficiently by the supporting cast, including Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, and Kristen Cloke. The writing present here is solid, and the story provides us with a solid group of characters. Even despite some initial friction with some of them, you never really want to see any of them bite the dust, and as a result, watching death slowly approach them grasps a true sense of dread.

The film is relatively old, as next year it will be coming up on it's 20th birthday. And while, you never fully expect the effects to look as good as a modern day film, the effects present here still leave much to be desired. However that is easily forgivable due to the amount of originality present in this now treasured movie.

Regardless of the dated effects, it is impressive that a film, generally dismissed by critics of the time, has spawned a series that has cemented itself into the horror canon as well as this one has. The crown jewel of this movie is the now iconic bus death. Providing us with one of the more shocking deaths in a horror film. The impact this film has had on the horror genre is hard to ignore, and as a result the dated feel of the film is extremely easy to forgive. The film is as tense as it is entertaining, lending itself to be a film that will be watched and re-watched throughout future generations.