Surprisingly Original Concept.

Rating: 9/10 (27 August 2006)

"Final Destination" is a horror movie that you can't help but love - while it might not be the scariest out there, it's originality and creative deaths make it great. The film starts off with a teenage senior named Alex (Devon Sawa) who is heading out on a field trip to Paris, France with his senior classmates. Afraid of flying to begin with, he is a little nervous. But after boarding the plane, he has a premonition of a horrible plane crash that kills himself and everyone onboard. Awaking from the dreamlike vision, he abruptly gets off of the plane, causing a scene, with a handful of other students and one of the teachers following. When the plane takes off, sure enough, it does explode, killing all onboard. But after the horrible accidents, those who survived (thanks to Alex's premonition) begin to die bizarre deaths. A loner named Clear (Ali Larter), who was among those who left the plane, teams together with Alex while they uncover that it just may be Death itself that has a 'plan'. And if the plan is intruded, those who cheated death are going to pay the consequences.
This film deserves a 10 alone just for the complete originality of it's story. I've never seen another film of this subject matter, and it's quite interesting how the film plays out. I think it's a great idea for a horror movie, unique and original. The entire personification of 'death' scenario is an interesting thing to play with. The plane-crash premonition was intense, and since I'm terrified of flying anyway, it made me pretty uneasy. The deaths that follow throughout the film are quick, sometimes unexpected, and genuinely shocking. Some of the deaths are anticipated, you know it's going to happen, which is quite suspenseful. But some of the others caught me completely off-guard, they were so abrupt and unexpected that I was nearly speechless.
The actors here were great, Devon Sawa fit the leading role as our hero who is trying to save all of his classmates as Death begins to pick them off. Ali Larter (from the "House on Haunted Hill" remake) plays his helpful sidekick, Clear, very well. The rest of the cast all did good jobs, and we even got a cameo from Tony Todd (of the "Candyman" series) as a mortician who Alex and Clear run into one night. The ending to film was clever and left it open-ended for the sequels that followed, which were both well-done but not quite as good as the original.
Overall, "Final Destination" is an excellent horror movie. It's not really scary, but it has one of the most original stories among recent horror films, and the creative deaths and inventive sequences that take place make it all the more better. Surely worth a look for horror and thriller fans alike. 9/10.