A fresh and entertaining approach to horror

Rating: 8/10 (10 October 2000)

It is refreshing to see a film that innovates. The last film to do that in the horror genre was `Scream'. `Final Destination' has introduced an inventive approach to the genre, giving it a supernatural killer rather than a lunatic slasher dress up in some kind of costume. Using `Death' as the killer opens up myriad possibilities for the method of death and choice of victims. This film was excellent at presenting the supernatural stalker's manipulation of the physical world to find murder weapons in everyday objects. While the concept of Death taking people from earth is hardly new in films, the idea of Death as a malevolent attacker that has a plan that can be outwitted is a novelty.
This film is the germination of an interesting direction, but does not bring the concept to maturation. It is unsophisticated in its storytelling and the characters lack subtlety and realism in their reactions to their situation. They are undifferentiated from their hollow horror counterparts in that regard, just fodder for the beast.
Director James Wong, who has mostly TV credits on his resume, breaks into feature films with a vengeance. From the standpoint of the photography and visual effects, the film was excellent. His camera perspectives were creative and lent greater force to the suspense. His crafting of the scenes was less effective. The prescient clues to the next murder lacked nuance. There were no surprises except perhaps the last murder. The formula was always the same, Alex predicts a murder and then rushes frantically to prevent it with mixed results.
As is often the case in this genre, the acting had a broad range from terrible to very good. Devon Sawa was excellent. He gave his character much more range and depth than we are used to seeing from horror heroes. He was the closest to having genuine human responses to the tragedies, at least in the beginning of the film. Ali Larter was good as Clear, but her character didn't have much range and she did little to expand the envelope. The same is true of Kerr Smith whose character had even less dimensionality. On the awful side, there were Daniel Robuck and Roger Guenveur Smith as the hapless FBI agents and Tony Todd as the completely implausible undertaker.
This was an entertaining film and a terrific story concept. I rated it an 8/10. It is a must-see for horror fans, but still enjoyable for a broader audience. Few films of this genre have the potential to improve in the sequel. This may be one of them.