Final Destination 5

In 2000, a new film introduced a new twist to the slasher genre: Final Destination. Instead of a masked killer going around stabbing people, Death itself enters the fray. Instead of murders, people are killed in "freak" accidents. After the successful run of the first Final Destination that starred Devon Sawa, Ali Larter and Tony Todd, 4 sequels were made. In the first film, a kid has a premonition about a horrific accident that kills everyone on the plane. He freaks out and gets himself and several of his friends ejected only for the plane to explode moments later. Later, each person dies in what appears to be freak accidents until one of the characters is told that Death has a design. Each subsequent film follows the same pattern. The first movie, the premonition was about a plane exploding. The second: A major freeway accident, third: A roller-coaster ride from hell, fourth: A car race that horribly wrong, and now in Final Destination 5: A freak bridge collapse.

Each film follows the exact same pattern without fail, with basically the same story about the survivors trying to cheat death. No, the reason to watch these movies is to see people die in horrible ways, and the series delivers. Final Destination 5 really is no different, but when somebody is about to die, the movie plays with you and shows you different ways that the victim could die, and ratchets up the tension. Then it pulls the rug out from under you and takes out the victim in a surprising and brutal fashion. Final Destination 4 ended up being too silly for its own good and the film suffered for that. Like the previous film, Final Destination 5 was shot in 3D as there are effects that were clearly designed to be seen in 3D. For example, during the opening bridge sequence, when of the characters gets impaled on a ship's mast. While meant to be seen in 3D, it's still pretty gory. Final Destination 4 really didn't have much in the way of memorable kills as most of them were CGI-intensive. In FD5, the cgi effects have vastly improved, and actually work in favor of the movie this time around. The kills are fairly inventive and brutal.

Acting-wise, nothing really to see here, except the return of Tony Todd as the enigmatic Bludworth, who was missing from the previous two installments of series. He returns to warn the survivors that Death doesn't like to be cheated, but in this film, he says that Death can be satisfied if the survivors take the life of someone else, which means that the years of that person are transferred to the survivor, and gets to live. As interesting an idea as that is, it's not as explored as it should have been. Tony Todd still has a commanding presence, even though his role is nothing more than an extended cameo, but then, he wasn't in the original two movies for very long either, just long enough to send chills down your spine. There's also a decent twist at the end of the film that ties FD5 with the first movie.

After the laugh-fest that was Final Destination 4, the fifth film is a nice return to form with some spectacular and brutal kills and an opening sequence that'll leave you squirming. Some of the CGI effects aren't very well done however and are fairly obvious, and the acting as I've mentioned is certainly not award-worthy. And the idea that I mentioned above isn't fully explored. If you're going to introduce a new way to cheat death, you don't want to half-ass it. Aside from those issues, Final Destination 5 is a really solid entry and quite frankly the best in the series since the original film. If you're a fan of the series, like me, there's no reason NOT to have this one in your collection. Sure, it follows the same pattern as the first four, but it takes a formula that works and DOESN'T BREAK IT, like so many franchises do. Overall, a respectable 8.5/10 is what this film earns.