Release Date: March 17, 2000
Starring: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Seann William Scott, Chad Donella, Kerr Smith, Amanda Detmer, Tony Todd
Directed by: James Wong
Distributed by: New Line Cinema
MPAA Rating: R (violence, terror, language)
The teen genre, since its high-profile inception sometime in the mid-nineties, has been starkly divided into two subgenres: the romantic comedy and the slasher/horror film. Ugly ducklings like Final Destination are certainly a welcome presence on the marketplace, for it means that hearing the words "teenie-bopper" is no longer a tip-off to the next bubble-gum lovefest or Scream copycat. In the case of Final Destination, which is a thriller without the typical stock of kitchen knives and blonde babysitters in peril, the overwhelming originality means it's a teen film that's well ahead of its brethren.
Those expecting a classic thriller out of Final Destination will be disappointed, for at its roots it's still a teen film and that means when the moment comes, it will fail to deliver. But those who find teen thrillers painfully similar will immediately find that this film is of a different feather.
Devon Sawa stars as Alex Browning, a teen whose powerful premonition of an airliner explosion leads him and several of his friends to get thrown off a 747 in the ensuing panic-induced melee. The watch from the departure lounge as the rest of their French class takes off en route to a field trip in Paris -- and the plane explodes exactly as Alex imagined it. With the help of an ominous mortician, Alex and his friends reason that by getting off the plane before takeoff, they cheated death and that eventually it will catch up with them.
The film's best scenes are, morbidly enough, the death scenes, which are extremely contrived but also extremely spooky. With any film of this nature, it's possible to guess the order in which the supporting players will die; this film, however, cuts to the chase and establishes the players' order of death early on. It's a new kind of suspense for this type of film, in which the question is not so much who? or when? but more how. Director James Wong, best known for his work on TV's "The X-Files," makes the most of it.
Sawa and the rest of the cast, which includes Ali Larter (Urban Legends), Chad E. Donella (Disturbing Behavior), Seann William Scott (American Pie), Kerr Smith (TV's "Dawson's Creek"), and Amanda Detmer (Drop Dead Gorgeous), do not make any impact outside of the film's running time. Most of them are there to just get dead, and viewers accustomed to the teen thriller's willingness to pluck off lesser characters will have no problem with that. Sawa, especially, is generic in the lead, although at his age this sort of project will almost be expected to appear on his filmography. The only standout, in fact, is the mortician, played with eerie aplomb by Tony Todd. There is the tendency to say that his character might have been underused, but it's clear that his part is perfectly summarized on his final line to Alex and Clear -- "I'll see you soon."
Director Wong keeps many of these characters constantly moving, though, and so often there's not time to notice the staleness of their performances. Wong avoids dialogue where it's completely unnecessary -- which prevents the film from getting annoyingly talky -- and even manages to slip in a few unpretentiously metaphysical thoughts about predestination. Of course, the film doesn't follow through on any of these overtly intelligent themes, and on the production scorecard it doesn't really aspire to be anything higher than a C-plus.
Overall, Final Destination is the sort of film that's best watched with an enthusiastic crowd -- whether it be at a packed weekend show in a theater or a video rental at a party. To the intensely analytic viewer it no doubt appear to foster many of the common shortcomings of the teen drama -- bad writing, bad acting, bad directing, bad everything -- but these are hidden well within an engaging premise. This is the quintessential popcorn film, where it's best to let go and ignore the nagging doubts.
all contents © 2000 Craig Roush