Monster Scholar

The answer is no. I watched the first Final Destination when I was in my teens, when the idea of death stalking survivors of a disaster was fresh and innovative for its time. But through two sequels the concept of death coming after clueless teenagers has been done to death, and has become an excuse to stage ridiculously elaborate death sequences (the plate glass death caused by pigeons in FD2 and tanning bed from FD3 come to mind). Even though it inspired two more films, the first Final Destination ultimately falls short as a horror film. In the beginning the film has a lot of promise as it starts to play with ideas of post traumatic stress and teenagers thinking they are indestructible, but it never develops any of these concepts past the introduction stage. Instead as the film progresses it drops all pretense of actually saying something meaningful and collapses under the weight if its own ridiculousness (Devon Sawa thinking he was going to die of tetanus from a rusty fishing h...

To commemorate the release of The Final Destination in theaters this summer, here are my favorite deaths from the Final Destination series. Terry Chaney gets hit by a bus after telling her boyfriend Carter to “drop dead” Ms. Valerie Lewton can’t seem to catch a break and dies when her computer shoots a glass shard into her throat, her kitchen catches fire and she is skewered by a knife while reaching for a dish rag. A piece of metal shrapnel propelled by a passing train slices Billy Hitchcock’s head in half while he’s yelling at Carter that he’ll be the next to die. Lucky lottery winner Evan Lewis narrowly escapes being blown up by his microwave, but he eventually gets his due after slipping on a pile of discarded spaghetti in an alley and is jabbed in the eye by the fire escape ladder. Rory the drug addict serves as comic relief until he is diced by a pair of flying logs connected by barbed wire. The anonymous farmer’s son is saved from death when Rory pulls him out of the way of an ...