Editor Reviews:

Description:
Horror tale with a twist, Final Destination tells the story of teenager with strange premonitions about death and the mysterious accidental deaths that follow his life. Directed by X-Files veteran James Wong.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
DVD ROM exclusive web site
Documentaries
Music Only Track

Amazon.com:
While hardly a spiritual upgrade of the slasher film, this high-concept teen body-count thriller drops hints of The Sixth Sense into the smart-aleck sensibility of Scream. Helmed by X-Files veteran James Wong, who cowrote the screenplay with longtime creative partner Glen Morgan, Final Destination is an often entertaining thriller marked by an unsettling sense of unease and scenes of eerie imagery. It suffers, however, from a schizophrenic tone and a frankly ludicrous premise. A high school Cassandra, Alex Browning (Devon Sawa of Idle Hands), wakes from a preflight nightmare and panics when he's convinced the plane is doomed. His ruckus bumps seven passengers from the Paris-bound plane, which immediately explodes into a fireball on takeoff, but fate hasn't finished with these lucky few and, one by one, death claims them. Wong brings such a funereal tone to these early scenes of survivor's guilt and inevitable doom that the already far-fetched film threatens to veer into unplanned absurdity. Thankfully, the tale loosens up with a playful morgue humor: one of the victims winds up the splattered punch line to a grim joke and elaborate Rube Goldbergesque chains of cause and effect become inspired spectacles of destruction. Final Destination is a pretty silly thriller when it takes itself seriously, and the filmmakers play fast and loose with their own rules of fate, but once they stick their tongues firmly in cheek, the film takes off with a screwy interpretation of the domino effect of doom. --Sean Axmaker

Rating : - Don't be so serious, and remember it's "fiction"
Ok, I am new to the "Final Destination" horror films, as horror is not my genre. I actually saw the 3rd one first, and became intrigued by the "cheating death or did they" plot. Last weekened, TNT had a showing of all 3 and for a lark I recorded them all (which will nicely fit on a 6 hour DVD).

I saw FD-1, and let me say, that it was interesting, and thought-provoking. It had it's moments and if you remember it's fiction, I think you will enjoy it better. As one person said, don't take it too seriously. You really don't want to keep running around scared to death and looking at everything like it's going to kill you.

None of us knows how we would react if something like that would happen to us. Would we panic, go insane, be grateful we were saved, be more careful, or wonder "was it really my time, and my selfishness to save my own butt caused the death of my friends". So, given all of the youth "I'm going to live forever" ideas, young kids who don't know how to deal with death (maybe they didn't have to) and fiction, it's worth 4 stars.

The movie starts out like life, you begin by thinking you got your whole life ahead of you, then you get to the airport.

Yes, a plane disaster, like we haven't seen or read about them before.

BUT, this one is a little different. One of the guys, Alex, is sitting in his seat for a moment (the whole numerology deal starts clicking; he was born 9-25, flight 925, ROW I (9) SEAT-25), then has a "vision or premonition" of the whole disaster. He freaks out & how many of us wouldn't?? He jumps up, alerting the crafts personnel and irritating a few other people (Kerr Smith's character--Carter). Teachers and students are dragged off the plane, and while chaos ensues, the crafts disembarks and explodes, as he said it would.

Of course the FBI being suspicious won't stop following him, even though the cause was "mechanical failure". The FBI doesn't believe in premonitions or the like.

That accident sets off a chain reaction to the whole death-master plan design. One by one, freakish accidents plague the survivors in the order they would have died had they stayed on the plane. Of course we don't know about such things as there are usually no surviors or instances where this has happened recently, so we don't know how true this theory is, it could make sense if you are open-minded.

Since Tod lost his brother on the flight, it is assumed he committed suicide, and he's the first to die. Then, it's the antagonist's girlfriend (Terry) who was next--killed quite freakishly after telling Carter to "drop dead". Then, the surviving teacher's freakish accident.

By this time, Alex realizes he might be able to cheat death and keep the others alive, and sets out to do just that. After saving Carter, another character (Billy) is rambling on about Carter being dead and is hit by a piece of debris from Carter's car versus train incident, leaving just Alex, Carter and the girl (Clear or Claire).

As of note, doors do not lock by themselves, BUT since he was on a train track, it is feasible the vibration from the coming train caused them to lock as they were the manual locks and relied on being "pushed down" (gravity/velocity type of thing??).

Since they figured they survived they run off, but Alex realizes Clear is next and sets out to save her, which he does. 6 months later they are in Paris (their "final" destination at the beginning), and after hearing the song "Rocky Mountain High", which preceded most of the other deaths, they realize they might not have cheated death and the movie ends with Carter sacrificing himself to save Alex.

And, as predictable there are going to be sequels.

FD-1 is pretty good entertainment, thought-provoking, plot is slightly recycled in the whole "teen death/slasher" genre, slightly over used "edge of seat" plot as well.

Watch it on the TV first. If you're really intriugued keep it on DVR or find the DVD cheap ($10 and lower), try Walmart $5 bin or thier $7.50 stack. If you must have the whole series, buy the triology on Amazon for under $25.