Final Destination 5
The legendary film critic Roger Ebert once made an interesting and insightful point about his own approach to reviews.
“When you ask a friend if Hellboy is any good, you’re not asking if it’s good compared to Mystic River, you’re asking if it’s any good in relation to The Punisher.…on a scale of one to four, if Superman is four, then Hellboy is three and The Punisher is two.”*
What he means, of course, is that for a review of any given film to be worth reading, it needs to be examined in relation not to the wider world of cinema, but within a system of benchmarks more logically consistent with other films of its kind. With that in mind, we can come to two informed conclusions straight off about Final Destination 5.
1. As an entry into the series, and as a contemporary big-budget horror film, it is perfectly acceptable.
2. If you were expecting Citizen Kane, you were barking up the wrong tree in the first place.
A significant return to form in comparison with 2009′s fourth entry The Final Destination, FD5 should be commended for another batch of wildly imaginative kills, a return to the darker atmosphere of the earlier installments, and – gasp – making creative, productive use of 3D technology to actually enrich the experience of seeing the film in a significant way (a move which arguably goes a long way on its own to setting it apart from the pack).
Anyone who’s read this far presumably knows what we’re dealing with here: a group of friends escape a large-scale catastrophe thanks to one of them having a well-timed premonition of impending disaster. Having effectively cheated death, the Reaper himself is understandably pissed, and stalks the survivors individually until order is restored. This time, our protagonist is Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto), who saves himself and his workmates from certain death after having a vision of a bridge collapsing. The bridge-collapse scene itself is genuinely remarkable, and is probably the best action sequence of the series so far. Of course, safety comes only in relative terms in the Final Destination universe, and the bodies soon start piling up as Death looks to rectify his mistakes. While the chains of events that lead to many of the casualties are often so convoluted that they bring to mind the breakfast-making machine from Wallace and Gromit, they’re undeniably inventive, and build suspense pretty effectively. We know the poor sap is going to bite it, it’s just a question of how.
Final Destination 5 makes a fair attempt at keeping things fresh by adding some new elements to the storyline. For instance, we find out that one way Death’s targets can escape their fate is by killing someone else, therefore acquiring their remaining lifespan and breaking the chain. This leads to some effective scenes of drama and paranoia, and although a fight scene in a restaurant kitchen near the film’s conclusion veers unapologetically into the realm of the ridiculous, overall it’s probably still a successful attempt to weave some extra substance into the admittedly flimsy plotline.
All things considered, fans of the previous four films (particularly the first two) should find a good deal to enjoy here, and as a pair of spectacular final scenes sees the story resolve itself with an unexpected level of invention, in terms of gloriously ridiculous entertainment, Final Destination 5 does the job better than most. A relative triumph.
*Mitch is a long-time fan of Roger Ebert’s writing, and if you’re looking for an alternative to Daily Dischord for opinions on the newest cinema releases, reckons you should head on over to www.rogerebert.com.
