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Final
Destination
review by Terry Wickham
One of the better films released in 2000. I found this film suspenseful, shocking at times and fun to watch. The description roller coaster ride would perfectly suit Final Destination. A group of high school students, a French class, is flying together to visit France. One of the students Alex (Devon Sawa) gets aboard the plane and has a premonition that the plane is going to blow up. When he wakes to find real life headed in the same order of events, he gets hysterical and panics. Alex yells out that the plane is going to blow up. This scares some kids and pisses off another. About eight people are escorted off the plane and taken inside the airport by security. While the kids are calming down at the gate area of the plane, in the background, we see the plane take off and suddenly blow up. This activity has set the course of what follows. The people who left the plane will now be pursued by death, as it was suppose to be their time to go. This is a brilliant idea as it veers off from the normal storylines of a psychopath, monster or demonic attack. The antagonist or danger is even more lethal as it's not only faceless, but also bodiless. Death is invisible and able to channel into anything that will get the job done in ending these characters lives. This opens many potential doorways for suspense and sudden jolts. The filmmakers, Director James Wong and Producer Glen Morgan who are veterans of X-Files, Millennium and Space Above and beyond, do a darn good job of playing the film for maximum thrills. It's spooky, creepy, funny and never boring. In the filmmakers' audio commentary, you learn that Wong and Morgan purposely named most of the characters after the horror filmmakers from the classic horror films from the 20's, 30's and 40's. James Wong presents mature, confident direction that is designed to create suspense. There are times he goes for the cheap thrill, which works everytime because he's set us up with purposeful build up. When we get use to that kind of pattern, which usually takes time (suspense), when something just happens quickly, it's like getting blindsided, because we don't see it coming. Composer Shirley Walker's music helps the film immensely. Walker's brooding score keeps suspense at the forefront and she never loses the emotional importance of backing the characters. I also found listening to her isolated score and audio commentary to be a nice addition. Walker tells of coming up through the ranks of film music community by working for Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer and others. She's honest and candid in describing how it is for a film composer working in Hollywood. This DVD from New Line's Platinum Series comes with deleted scenes and alternate ending. The DVD comes with two original documentaries. "A Look at Test Screenings" reveals how the Filmmakers and studio used of test screenings to shape Final Destination. The second "Premonitions" concerns real-life investigator Pam Coronado, who solves crimes by using her psychic skills.
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