Director: Steven Quale
Writer: Eric Heisserer
Cast: Nicholas D'Agosto, Emma Bell, Miles Fisher, Ellen Wroe, Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, P. J. Byrne, Arlen Escarpeta, David Koechner, Courtney B. Vance, Tony Todd
Runtime: 92 mins.
2011
Final Destination 5 begins with one of the truly ugly credit sequences of our time. Computer-generated objects hurtle towards the screen, shattering it over and over again as if that pesky fourth wall just didn't know when to quit. The film ends much the same way, with a much snazzier supercut of every death in the storied franchise. As much as is possible, FD5 has a great respect for the franchise it has inherited, and with that respect comes attentiveness, both to what has worked in the past and what hasn't. Thus FD5 is in some ways the most functional entry.
It is also the first to exist outside the dueling paradigms of James Wong and David R. Ellis. Not since Final Destination 2 has an entirely new creative team taken the reins on one of these movies. This time the helmsman is Steven Quale, making his mainstream directorial debut after a handful of high profile second unit directing gigs scattered over a decade. Writing the script is Eric Heisserer, a horror journeyman who most recently wrote Lights Out and is signed on to adapt Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. With this fresh blood comes a clear-eyed perspective not brought to the proceedings since, again, Final Destination 2. We spend a surprising amount of time getting to know the characters before their work-related bus trip turns disastrous on an enormous suspension bridge. A few of these characters actually have rudimentary arcs before their timely deaths, an astounding development for a Final Destination entry, especially this late in the game.
But let's talk about that bridge for a second. It is the single grandest setpiece in the entire series, and it does not disappoint. Rather than the idiot CGI chaos of the NASCAR disaster or the bizarro logic of the roller coaster catastrophe, the bridge collapse is just well-structured enough to allow for some slight suspension of disbelief. Or rather, perhaps it's less about suspension of disbelief and more about a sensible cause and effect relationship within the display of carnage. Either way, there are also brief social dynamics that play out in the scene that build upon what we've learned of these characters thusfar.
This time around, they're not a bunch of juvenile reprobates. Our hero Sam (Nicholas D'Agosto) actually has passions and objectives, and his girlfriend Molly (Emma Bell)... well, she displays slightly more agency than the women in these movies typically do? Their mutual friend Peter (Miles Fisher) really takes the cake, though. He loses his girlfriend early on in a freak gymnastics accident, and is stricken by grief thereafter. He learns about the death order theory (that Death comes for people in the order they were originally supposed to die), and he learns about the proxy theory (you can be saved if someone dies in your place), and he decides to take matters into his own hands. It's melodramatic nonsense, but at least it makes good on the mishandled Final Destination 3 arc of the companion-turned-killer, as well as finally exploring the ethics of the mostly ignored proxy clause in these movies' half-baked mythology.
The film also sees the return of Bludworth (Tony Todd). This macabre mentor is eerily prescient in that he saw fit to only appear in the three films of this franchise that are any good. He hams it up as usual, and when he leaves the main characters they stand around awkwardly, as if they are reflecting upon the experience of being in the presence of an actor working at a far higher caliber than they are.
Every death in FD5 feels unique and earned. This is one of the more memorable sets of deaths, perhaps in part because they return to the series' roots of exploring the paranoia we feel around the increasing proliferation of objects, machinery, and technology we don't understand. I mentioned the gymnastics scene earlier, but we also have two workplace accidents, an acupuncture mishap, a kitchen-based kerfluffle, and a laser eye surgery gone horribly wrong. That last one is my favorite; it squeezes every bit of tension from the modern horror that is letting doctors shoot hot beams of light into our eyeballs. It also features a healthy smattering of juicy comedic irony, my favorite kind of Final Destination flavor.
I don't want to overpraise the film. It's still a big dumb orgasm of grotesqueries married to an incredibly limiting structure carried out by cardboard characters performed with little emotional resonance. But it works that model with just about as much flair as one can expect. Nowhere else is this more apparent than the ending of the movie, a satisfying tie-in with the original film that actually managed to catch me off guard. In my estimation, that makes this the only Final Destination film with a solid ending, and it's fitting that it should be in the final film of the series.
That is, until the soft reboot that our intellectual property-starved creative landscape will inevitably demand...
2.5 / 5 BLOBS
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