You want to read a review about a horror movie don’t you?, go on admit it that’s why you’ve clicked on the link to read this review, yeah?, thought so, well sorry to disappoint you but this although billed as a horror movie, isn’t exactly a horror movie, In fact in my ever so humble opinion its more of a comedy.
Now don’t get that opening paragraph wrong, I like my horrors to have a bit of humour in them (and blood, dear lord we need a lot of blood) but you see this isn’t intentional humour, its a job of laughing at the fact that this movie is so bad! See its a story (well duh!) about a bunch of teenagers who cheat death, see they should have been on a plane that explodes, but one of them (Alex, played by Devon Sawa) falls asleep whilst waiting for the plane to take off and has a premonition of the explosion, now being the young little character he is he decides to jump into the aisle screaming about how we’re all going to die, this causes a bit of a ruccus (fake word, but what are ya gonna do, eh?) and the result is 7 people left on the ground.
Well that was a bit of a long paragraph, anyway after all this what we see is death stalking the 7 survivors and slowly picking them off one by one. That’s it, sorry there isn’t that much of a storyline to go on here, but its a horror movie so theres never usually that much of a storyline but you see the way its all played out is what makes it so humorous, first off theres the goofs, I’m only going to tell you one that I noticed and on further investigation imdb picked up on it as well (they always do), when people are ejected from a plane before it takes off in real life, their luggage gets ejected with them, this has always happened since Lockerbie, but in the movie there is about 5 minutes at the most between take-off and the kids getting ejected, definitely not long enough to remove the luggage.
Now I could go on all day about goofs but if thats what you want to read then you’re in the wrong place - see that sign-post over there its pointing out the goofs they’re in a little place called https://imdb.com, oh you’re still here, well I’d better carry on reviewing then, see its not just the goofs, its the remaining cast, with the exception of Ali Larter who plays Clear, the whole cast do a terrible job, so its time to be critical, as always heres a list of characters, who played them and how terrible they were, read on :-
Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) - Oh Dear, this is the main character Devon, put a bit of effort into it - you see he runs around telling everyone that there is a chain of whos going to die next, and then when they die, he sits down a lot and thats about it, well he is the main character and he does get to rescue a couple of peeps nearer the end of the movie, but really it just doesn’t work.
Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) - Huzzah!, a good and believable character!, Clear is the school outcast you see, always on her own, and Larter portrays this brilliantly (in fact she nearly got this review 2 stars), showing how she adapts to the situation and begins to come out of her shell, whilst still maintaining an air of mystique, very hard to do and maybe just maybe the next time I’m browsing a DVD store and I see her name on a movie I haven’t seen yet I might give it a look.
Carter Horton (Kerr Smith) - Then we come back down to earth with a huge bump, because Carter is supposedly the School’s ’tough guy’ and well, sorry but no, to play a tough guy you need to do more than threaten ’I’m gonna kick your a** (censored for the younger mouthshutter), and well every appearance by Carter is completely laughable, hes just not menacing enough, or at all if I was being honest and I didn’t think it could get any worse until......
Valerie Lewton (Kirsten Cloke) - The teacher who survived, now she starts off trying to play the slightly upset but very bitter character and very quickly changes to a blubbering wreck, within 20 minutes of the opening scenes, she confirms it off by looking straight at Alex and saying ’you freak me out’ - not good teaching is it? and guess what it isn’t good acting either, theres a difference between being an on-screen wreck and, well, just wrecking what little dignity a movie has left and Kirsten certainly does that.
Tod Waggner (Chad Donella) - then theres the male version of the teacher, hes a student, he survived, he blubbered almost as much as Lewton. In fact his major contribution was providing the daftest death scene in the movie, after that (well before actually), well there was a lot of tears and a lot of talk of how he’s getting over it, but not much action.
Terry Chaney (Amanda Detmer) - Bimbo alert, even less relevance to the story thn Tod, see shes a survivor - big yay right? well no - how do you think she copes with it? By following her boyfriend Carter around shouting ’no not here’ at him whenever he gets within 500 yards of Alex, so its not so much Detmers fault that this character was bad, just the scriptwriters inept ability to make terrible characters.
Billy Hitchcock (Seann William Scott) - you may remember Scott for playing Stiffler in American Pie, maybe thats why I assosciate this movie to comedy movies so much, but well hes terrible as well - this time, we have someone who only wants to approach Alex and ask if hes had any premonitions yet, please dear god Seann next time you’re asked to do a horror movie say no.
I think its now obvious to all of you out there that I have a severe dislike to this movie, the DVD ain’t too bad but thats another review, so where did it go wrong then? well to be honest it doesn’t help that there isn’t actually any ’bad guys’ to fight against, theres no Freddie Kreugers or Candymans its just fate that they’re fighting and fate ain’t an evil monstrosity.
But even so, it has a promising plot its just the scriptwriters failed miserably trying to take it anywhere, nobody actually does anything interesting and the death scenes are just so daft that they aren’t even laughable.
Is there any music score to talk about? well theres a John Denver record that occassionally gets referred to, but after that theres not much there, except the sporadic ’spooky’ music which plays for around 5 seconds before someone dies.
Finally location, well it just doesn’t seem right, one moment they’re in the middle of the city, the next they’re out in the sticks, running away from the FBI, so once again sorry but no, it doesn’t work.
In fact on a whole the words ’a little continuity wouldn’t go amiss’ come to mind when watching Final Destination, so if I was you I’d make sure that the shelf is this movies Final Destination. (Cheesy ending, but I like it)