Luke Owen takes in a Final Destination movie marathon...
Where 3 guys watch franchise movies one after the other. Sponsored by Mountain Dew Energy and Bacon...
With a slightly sorer head than what I went to bed with, we rose from our 3 hour slumber post-The Planet of the Apes Marathon with hangovers that should have been much worse. But thankfully we had the perfect cure – bacon and teenagers attempting to avoid death. Or as I like to call them, Mouse Trap: The Movie.
I know I said that the last meeting deemed we were moving away from horror movies, but we needed an easier marathon to soothe our souls after an all-night drinking session.
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09:59 – Final Destination
I remember watching this movie about a year after it came out round my cousin’s house. He put it on with a prefix warning of: ‘don’t watch this if you’re about to fly somewhere’. For some reason that has stuck with me to this day despite nothing else about the film being all that memorable. Well, apart from that girl getting hit by the bus. Final Destination really is a film of its time with a stereotypical cast of characters, sub-standard dialogue and fairly decent visual and practical effects. It really isn’t the worst horror movie to come out the late 90s/early 2000s, but it is by no means the best. However the plane crash vision is still quite harrowing and the shower strangulation scene really makes my skin crawl, although the final scenes of the movie fall quite flat and are ultimately very anti-climactic.
11:28 – Everyone but Clear Rivers (yes, that is a character’s name) is dead I guess. How will this survivor hold up when Death rears its ugly head once again?
11:37 – Final Destination 2
Coming out a couple of years after the first movie, this entry follows more or less the same pattern as the first instalment. Someone foresees a car crash, stops it from happening and then the survivors get bumped off one by one by Death. However this film is different to the first one because it is so wacky. Whereas the first movie was trying to take itself relatively serious, this film goes the complete comedy route with massively over the top deaths, bizarre dialogue and a scene where a 15 year old kid is effectively killed by pigeons. Laugh out loud moments covered the entire movie and for all the right reasons. What really made me laugh however is how Ali Larter managed to age about 15 years in just 3. I should have really loathed Final Destination 2 because it was so stupid, but it’s just so wacky that I can’t hate it.
13:00 – More people are dead only this time some people actually survived. However they wouldn’t make it into the next instalment...
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13:06 – Final Destination 3
Another 3 years after the last movie, the Final Destination franchise went back to straight-up horror and rolled back into cinema screens with, if you ask me, the best entry of the series. Seriously, I really liked this film. I thought all the characters were fun, the storyline was fairly good and the deaths were really entertaining. On top of that, the “premonition” scene that comes with every Final Destination movie is the most harrowing, nerve-racking and is certainly the tensest of the whole series. Now, I admit that a lot of my love for this movie may come from my lot of love for Mary Elizabeth Winstead, but I like to think that it was a combination of other things. And while I did like this film, I do think the whole picture subplot was a bit weak and extraneous. Also by this point the series was starting to get a little samey. Someone has a vision, they stop the vision, survivors die etc etc. But this film gets bonus points by being a really enjoyable film with some really on-the-edge-of-your-seat scenes.
14:30 – BOOOOO! Why kill Mary Elizabeth Winstead?! Have you no heart?! Well, it looks like we’re moving on to another Final Destination, THE Final Destination apparently…
14:32 – The Final Destination
Such a bizarre name for a movie. Even if this was intended to be the last entry the franchise, it’s just an odd sounding title. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter looks silly now, but at least at the time it made sense. Remember when I said that the series was starting to grow stale in the last movie, boy oh boy does it ever show in this one. This is the only film of the Final Destination franchise where I was really bored. To be honest, sitting here now, I can’t really remember what happened in the film other than the over the top crash at the start, the cinema scene and the terrible special effects. The 3D work was really stupid, the death scenes were bland and, I want to stress this again, the special effects were dreadful. They would have looked embarrassing if this movie had been made in 1998, let alone 2009. Lastly, The Final Destination features one of the most badly filmed death scenes on film and one of the worst death scenes on film at the same time. Seriously, the car wash scene is so horrendously put together and un-engaging, while the “pool” death scene is just dreadful. A really pointless entry and one I will quickly forget.
15:48 – Just a really boring movie that I am happy to see the back of. And we’re about to reach our Final (marathon) Destination…
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15:54 – Final Destination 5
With the last instalment being a really boring affair, I didn’t have much in the way of high hopes going into this final film. However I can now say that I really, really enjoyed this movie. It managed to overcome some of the issues the series had as a whole (but still has the same rubbish CGI from the previous movie), had good characters with story arcs and a really interesting twist ending that I honestly didn’t see coming. The death scenes made me wince, the dialogue kept me engaged and the ‘take a life, get a life’ plot element gave the film some much needed weight. The problem that the series has always had is that without a physical presence doing the killing, there is no antagonist for a final showdown. That’s why the ending to parts 1, 2 and 4 had such flat endings (3 at least had a semi-showdown with one of the survivors that ends way to quickly). Final Destination 5 doesn’t have that issue because it turns one of its survivors into a villain through clever writing and good storytelling. With that said, the final moments of the movie are a bit forced and we didn’t need to see the ironic moment play out. It would have played out a lot better had we not seen their final moments of the twist ending and just ended at the reveal. It’s a great entry into the series and a great movie to end this marathon on.
17:18 – Our shortest marathon to date is over and I am one tired little monkey.
With only one real stinker in the entire series, you have to wonder why the Final Destination series doesn’t get a lot of credit. After all, Friday the 13th only has a handful of really good movies and the Nightmare on Elm Street series has even less. So what’s the problem?
As I said earlier, the lack of a real antagonist hampers the series. If they’d have the ‘take a life, get a life’ motif from the first instalment then it may have fared better, but without a Freddy or a Jason the audience really has no one to fear. The other problem the series has is that the whole set up is so odd that the exposition scenes that detail the plot feel so contrived. Each film had the same issue with this problem, and so far the series hasn’t found a way to get round it. However, with Final Destination 5 being one of the best movies of the franchise, perhaps there is some hope should they do another film.
From Best to Worst:
1. Final Destination 3
2. Final Destination 5
3. Final Destination 2
4. Final Destination
5. The Final Destination
Total runtime (including breaks): 8 hours, 17 minutes.
Having now had 3 of our 4 marathons be around horror movies, you’d think we’d be ready to move on. But with October being the month of Halloween, we thought we’d celebrate the night that he came home…
Next Time: Halloween
Luke Owen is a freelance copywriter working for Europe’s biggest golf holiday provider as their web content executive.![]()
Where 3 guys watch franchise movies one after the other. Sponsored by Mountain Dew Energy and Bacon...
With a slightly sorer head than what I went to bed with, we rose from our 3 hour slumber post-The Planet of the Apes Marathon with hangovers that should have been much worse. But thankfully we had the perfect cure – bacon and teenagers attempting to avoid death. Or as I like to call them, Mouse Trap: The Movie.
I know I said that the last meeting deemed we were moving away from horror movies, but we needed an easier marathon to soothe our souls after an all-night drinking session.
09:59 – Final Destination
I remember watching this movie about a year after it came out round my cousin’s house. He put it on with a prefix warning of: ‘don’t watch this if you’re about to fly somewhere’. For some reason that has stuck with me to this day despite nothing else about the film being all that memorable. Well, apart from that girl getting hit by the bus. Final Destination really is a film of its time with a stereotypical cast of characters, sub-standard dialogue and fairly decent visual and practical effects. It really isn’t the worst horror movie to come out the late 90s/early 2000s, but it is by no means the best. However the plane crash vision is still quite harrowing and the shower strangulation scene really makes my skin crawl, although the final scenes of the movie fall quite flat and are ultimately very anti-climactic.
11:28 – Everyone but Clear Rivers (yes, that is a character’s name) is dead I guess. How will this survivor hold up when Death rears its ugly head once again?
11:37 – Final Destination 2
Coming out a couple of years after the first movie, this entry follows more or less the same pattern as the first instalment. Someone foresees a car crash, stops it from happening and then the survivors get bumped off one by one by Death. However this film is different to the first one because it is so wacky. Whereas the first movie was trying to take itself relatively serious, this film goes the complete comedy route with massively over the top deaths, bizarre dialogue and a scene where a 15 year old kid is effectively killed by pigeons. Laugh out loud moments covered the entire movie and for all the right reasons. What really made me laugh however is how Ali Larter managed to age about 15 years in just 3. I should have really loathed Final Destination 2 because it was so stupid, but it’s just so wacky that I can’t hate it.
13:00 – More people are dead only this time some people actually survived. However they wouldn’t make it into the next instalment...
13:06 – Final Destination 3
Another 3 years after the last movie, the Final Destination franchise went back to straight-up horror and rolled back into cinema screens with, if you ask me, the best entry of the series. Seriously, I really liked this film. I thought all the characters were fun, the storyline was fairly good and the deaths were really entertaining. On top of that, the “premonition” scene that comes with every Final Destination movie is the most harrowing, nerve-racking and is certainly the tensest of the whole series. Now, I admit that a lot of my love for this movie may come from my lot of love for Mary Elizabeth Winstead, but I like to think that it was a combination of other things. And while I did like this film, I do think the whole picture subplot was a bit weak and extraneous. Also by this point the series was starting to get a little samey. Someone has a vision, they stop the vision, survivors die etc etc. But this film gets bonus points by being a really enjoyable film with some really on-the-edge-of-your-seat scenes.
14:30 – BOOOOO! Why kill Mary Elizabeth Winstead?! Have you no heart?! Well, it looks like we’re moving on to another Final Destination, THE Final Destination apparently…
14:32 – The Final Destination
Such a bizarre name for a movie. Even if this was intended to be the last entry the franchise, it’s just an odd sounding title. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter looks silly now, but at least at the time it made sense. Remember when I said that the series was starting to grow stale in the last movie, boy oh boy does it ever show in this one. This is the only film of the Final Destination franchise where I was really bored. To be honest, sitting here now, I can’t really remember what happened in the film other than the over the top crash at the start, the cinema scene and the terrible special effects. The 3D work was really stupid, the death scenes were bland and, I want to stress this again, the special effects were dreadful. They would have looked embarrassing if this movie had been made in 1998, let alone 2009. Lastly, The Final Destination features one of the most badly filmed death scenes on film and one of the worst death scenes on film at the same time. Seriously, the car wash scene is so horrendously put together and un-engaging, while the “pool” death scene is just dreadful. A really pointless entry and one I will quickly forget.
15:48 – Just a really boring movie that I am happy to see the back of. And we’re about to reach our Final (marathon) Destination…
15:54 – Final Destination 5
With the last instalment being a really boring affair, I didn’t have much in the way of high hopes going into this final film. However I can now say that I really, really enjoyed this movie. It managed to overcome some of the issues the series had as a whole (but still has the same rubbish CGI from the previous movie), had good characters with story arcs and a really interesting twist ending that I honestly didn’t see coming. The death scenes made me wince, the dialogue kept me engaged and the ‘take a life, get a life’ plot element gave the film some much needed weight. The problem that the series has always had is that without a physical presence doing the killing, there is no antagonist for a final showdown. That’s why the ending to parts 1, 2 and 4 had such flat endings (3 at least had a semi-showdown with one of the survivors that ends way to quickly). Final Destination 5 doesn’t have that issue because it turns one of its survivors into a villain through clever writing and good storytelling. With that said, the final moments of the movie are a bit forced and we didn’t need to see the ironic moment play out. It would have played out a lot better had we not seen their final moments of the twist ending and just ended at the reveal. It’s a great entry into the series and a great movie to end this marathon on.
17:18 – Our shortest marathon to date is over and I am one tired little monkey.
With only one real stinker in the entire series, you have to wonder why the Final Destination series doesn’t get a lot of credit. After all, Friday the 13th only has a handful of really good movies and the Nightmare on Elm Street series has even less. So what’s the problem?
As I said earlier, the lack of a real antagonist hampers the series. If they’d have the ‘take a life, get a life’ motif from the first instalment then it may have fared better, but without a Freddy or a Jason the audience really has no one to fear. The other problem the series has is that the whole set up is so odd that the exposition scenes that detail the plot feel so contrived. Each film had the same issue with this problem, and so far the series hasn’t found a way to get round it. However, with Final Destination 5 being one of the best movies of the franchise, perhaps there is some hope should they do another film.
From Best to Worst:
1. Final Destination 3
2. Final Destination 5
3. Final Destination 2
4. Final Destination
5. The Final Destination
Total runtime (including breaks): 8 hours, 17 minutes.
Having now had 3 of our 4 marathons be around horror movies, you’d think we’d be ready to move on. But with October being the month of Halloween, we thought we’d celebrate the night that he came home…
Next Time: Halloween
Luke Owen is a freelance copywriter working for Europe’s biggest golf holiday provider as their web content executive.
