Final Destination 5

The first four films of the Final Destination franchise have grossed an international $321million (adjusted for inflation)¹. That figure exceeds 227% of its domestic take¹. The significance of this is that in 2010 the North American box office tallied $10.5billion² whereas the overseas numbers were $20b³. In an industry where the foreign market is worth 190% of the domestic the Final Destination franchise is an overachiever.

That begs the question why tinker with the formula? Why give a stripper a make over?

Jeffery Reddick wrote the Final Destination 2000 script as a staff writer for The X-Files. It was rejected but his TV colleagues James Wong (director) and Glen Morgan (writer) were impressed to join the project. So was New Line Cinema.

Reddick wrote the treatment and co-produced Final Destination 2 2003. Eric Bress penned the screenplay and David R Ellis directed. James Wong and Glen Morgan came back for Final Destination 3 2004. Ellis and Bress returned for The Final Destination 2009. These are the men who created and carried a horror franchise without an icon: without a Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers or Pinhead. They are the reason for its success.

Jeffery Reddick: discovered by New Line

For whatever the reasons are New Line hired a new team for Final Destination 5 2011. Steven Quale⁴ is a first time feature director. He’s known as a James Cameron protégé having worked Second Unit on Avatar 2009 and Titanic 1997. That is good pedigree. It is negated by the hiring of screenwriter Eric Heisserer who wrote A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010. That screenplay is worse than the film.

The big gun New Line has for this movie isn’t creative – it’s technological. 3D pushed The Final Destination to a worldwide $193.6m (inflation adjusted) making it the highest grossing entry in the series. Furthermore worldwide revenue generated by 3D films doubled last year⁵. The technology is a hand-in-glove fit for the genre (as well as action, war and sci-fi). This is cinema as spectacle and the horror Fanboy will always seek a primal visceral satisfaction.

Cinema is not spectacle alone. The Fanboy demands to be told a story he has paid for. With A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 Eric Heisserer has proved he couldn’t tell a story to a judge. Thus it is left to Quale to make a supermodel out of a swamp thing. It cannot be done. New Line will try – at a cost of $12 per ticket.

The story formula remains the same; the lead character has a premonition moments before a disaster strikes. He and others at his behest flee the scene and survive – so death returns to slay them one-b-one. In a departure from the previous films these survivors are neither school kids nor strangers. They are work colleagues in their early 20s and know each other outside the office: same difference.

The disaster as depicted in the trailer is one of the best in the franchise. Quale can shoot a set piece but Heisserer immediately includes narrative flaws. The eight survivors from Presage Paper are not the only survivors. This renders their predicament unexceptional. It goes against the ethos of the series. Somewhere in a parallel film other survivors are being stalked by death.

Nicholas D'Agosto: a case of casting disaster

The casting for this film is particularly bad. The final boy is played by Nicholas D’Agosto. He performs each scene with a blank gawp. His best friend looks exactly like him except he wears a perpetual scowl. The girlfriend always looks like she’s about to cry and the peripheral victims seem to be waiting for roles they can include on their résumés. There is one name actor and Courtney B Vance should be ashamed of himself for accepting this role. His character adds nothing to the rote proceedings. It is only Tony Todd who delivers – both a creep factor and an assurance: this is still a horror film.

Or is it? Heisserer can’t write cohesive narrative and he certainly can’t write comedy. The scene in the Ming Yun Spa is the sort of racist humour the Nazis laughed at in the 30s. It’s to be seen how this film will play in Hong Kong.

The raison d’être for the franchise are the gags. As the movie wears on they become repetitive: there’s always something involving water and electricity. There is also the final gag. It’s an insult to the audience and the previous writers. Heisserer wrote The Thing 2011. It means he’s going to insult John Carpenter too.

The best part of this film is the opening credit sequence. Shirley Walker’s theme is gone but Brian Tyler provides an expectant replacement. This is telling because it means the next film will be the last one. Regardless of Final Destination 5 box office the public will be aware that 3D means less entertainment for more money.

Read more Thrill Fiction: John Carpenter’s TheWard

1 Final Destination franchise The Numbers

2 2010 domestic box office Variety

3 2010 international box office boxoffice.com

4 Steven Quale IMDb

5 3D global revenue TG Daily

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The Final Destination

The first three films of the Star Wars saga serve as paradigm for the movie trilogy. Both sequels had three years to develop. What the first film started the third one finished. All of the films were box office phenomena. The cinemagoer wanted more.

In comparison the Final Destination sequels in the first trilogy also had a three year gestation period. In contrast the Final Destination sequels are merely remakes of the original. However the brand had been established and owned its market. In today’s money Final Destination 2000 made a domestic $69.4million. Final Destination 2 2003 grossed $56.8m. Final Destination 3 2006 earned $60.2m. With the trilogy over but with a robust box office New Line decided to commission part four.

The Final Destination 2009 arrived on schedule – three years after its predecessor. There was no series hiatus as such – even though the studio publicity inferred that there was. The new title alone demonstrated as much. It wasn’t so much a rebranding as a reintroduction.

No reintroduction necessary. The format, plot and layout of this fourth instalment is as carbon copied from the original as the other sequels. New Line has a cash cow and they are not going to genetically modify it. They did tinker with Shirley Walker’s original score but that wasn’t going to induce Fanboy boycotts. To wit more so than Freddy and Jason in the 80s the Final Destination sequels are product as entertainment with no camouflage of art.

The movie business is run by corporations. In this case New Line Cinema¹ is owned by Time Warner. Corporations² exists to generate profit in the same way a man cannot exist without sustenance. The difference is that when a man is sated he will stop consuming. The corporation will never stop. The product a corporation chooses to trade in (be it movies, pharmaceuticals, firearms) makes no difference. The corporation will continue to churn out product until the market is dead. This is the Hollywood ending.

The corporation is anathema to the arts: new stories are not allowed to be told; experiments are not allowed to be tested; the culture is constrained and contained. Corporate film is anti-cinema. Hollywood is simultaneously the antithesis and epitome of the horror film.

The Final Destination has no new story so it uses new technology. This series was tailor made for 3D but here at Thrill Fiction the belief is that 3D is not fit for cinema. It will be a good for gamers but it is extemporaneous in the storytelling arts. It’s a gimmick – a distraction – like smell-o-vision³.

The definition of art (for dummies) is to create something out of nothing eg a film script. It is not uncommon for the artist to create under life threatening conditions. It is common for the artist to create under restrictive conditions. The Soviet Union no longer exists but it is the corporation and not the communist party that now dictates censorship.

A Moment of Truth by Robert Capa

On the surface The Final Destination is Hollywood fast food. That’s all it was meant to be. New Line hired both the writer and the director of Final Destination 2 to make this instalment like the one they made before. Yet something happened on the way to the cinema.

In 1998 James Byrd Jr⁴ was murdered by three white racists. They beat him then chained him to their pickup truck and drove off – dragging him (subsequently his corpse) on a rural road in East Texas. Writer Eric Bress incorporated this horror into the film. In The Final Destination it is the white racist who dies by his own truck.

Martin Scorcese should be so bold.

Eric Bress succeeds in being subversive in a mainstream movie. This is the raison d’être of the writer. James Byrd’s terrorist murder lives on through The Final Destination. It serves as a reminder of the horror that exists outside of cinema. It puts a bloody thumbprint on this film series. 

The Final Destination grossed a domestic $69.3m (adjusted for inflation). The market for this franchise is not yet dead. It is thriving. It has outlasted its inspiration (Scream 1996), pretenders (Urban Legends 1998) and usurpers (Saw 2004). It shows no sign of stopping.

Final Destination 5 opens later today in the US (26^th August in the UK). It has the biggest budget yet but for reasons best known to the corporation the studio has hired a debutant feature director new to the franchise. They hired the writer responsible for the worst film of 2010. Despite the return of Tony Todd the omens are ominous.

The Final Destination is not the best film in the series. It is the most important one.

James Byrd Jr 1949-1998

“A voice was heard in Ramah,

 wailing and loud lamentation,

 Rachel weeping for her children;

 she refused to be consoled,

 because they were no more.”

– Matthew 2:18

Read more Thrill Fiction: The Wicker Man

1 New Line The Lost Tycoons Vanity Fair

2 The Corporation 2003 IMDb

3 Smell-o-Vision Wikipedia

4 James Byrd Jr CNN

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Final Destination 3

Hollywood does not save the best for the last.

Sequels adhere to the law of diminishing returns thus the end of a trilogy usually means good riddance. Final Destination 2000 was a high concept addition to the genre. The follow-up (by definition became low concept and) was formulaic but someone at New Line must have loved this franchise. The mistakes made in Scream 3 2003 and Final Destination 2 2003 were noted.

Final Destination 3 2006 did not promise its audience anything new or remarkable. In true capitalist-industrial sequel fashion it promised more of the same – only better. To this end the studio hired the original’s director James Wong (not his real name¹) and writers².

2 Wong and his writing partner Glen Morgan.

Jeffery Riddick³ conceived and co wrote Final Destination. He receives credit as creator in each instalment but has not worked on the franchise since Final Destination 2.

The story went back to beginnings to duplicate what worked in the original. A mistake in Final Destination 2 was to group together a bunch of strangers. It diminished the dramatic interaction between characters. Another error was the inclusion of a cop. His access to government computers diminished the threat. Third plot mistake was the love story subplot. It was an irritant.

Final Destination 3 returns to a bunch of school kids to whom death is an abstract concept – it only occurs to old folk and other people. The survivors all know each other but are not friends. The Final Girl and the lead boy have both lost their lovers in the curtain raiser catastrophe. They are not attracted to each other.

 “Kevin. If it wasn’t for you and Jerry being friends and me and Kerry being friends we wouldn’t have even hung out.” - Wendy

There are attempts at fine writing throughout the film: Lewis rants about his life plan: McKinley lumps Charles Manson, Osama Bin Laden and the Vice President in the same pot: Carrie’s confessing her plan to dump Jerry after graduation. These are the primal screams of youth. They are drowned by the perfunctory and pedestrian story.

With AJ Cook gawping her way through Final Destination 2 James Wong had to cast another Devon Sawa. He settled for Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Winstead awaits the release of her biggest role to date in The Thing 2011. A perusal of her curriculum vitae reveals enough credits for Final Girl⁴ status but she’s more of a Scream Queen⁵. In Final Destination 3 she tries to inhabit the role of lead character Wendy but there is nothing involving about her performance. Even with expectations for horror acting so low Winstead is begrudgingly adequate.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: will scream for food

Jamie Lee Curtis was a long time ago.

Some of the blame can be directed at her co star Ryan Merriman. His rendition as the lead male is as flat as a runway model’s chest. There are however flickers of bright spots. Kris Lemche as McKinley, Alexz Johnson as Erin and Sam Easton as Frankie Cheeks command the little screen time they have but the rest of the cast is anonymous. It’s that bad.

The real stars of these films are the gags: the stunts and CGI that death employs to entertain the renter. The Final Destination films have never elevated themselves to the folklore of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. None of the Final Destination 3 gags are memorable. They entertain in the moment but fail to resonate after the credits compared to Johnny Depp’s death in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street 1984 for example. A reason for this is the preposterousness of execution.

The highly advertised roller coaster scene is over detailed. The camera is close up on the teens faces thus reminding the viewer that it is only a movie. There have been videotaped rollercoaster tragedies shown on the news. In order to induce realism the filmmakers could have mimicked that ground level angle POV long shot vérité style. In making the choices they made they removed all tension.

Tension exists when the audience doesn’t see death coming. The kill is sudden and the viewer is jolted. Tension oozes from the screen as to what will happen next. This film had one of those instances. That’s not enough for 90 minutes.

This final chapter in the trilogy was a good riddance and although Hollywood doesn’t save the best for the last Final Destination 3 was an improvement on its predecessor. It also made more money⁶. In the current production climate that meant a franchise reboot was inevitable.

Only the music industry can wring more money out of death than Hollywood.

Read more Thrill Fiction: The 100 Best Horror Films #3

1 James Wong Wikipedia

3 Jeffry Riddick IMDb

4 Final Girl AxWound – Gender in the Horror Genre

5 Scream Queen Wikipedia

6 Final Destination series The Numbers

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Final Destination 2

Harry Potter is the most successful film series in history¹. With its conclusion it is sure to be usurped by former leader¹ James Bond. In this Daniel Craig incarnation or the next Bond is always only a number of films away from dominance.

James Bond is the epitome of film franchise; the character has been played by a variety of actors the majority of whom have been accepted by the public; each film is a self contained storyline with no reference to prior movies; it has been successfully rebooted numerous times²; there have been 18 movies³; it is 50 years old. It is the Hollywood business plan.

2 James Bond reboots occur every time a new actor first plays the role; there have been six occasions⁴. A counter argument is reboots occur after a hiatus – in which case there have been two⁴.

Before a series comes the (first) sequel. This is the acid test that determines the direction of subsequent entries. Sequels tend to take one of three routes: the thematic swerve (Aliens 1986): the narrative continuum (Halloween 2 1981): the carbon copy (Friday the 13^th Part 2 1981). Final Destination 2 2003 chose the path of least resistance aka the James Bond effect.

stunt flick

The revelation in Final Destination 2000 is Devon Sawa. Though the film’s high concept is preposterous Sawa’s performance anchors the film into a suspension of disbelief. His character survived the movie – along with two others – but died before the sequel.

The reason Tuesday Night features in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master 1988 is because Patricia Arquette wasn’t available to reprise her role. In the documentary Never Sleep Again 2010 actor Rodney Eastman alleges Arquette wasn’t hired due to New Line’s unwillingness to pay her asking price. As Eastman notes The Dream Master suffers for it.

Whatever the reason for Sawa’s absence⁴ Final Destination 2 suffers for it. In his stead is one AJ Cook. On the surface swapping a boy for a Final Girl is astute casting. Onscreen it is failure. Final Destination 2, like its predecessor, is an action film. Women cannot and do not carry action pictures⁵. The exception (Terminator 2 1991) is not the rule.

5 Female action heroes exist in the fantasy (and/or politically correct) subgenre of action⁶. Any credible female lead in a reality milieu is the exception⁷.

AJ Cook: no sizzle no spice no salt

AJ Cook⁸ should be a synonym for insipid. The woman is out of her depth and range. Her talent belongs on daytime television as background noise while the stay-at-home-moms and deadbeats vacuum the front room. Her one-tone performance renders Final Destination 2 without centre so much so that it is not a prediction she will never carry a movie again.

The template for horror casting is young, inexperienced and cheap actors supported by older, talented and cheap has-beens (Halloween 1978). Final Destination adhered to this convention. Final Destination 2 did not. Co-star Michael Landes plays the older voice and love interest. He’s barely older than Cook. He’s barely better.

Returning to the cast are Clear Rivers and Tony Todd. Rivers was bad in the original and she’s no better here. Worse still her character does not belong in this movie: there is insufficient motivation for her actions. Tony Todd’s reprisal as seer is both homage to his iconic status and insult to his racial identity. The mortician he plays is no more than ‘mammy’ – and is treated worse than she was by these whites.

"yessur massa boss."

One of the changes from the previous movie was to insert the lead character into a pool of strangers as opposed to a group of friends. It’s another creative blunder. In Final Destination tension exudes from the fear of which friend is going to die next. In this sequel who should care which stranger dies next? There is no camaraderie, there is no community ergo there is lack of empathy.

With no characters to speak of – and no coherence in the story – there is only plot. This manifests itself in set pieces linked by dialogue leased from daytime sitcoms. The set pieces are signposted thus the element of surprise is nonexistent. What remains is spectacle. What is missing is shock.

At least James Bond has story.

The opening scene of Final Destination 2 has a prologue reminiscent of the Psycho 1963 epilogue. It is an exposition scene that explains the concept of the series in metaphysical terms. It is interesting in that the movie could have taken a turn into Unbreakable 2000 territory. Alas Final Destination 2 ambitions were to be a rerun of part one.

A rerun without the original writers and without the original star exposes Hollywood’s final destination.

It is the James Bond effect.

Read more Thrill Fiction: John Carpenter’s The Ward

1 Film franchise box office rankings The Numbers

3 James Bond franchise The Numbers

4 Devon Sawa AWOL The Arrow interview

6 Top 30 female action heroes Yell Magazine

7 Signourey Weaver interview Moviefone

8 AJ Cook IMDb

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Final Destination

In anticipation of the release of Final Destination 5 (12^th August) this is the first of a series of editorials examining each of the four films to date. As such plot points/spoilers will be mentioned.

It has been 10 years.

The release of Scream 2 1997 alerted Hollywood that there was new profits in new horror franchises. On the bandwagon of Wes Craven’s success came the films I Know What You Did Last Summer 1997, Urban Legends 1998 and Jeepers Creepers 2001 amongst others (this period was from Scream 1996 – Final Destination 3 2006 and was superseded by torture porn and Asian remakes. Ginger Snaps 2000 is an independent Canadian film made with no reference to studio fare). Final Destination 2000 is the most successful film/ franchise in the wake of Scream.

Watching it for the first time it was clear this was an attempt to start a franchise: there were survivors, an obligatory trick ending and an indestructible monster. That monster is death.

In the year 2000 death was all around more so than at any other time in a thousand years. Urban legend dictates when there’s a full moon the lunatics come out to play. At the turn of the millennium there was a lot of lunacy. There was fear. There was paranoia.

The Y2K bug¹ foretold the collapse of civilisation². The Waco Siege was fresh in memory and the Jonestown Massacre was revived to remind. Governments were on alert re suicide cults³. The East African US embassy bombings of 1998 were viewed by many to be a dry run for targets on the American mainland. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing showed where the US was vulnerable. Terrorism was in the air.

This was the age of The X-Files – a television show that spread paranoia amongst the simple minded. With these credits alumni James Wong directed and co-wrote Final Destination. His concept couldn’t be clearer: a group of teens cheat death – but can’t escape it. The concept would have been effective at any point in time. At the turn of the millennium Wong chose the best time.

The advertising industry has the ‘big idea’. Screenplays should have them too. This is beyond ‘high concept’⁴. This is the secret of the script. It is blood that cannot be transfused – or there is no point to the story. The secret of Final Destination is death. Not the Grim reaper but Death as a (super) natural force: a scheme of things.

This poses a dramatic risk: the victims have no monster to fight against and no chance of survival. Furthermore there is no motivation for their deaths. Where is the dramatic pulse?

The Final Destination big idea is inspired; every sentient being has a fear of death; even old people don’t want to die. This is dramatic impulse. The audience is placed in the eye of God and the characters cannot see death coming. The ones who live to die another day are the ones who drink at the waterhole like gazelle watching for signs.

In Nazi occupied Russia Hitler waged a war of annihilation. Partisans fought back and the Germans wrecked terrible vengeance; they burned villages; they killed civilians. In a particular episode the Nazis were coming. A villager pleaded with her brother to run with her into the forest. He refused. He was a school teacher before the war. He couldn’t see how the Nazis would harm him since he had done nothing wrong.

Death comes.

There are those who refuse to see the signs.

Final Destination is a studio picture and not an exploration of themes. Rosemary’s Baby 1968, The Exorcist 1973 and Carrie 1976 were a long time ago. Final Destination relies on set pieces to tell its story. There is no examination of the psychological effects of near death experiences à la war veterans. However it does acknowledge the effect on some of the characters.

Kristen Cloke plays teacher Val Lewton (wink) as a guilt racked survivor whose colleague died in her place. She blames lead character Alex (Devon Sawa) the seer. At one point an excited Alex describes himself as ‘a god’. His love interest chastises him; “you’re losing it”. This was the point the film could have targeted its (primary) teen audience with their own mortality in the same way the Brothers’ Grimm fairy tales challenge children.

Alas the filmmakers chose to concentrate on formula: premonition results in elaborate death. Yet the formula is imperfect. The first survivor to die is best friend Tod. In his case Death acts like an invisible Grim Reaper: the water on the bathroom floor whereupon he slips retracts after his demise. Subsequent deaths infer the incidental. The peril is depicted as even.

As is the case with horror films with a teen cast most of the acting is shoddy. The exceptions are the G-Men (Roger Guenveur Smith and Daniel Roebuck) and Devon Sawa. Sans a visible monster to cower from Sawa’s role as protagonist takes on more scope. The actor carries the film with enthusiasm. He could have become a star.

Devon Sawa

It was the film that became a star ie franchise – now in its second life. Final Destination is a crowd pleaser because of its set pieces much like James Bond and much better than Saw. In bypassing its narrative potential it has become a blueprint and a cash cow. It grossed an inflation adjusted $147million⁵ (worldwide) in 2000 – more than half of which came from outside the US. The spectacles of the death scenes were not lost in translation.

Final Destination excites more than it infuriates. It delivers on its poster and trailer. It’s a good horror film. It even has the endorsement of the Candyman.

Read more Thrill Fiction: Top 10 Coming Soon Movies 2011

1 Y2K Bug BBC News 2 The Independent 3  suicide cults E Telegraph 4 high concept Writers Store 5 The Numbers

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