A Bloody Good Time: Ranking The Final Destination Movies

Opening Logo courtesy of Benjamin J. Colón (Soul Exodus)

This week, by reader request, I’m going to be ranking a series that I really wish would make a comeback: Final Destination. Not that I didn’t enjoy Jigsaw for what it was, but I think the world was okay with that series being gone. There’s still a lot you could do with the Final Destination movies. Unfortunately, the box office wasn’t great for the fifth movie and so New Line has been hesitant about making another one.

The series came along at the right time in my life when I was absorbing everything horror and wanted something new. A movie with Death itself as the villain, killing characters in increasingly complex ways because they angered it, was exactly what I needed. And while you could argue the concept tends to make the movies kind of pointless (Death always wins, after all), it doesn’t ever stop being fun for me. Even the lesser entries have at least one cool death scene.

Everyone has their own opinions about what order these should be in, I’m sure, but I I think I have a hunch we’ll all have the same choice for #1. I tend to prefer the more violent and fun entries in the series although even the ones with fun deaths can be brought down by a moronic group of characters.

Anyway, here’s Tony Todd.

#5: Final Destination 3 (2006)

It’s hard to put into words why Final Destination 3 is so bad compared to the rest of the series. On the outside, it’s not much different from the others. There’s the big show-opening carnage, then the survivors are killed one by one. It’s not exactly because it doesn’t try anything new, but it’s a little because of that. There are no real twists here. It’s a standard formula for these movies and outside of the twist that Death is extremely cruel at the end (which admittedly is good), nothing stands out.

You’d think the roller coaster death would be great, but it feels a little too fake due to the CGI used. The massacre at the opening of the next film is like that too. The kills themselves are hit are miss, which is a step down from the creative, gory kills that preceded it. And the characters themselves, outside of the two leads trying hard, don’t add a whole lot. They’re really generic teenagers or they’re annoying jerks who don’t think.

Final Destination 3 is a perfectly watchable film, even though it’s bad. Like any good slasher, even the bad ones are fine background viewing if nothing else. That’s essentially what these movies are, you just can’t actually see the killer. And while this has a lot of dumb character decisions, some poorly acted moments and some lame, lame kills at times, it’s still easy to watch. That’s not to say I would ever, ever pick it over any of these others.

#4: The Final Destination (2009)

The worst thing a movie can be is boring. I’ve said this on multiple occasions. When The Final Destination is not killing someone in a graphic fashion, it’s completely boring. There’s no reason to care about any of these characters, particually some of the more awful ones. If you think that complaint sounds like Final Destination 3, you’re right. The reason this wins over that is because the kills are better.

Of course they’re only better in the sense that they’re gorier. Outside of a somewhat memorable (if clearly poor CG) opening race track massacre, many of the kills here are copycats of earlier kills in the series. Someone gets run over by a vehicle. Someone else gets impaled. Yet another person gets decapitated. Sure, a few of them are retooled a bit to appear original, but it’s really just a variation on something we’ve already seen before. When the entire point of your film is to feature new and inventive kills and you fail to deliver on that, then your film is already flawed from the outset.

The Final Destination isn’t as bad as Final Destination 3, but like that film it doesn’t break any new ground. It feels tired and familiar. Normally this wouldn’t be a reasonable complaint, but here even the selling point of the creative kills is lackadaisical and half-hearted. Unfortunately I think it’s the poor reception to these two films that ultimately doomed Final Destination 5 and the franchise as a whole. For that alone I have to put this on the lower end.

#3: Final Destination (2000)

What? The original is only #3? Yes, I’ve got to. As I said, these movies are the most enjoyable with the more carnage and kills they have, and compared to the rest of the series this one is pretty tame. I think the most gruesome death is their teacher, but that’s more because it’s mean spirited than anything else. While not the goriest in the series, the deaths do serve a purpose and are entertaining in their own way.

Final Destination does have some of the better characters in the entire series. The cast is mostly likable, Devon Sawa’s Alex is actually a really intelligent and forward-thinking protagonist (rare for a horror film) and the plot moves along at a steady pace so as not to get boring. There’s always something happening, even if it’s not a death. It never feels like a scene is there just to pad the running time. It’s one of the tighest horror films in recent memory.

Also, I mean, it’s the first. It came up with the concept and it set the tone for the movies that would follow. It deserves respect for that alone if you’re a fan of this series. The story is clever, the twists and turns along the way aren’t there for the sake of it, but to further the plot. It’s a really fun horror movie, and definitely one of the best of its year.

#2: Final Destination 5 (2011)

I love this movie. Not as much as I like the #1 entry, but it’s really great in terms of keeping things fun and enjoyable. It almost feels like an apology to series fans for the mediocrity of the third and fourth films. It has all the strengths of the first two films in the series along with very few of the flaws that the last two films had. In addition to that, and I know this doesn’t really apply now, but I maintain that the 3D in this movie was some of the best use of 3D I’ve ever seen.

The bridge collapse massacre is great. The kills are as complicated and nasty as you’d expect. This one is more mean-spirited and it almost gives Death a sense of humor in how he kills these people. The writers know that their audience comes to expect certain deaths so they switch them up a little bit. Without spoiling anything, the deaths you see in the trailer don’t end the way you think they do. It drops hints that one thing or another will happen, but then something comes out of left field and all you can do is laugh.

It’s easily one of the best sequels, and would be the best if not for the next entry. It has all the bloody deaths that fans have come to expect, and in glorious 3D so you can really enjoy it. Add to that the likable cast, a creative twist ending and the return of Tony Todd and you have a sequel that is fun, entertaining and worth your time.

The montage at the end of the film is great too. Check it out.

#1: Final Destination 2 (2003)

This one. This is the best in the franchise and still one of the most enjoyable horror films to watch for me. Yes, a movie with death and carnage is fun. But we’re horror fans, we knew that already. If this movie only had the highway deaths to start and then a bunch of tame deaths to continue, that’d still be really fun. But it has more than that. There’s the elevator kill, the teenager that gets crushed with a pane of glass. It’s all brutal stuff, but if you’re into that, you’ll enjoy it.

But man, that highway scene is classic. It’s just a perfect combination of a bunch of things happening at once, bloody carnage and some creative ways to off people indiscriminately. It sounds weird to have a favorite, but the log crashing through the windshield and the person’s head is mine. It’s total anarchy in the span of about five minutes and remains one of my favorite sequences in horror. Yes, the entire genre.

The movie itself also benefits from a well-written script, with more interesting characters, Ali Larter returning to tie things into the first and a story that actually builds on what came before. Later films ultimately revealed that Death always wins, but in this one it felt like there was an actual chance to win. It’s probably the last one where you actively root for the people being hunted down, which says a lot in a series where you watch solely to see people die.

But yeah, I knew from the moment this was asked that Final Destination 2 was my #1. It’s not even close.

Ending Notes:

That’s it for me. Leave some comments here, on my Twitter or my Facebook.

Closing Logo courtesy of Kyle Morton (get your own custom artwork and commissions at his Etsy account)

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