October 30: Final Destination (2000)

[kinetic_elaboration]

Finally finished Final Destination. I enjoyed it, thought it was a very solid movie, and honestly found it to be maybe a bit more…thoughtful? than I was really expecting. I was kind of expecting a standard Y2K-era YA horror movie, which, like, I do enjoy, but I don’t think they’re that deep. (This isn’t really me calling Final Destination deep, but it had glimmers. Something something about the obsession with death overtaking life.)

I think the worst thing I can say about this film is that it took me so long to watch: both yesterday and today, and I was kinda off and on about it this evening. I mean, that’s sort of a choice I made because my brain is all over the place, and my attention span is not the movie’s fault. But I also wasn’t compelled at any point to stop everything and just focus on it properly. And I can’t tell if I would have enjoyed it more or less if it had my undivided attention for an hour and a half.

Reading beforehand that the concept was originally supposed to be an X-Files script makes soooo much sense to me. I am a little mad I knew this going in because I’m wondering if I would have clocked it on my own. The later two-thirds, which spent so much time on elaborate kill sequences, were more Horror Movie/Slasher to me, but the first third with Alex seeing all the omens and then the plane crash itself, that was puuuuure X-Files. Like a really extended cold open. This isn’t good or bad to me, I mean, it was a good X-Files concept, and the movie as a whole had that thoughtfulness that I associate with the show. On the other hand, my personal main interest in the show is Scully and Mulder so…

Absolutely the best part was when Alex and Clear talked to Totally Not Death in the morgue. Tony Todd absolutely killing it as per usual. He’s so creepy. He’s so compelling. That scene made the whole movie for me.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I also enjoyed Billy bringing some degree of comic relief with his weirdly off-genre goofiness. Alex and Clear take themselves soooo seriously.

The shocks and twists of the deaths were fun but imo had definite diminishing returns. Tod’s was the most startling and did make me jump, but after that, I could sort of… see it coming? I mean the sudden deaths like Terry’s were alarming jump scares for being sudden specifically. But having seen one set piece… I could kind of see the others coming? And by the big finale with Clear and Alex’s almost deaths, I was zoning out.

Which leads me to whether or not I would watch the others… I dunno. Maybe? My disappointing experience with watching all the Screams sort of put me off trying to watch whole franchises, honestly. And I suspect this one is going to be really formulaic. But…I might watch Bloodlines. We’ll see.