Final Destination (dir. James Wong, 2000)
Devon Sawa, a charismatic young actor known for this and for Idle Hands, stars as a teenager named Alex who opens the film on a plane, heading off to Paris with his high school class. He has a psychic premonition that everyone will die (which, of course, we get to see violently dramatized), and his subsequent freakout gets him and several other classmates (including Ali Larter and Seann William Scott) kicked off the plane, which then explodes right after takeoff. Because of the airplane, the series gets its name. “Final destination” refers to where the plane was going, you see, and not just death. Seeing as none of the future installments will have airplanes in them, the title loses its double meaning. Oh well.
The students are all understandably freaked out by the deaths of their classmates, and by Alex’s premonition. When one of the survivors dies in what may have been a suicide, but we see to be a bizarre in-bathtub hanging (it would take too long to explain), James and Larter become suspicious. A mysterious pathologist named Bludworth (sigh) explains to them that Death has a plan, and that psychics tend to interrupt that plan. Death is now stalking our heroes and will kill them off using whatever means It can. Bludworth is played by Tony Todd, one of the few actors who will recur in this series.
It occurs to me that continuity is hardly the issue in these films, and it may be one of the only cases in series history wherein a complete lack of continuity will serve to make the series stronger. There is no secret cabal of psychics, Death’s plan is never explicitly laid out, and our main characters are always, always doomed. And why not? Why not kill everyone? The theme of this entire series is pointedly fatalistic, and that Death – despite a divine tease of psychic gifts – is inevitable. Violence is an intrinsic part of the universe, and some of us are merely and powerlessly its bitch.
By the end of Final Destination, we’ve had some pretty spectacular kills (the surprise bus smash was a highlight) and the surviving heroes (including Sawa and Larter) feel they’ve somehow beat the system (they managed to interrupt the order in which they thought they were to be killed). But no! The final shot reveals otherwise!
There will be an attempt to connect Final Destination to Final Destination 2, but the groundwork is all we need.
