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Final Destination
***
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Entertainment Distribution on May 19, 2000; certificate
15; 90 minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by James Wong; produced by Glen
Morgan, Craig Perry, Warren Zide. Written by Glen
Morgan, Jeffrey Reddick, James Wong; from a story by
Jeffrey Reddick. Photographed by Robert Maclachlan; edited
by James Coblentz.
CAST.....
Devon Sawa..... Alex Browning
Ali Larter..... Clear Rivers
Kerr Smith..... Carter Horton
Kristen Cloke..... Valerie Lewton
Daniel Roebuck..... Agent Weine
Chad E. Donella..... Tod Waggner
Seann William Scott..... Billy Hitchcock
Amanda Detmer..... Terry Chaney
I found myself forced to fill in a questionnaire
the other day, which at one point asked: "Are you offended by anything that
offends good taste?" I had to answer no. While I do usually take a highbrow
approach to things, there are no absolutes when it comes to possible emotional
reactions. Sometimes it's healthy to view things from a low down and dirty
point of view.
"Final Destination" proves my point.
It's not a great horror movie, nor a scary one, and it doesn't even try to
satirise its genre. It simply inspires its viewers to indulge lurid fascination
with violence. I usually find that repellent -- look at my scathing reviews
of "The Bone Collector", "Ravenous", "8mm" and "Urban Legend". What distinguishes
this film from those is how up-front it is about its morbidity; it's unashamed
Grand Guignol, rather than sick titillation pretending to be serious
drama.
The story begins when a group of forty high-school
students board a plane for Paris. One of them, Alex (Devon Sawa), has a vivid
premonition of the aircraft exploding into flames after take-off. He freaks
out trying to warn people, and in the ensuing commotion gets thrown off the
plane, along with a teacher (Kristen Cloke) and five other students (Ali
Larter, Kerr Smith, Chad E. Donella, Seann William Scott, Amanda Detmer).
From the airport this group see that Alex was right -- the plane blows up
before their eyes.
Are the survivors lucky? Well, no, because they
soon start dying off anyway, and in a speech full of hammed-up grimacing
and portentous groaning, a strange mortician named Bloodworth (Tony Todd)
offers them an interesting theory as to why: In cheating death by getting
off the plane, they've gone against the Grim Reaper's plan, and the creature
is now stalking them to make up for it. All our heroes have to do is figure
out the nature of this plan, and how to cheat it again. Ah, no
problem.
It's unconventional to find a teen horror movie
in which Death himself is the villain. Refreshing, too, since there is no
opportunity for silly slasher-pic clichés involving friends creeping
up on each other and causing false alarms, or moments where people creep
around in the dark while a killer lurks in the shadows. Instead we get elaborate
supernatural death traps, which are so twisted that our morbid curiosity
is enthralled. I don't want to give too many specifics away, because the
appeal of "Final Destination" lies in waiting to see how creative its moments
of doom will get, but let me whet your appetite for their gleefully sadistic
flavour: In one scene, a leak causes a kid's bathroom floor to get slippy,
while he, unaware, uses a razor to nick a pimple from his neck, cuts his
nose hair with a sharp scissors, and stands opposite a cord that could strangle
him if he fell on it. We know he's going to die, we can see he's surrounded
by potentially fatal objects, and we can't turn our eyes from the screen
until we've seen him stumble into his demise.
This is of course sick, but it's fun, too, even
after it's been repeated seven times. We leer at how gruesome the film is,
allow ourselves to jump when death strikes, then laugh at ourselves for jumping.
I suspect "Final Destination", unlike most horror movies, will not look dated
in years to come, as it deals directly with the universally interesting theme
of mortality. Okay, so it deals with it in a goofy way, but goofiness will
live forever, too.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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