Special Feature: Final Destination Films Ranked
If you’ve clicked on this article, then you’re probably one sick puppy (just like the author), who gets their cinematic jollies from watching movies where the cast meets their demise through avengingly sinister means. Whether it’s via crushing, splattering or impaling, there’s always something to satisfy our bloodlust in every Final Destination movie.
Unlike the short-lived characters in each film, the franchise has proven it’s got legs. The release of Final Destination: Bloodlines marks the 25th birthday of the franchise and is something of a relaunch for the series. New decade. New design. New disturbing and disgusting deaths for a new generation to relish. Read our Bloodlines review here.
Bloodlines is the sixth film in the franchise, and while these films are hardly critically regarded, no film before Bloodlines has scored higher than a 6.7 on IMDb. And yet the franchise has endured for a quarter of a century. So, in honour of its quadricentennial milestone, now seems like a good time to rank all the films for funsies.
6. The Final Destination
In the last position, we have The Final Destination, which is widely viewed as the worst in the franchise, and we have to agree. The fourth entry, while having its moments of gruesome fun, leaves a lot to be desired. For starters, the title is infuriating. It should’ve been called Final Destination 4. Simple and succinct. The Final Destination implies finality, which this is not. Duh.
But beyond trivial complaints about the title, this entry feels weaker in every department; the setup, the characters and the kills. The opening premonition involving a race track accident feels noticeably less inspired after the chaotic freeway car pileup of Final Destination 2.
None of the cast leaves an impression, and that includes Bubba Gump himself, Mykelti Williams. But in their defence, the script is lacking in characterisation, reducing most of them to generic likeable stereotypes; the racist, the irresponsible hot mum and the alpha-jock. Even the characters that you’re meant to hope survive the ordeal are just bland. When you find yourself rooting for a decapitation in a car wash, then you know you really aren’t attached to any of the characters.
This film was guilty of jumping on the 3d trend of the early twenties, and upon rewatch, the kills come across more corny than gnarly. With there being such an emphasis on deaths that involved n element of something leaping, poking or flying off the screen, the result is the deaths ultimately eel like a cheap thrill akin to one of those janky 4D rides at Universal Studios that spits water at dience. In the attempts to feel more immersive, it ironically lost the pulpiness of the previous films. And just like the film’s title, the gimmick of the 3d deaths has aged like milk.
Best Death: Hunt having his organs sucked out in a public swimming pool’s draining system. To quote Jojo Siwa; “Karma’s a bitch”.
5. Final Destination 2
There’s a lot of fun to be had with Final Destination 2. Director David R. Ellis does a decent job of delivering a sequel that works in tandem with James Wong’s original. Effectively, seeing death doing damage control from the first film. In this one, the sole survivor of Flight 180, Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), tries to help a bunch of civilians who narrowly avoided a log-tastic freeway pileup to escape death once again.
The golden rule of a sequel is it’s gotta be bigger and better. Whilst not as original or tightly knitted as the first, one thing Ellis did improve upon was the deaths. The kills are a lot nastier in this film, as if death is some bored kid pulling the wings off of flies before finally squishing them. Characters like Evan Lewis, Tim Carpenter and Kat all have close brushes. Lulling us into a false sense of security that they might just have evaded the grave, before an even more brutal death awaits them around the corner.
What lets the sequel down is a limp protagonist. A.J. Cook’s Kimberly Corman never quite gets the audience on her side like Devon Sawa did in the first film. Thankfully, when Larter’s Clear returns, the story picks up steam. The Final Destination ingredients are all here, but the mixture wasn’t quite perfected yet.
Best Death: The film starts strong with a sequence that only builds the tension with each ing minute. Evan Lewis narrowly escapes a burning building only to be skewered through the face by the very thing meant to save him – that’s just stupidly fun. But Nora’s decapitation by an elevator. The door has to take the cake for gruesomeness because of how drawn-out and unnecessarily cruel her death is.
4. Final Destination 3
James Wong returned to the director’s chair in 2006 for the third instalment, and like a trip to the carnival, Final Destination 3 is one helluva ride. For anyone with a fear of rollercoasters, this one probably isn’t for you. The opening set-piece with the rollercoaster crash is equal parts thrilling and terrifying. But the fairground fun doesn’t stop after Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) gets a group of her classmates off the doomed ride. Each death set-piece is cleverly foreshadowed by
the games the characters play at the carnival and documented by Wendy’s camera. Lewis’s head is crushed by weights. Erin takes a nail gun to the head, etc. Each death feels like a twisted fairground stall game, as if death is collecting a prize for himself after playing a sinister game of Ring Toss or Skee Ball.
As mentioned, nobody shows up for these films for sublime acting, but Final Destination 3 boasts arguably the strongest performance of the entire franchise with a then-unknown Winstead as protagonist Wendy. Winstead elevates the schlocky material and manages to ground Wendy with a real sense of grief and guilt for not doing more to save those who didn’t get off the rollercoaster. Winstead’s performance is so good that it’s almost too good for this type of bonkers horror film. Except for Kris Lemche as emo kid Ian McKinley, nobody else comes close to the quality of performance Winstead is delivering here.
Where the first Final Destination’s characters felt like a more nuanced group of high schoolers, the roster in Final Destination 3 leans heavily into generic high school archetypes; the airhead hot chicks, the cocky quarterback, the sarcastic punks, that sad guy who keeps hanging around with high schoolers despite graduating 2 years ago. They’re hardly even characters, just sacks of meat waiting to be killed off in ridiculously gory fashion. But with Winstead shining so brightly, she more than makes up for a ing cast that’s lacking dimension.
Best Death: Arguably one of the most traumatising deaths in the entire franchise is the twins of Ashley and Ashlyn, who are cooked alive in the malfunctioning tanning beds.
3. Final Destination 5
Steven Quale’s Final Destination 5 is one of the strongest entries and might be the most cinematic of the franchise. In of spectacle, the opening bridge collapse sequence rivals many disaster films. There’s more notable talent onboard for this film, with a cast that includes Nicholas D’Agosto, P.J. Byrne, David Koechner and Courtney B. Vance. It’s evident this film had more budget than its predecessors.
But what elevates Final Destination 5 above others is how it cleverly managed to pull the wool over the audience’s eyes for 90 minutes with a twist ending that ties directly into the beginning of the original film. With the surviving characters of this film boarding the same Flight 180 trip to Paris moments before Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) had his premonition of the plane crashing. Nobody saw this full-circle ending coming. We were all led to believe this film was set in 2011, but upon reflection of the film, you end up marvelling at how you didn’t clock the fact that characters aren’t glued to smartphones. Or that you didn’t pick up on the subtle fashion trends of the early 2000s. The clues were there all along, but Quale does a masterful job of hiding the truth in plain sight.
Best Death: This film is entirely about misdirection, and no death encapsulates that idea more than the comically drawn-out demise of gymnast Candice. The whole sequence is peppered with numerous red herrings, which we believe will be the catalyst for her death. The screw on the balance beam, the exposed electrical wire, the squeaky bar – they all come into play. But in the end, the thing that actually kills her? Gravity. Quale pulled the rug out from under us.
2. Final Destination
It’s not an overstatement to say just how influential the first Final Destination movie actually is. Released in the year 2000, James Wong effectively birthed a new American sub-genre of turn-of-the-century, overly elaborate death horrors. Final Destination walked, so that franchises like Saw and Escape Room could run. And even 25 years later, the original Final Destination still stands out as one of the best in the franchise.
Wong breathed new life into the stale horror formula of high schoolers being killed off one by one. Instead of the teenagers being stalked by Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers or some overly large killer animal, this time the killer was death itself. An unseen presence who was pissed off with those who vaded his grand design for them to die onboard Flight 180. So he comes after them in more icious ways. And audiences got a kick out of seeing the chain reaction of events leading to each character’s untimely end. It was original. It was inventive. It was fresh.
Final Destination stands out from the pack because, to this day, it is the only film in the series that is more character-driven than spectacle-driven. While the franchise eventually leaned into the bizarre kill pieces, there’s a chilling atmosphere in the first film that has never been replicated in ny subsequent films. It’s a mix of supernatural, paranoia and conspiracy theory bolstered by the ominous score from Shirley Walker. Protagonist Alex is the prime suspect in the investigation of the Flight 180 crash because he predicted it. And when his classmates suspiciously start to die, he seems even more guilty to the police. The story is about survival for Alex, both from the authorities and death. As he looks for the signs and tries to figure out death’s design.
Devon Sawa truly shines as the disturbed teenager Alex. The ing players also feel less cartoony than the characters of later entries. It’s testament to the quality of the script that Ai Later, Kerr Smith and Kristen Cloke were given so much to work with despite being secondary canon fodder characters. Even Stiffler himself, Seann William Scott, is good in this in a small but morable part as the dweeby Billy.
Best Death: For the surprise factor, it’s Terry getting hit by the bus. But the death that demonstrated what this franchise could be has to be the very first one, with Tod being extravagantly strangled in the bathtub. The fact that Tod’s death is staged by the reaper to look like a suicide sets the stage for just how malevolent Death is going to be in these movies.
1.Final Destination: Bloodlines
This could be just recency bias, as this film is so fresh out of the gate. But Final Destination: Bloodlines is truly the most fun film in the franchise thus far and takes the top position in our rankings. Which might come as a surprise to some. Given how perfectly roundabout and satisfying the fifth instalment of the franchise was, it did beg the question: do we even need a new Final Destination film 14 years later? There are only so many times we can watch characters brutally kick the bucket before the novelty wears off.
But co-directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein not only justify Bloodlines’ existence, they’ve enriched the franchise as a whole. With lots of nods to previous films, they’re clearly big fans of what came before, and they’ve delivered an entry that feels familiar but also fresh. They’ve imbued their film with a level of self-awareness and tongue-in-cheek humour which has completely reinvigorated the formula. Because they are so tapped into what audiences have come to expect from these films, Lipovsky and Stein know just exactly how to toy with and subvert our expectations, making for a deliciously fun watch. Just when you think the film is about to zig, it zags. Big time.
But the biggest shock of all is that Final Destination: Bloodlines is somehow the most emotionally compelling film of the entire franchise. Not only do the stakes feel higher in this one because death is coming after an entire family. But there’s a notion embedded into the story that life is precious and you should enjoy it whilst you can. This sentiment hits even closer to home, being delivered by the franchise’s staple character, William John Bludworth, played wonderfully by the great Tony Todd in his final ever film role. An unusually fitting and also bittersweet sendoff for the renowned character actor. You might say that Todd’s final bow is Bloodlines’ unique X-factor that none of the other films possess.
Best Death: It’s genuinely hard to pick just one, and we don’t want to spoil the joy of the kill pieces in the latest film. But the death at the hospital involving an MRI machine’s magnet was probably his sicko’s favourite.
Final Destination Bloodlines is in cinemas worldwide from May 14th.
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