Final Destination [Blu-ray]

Final Destination [Blu-ray] Review

7.9 THE FILM ITSELF
6.9 VISUALS
7.5 SOUND
7.0 PACKAGING
8.4 EXTRAS

Remembering that Final destination came out in 2000, it's easy to see how old the film looks - especially on blu-ray. But even more so, the dialogue, the some what hammy / cheesy acting and just how young the cast is makes you understand you are not watching an Oscar award winning film.

Final Destination is an above average thriller / horror flick that deals with a young man who has visions of death. When he escapes the "death" that was imminent, the count down is on until death "catches up" to those who escaped. It's an interesting premise and it's handled decently. But after 9 years, it's certainly not the most engaging of stories, it sometimes doesn't really hold your attention and the characters feel cookie-cutter at best. But if you're looking for something different and slightly entertaining, you can do a lot worse than Final Destination.

VISUALS 6.9
There's no reason this should be bought on blu-ray. It looks okay at best, but for visual nuts they will certainly call this "horrible". From the bad haircuts that are really shown well here to the blotchy skin / makeup, some movies just should be left on DVD. Of course, being 9 years old doesn't help, but I've seen movies had 20 years ago that look stunning compared to this. It seems like no remastering has been done here at all.

SOUND 7.5
It's good, but nothing special. And after listening to the entire "isolated score" feature, I'm even more less impressed with this than I originally was. The rest of the sound - dialogue and explosions - are better, but still, nothing that makes you crank up the surround sound or anything.

PACKAGING 7.0
No main menu, the movie just starts with a menu bar that pops up on the bottom. The cover kind of resembles a cheesy teen-horror / action flick, and that's exactly what the film is.

EXTRAS 8.4
Two commentary tracks, one of which is really good (the one with the crew) while the other is average at best (the one with some of the cast members). There is a feature that is commentary by the composer as the entire score is presented over the dialogue. I never listened to one of these before, and this was not a good first selection for a film to do so on. The score just isn't that interesting here and the dialogue is "blah" at best.

"The Perfect Souffle: Testing Final Destination" is an inyteretsing feature I have never seen again. The creators talk about what a testing piece does for the film and what changes after it. Kind of interesting, but glad more films don't have this as it won't be watched by many fans.

"Premonitions" is an obnoxiously cheesy piece about a woman who believes she has the power to see when people are dead or in danger, and that she can see the future. Maybe if she didn't try to force her kids to believe it (that's how it seems anyway) it wouldn't be so bad, but this just seems like a family that will be in the news one day for joining a cult or something.

Then there are 3 deleted scenes that show a radically different ending. These are good because it shows just how far off the ending was, but they're bad because this ending is a horrible decision. So I'm glad they changed it and this is a very interesting original ending.

FINAL VERDICT
Final Destination is a decent film that offers something new to a tired genre, but it certainly hasn't aged well in the 9 years since it was released. The special features are impressive, but aside from the crew commentary and the shocking alternate ending there isn't much substance here.

8.1/10 "IMPRESSIVE"

Final Destination [Blu-ray] Overview

After an eerie premonition leads a handful of passengers to disembark an ill-fated flight, Death with all its ingenious contraptions of doom at the ready stalks those survivors (Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith and more) one by one in the gory, gleeful shocker that launched the fright-filled film series. Final Destination: the start of it all!

Final Destination [Blu-ray] Specifications

While hardly a spiritual upgrade of the slasher film, this high-concept teen body-count thriller drops hints of The Sixth Sense into the smart-aleck sensibility of Scream. Helmed by X-Files veteran James Wong, who cowrote the screenplay with longtime creative partner Glen Morgan, Final Destination is an often entertaining thriller marked by an unsettling sense of unease and scenes of eerie imagery. It suffers, however, from a schizophrenic tone and a frankly ludicrous premise. A high school Cassandra, Alex Browning (Devon Sawa of Idle Hands), wakes from a preflight nightmare and panics when he's convinced the plane is doomed. His ruckus bumps seven passengers from the Paris-bound plane, which immediately explodes into a fireball on takeoff, but fate hasn't finished with these lucky few and, one by one, death claims them. Wong brings such a funereal tone to these early scenes of survivor's guilt and inevitable doom that the already far-fetched film threatens to veer into unplanned absurdity. Thankfully, the tale loosens up with a playful morgue humor: one of the victims winds up the splattered punch line to a grim joke and elaborate Rube Goldbergesque chains of cause and effect become inspired spectacles of destruction. Final Destination is a pretty silly thriller when it takes itself seriously, and the filmmakers play fast and loose with their own rules of fate, but once they stick their tongues firmly in cheek, the film takes off with a screwy interpretation of the domino effect of doom. --Sean Axmaker

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