Final Destination 5 Review

ign.com It's more of the same, but not in a bad way.

Eleven years into the franchise and audiences know what to expect when they buy a ticket to Final Destination 5. The latest in the series is a solid, fun installment that delivers what the fans want: Over the top, elaborate and wildly cartoonish death scenes. In 3D! Because the kids love 3D!

Nicholas D'Agosto (Heroes, Fired Up) stars as Sam, who we meet while he's on his way to a corporate retreat with a busload of coworkers, including his newly estranged girlfriend, Molly (The Walking Dead's Emma Bell). While the bus sits idling, thanks to construction on a bridge, Sam has the requisite Final Destination premonition – seeing the horrific bridge collapse that is about to occur, killing them all. Sam's warning about what is going to happen are heeded by a select few of his coworkers and… Well, you know the rest. The bridge does indeed collapse and those who survived count themselves lucky to be alive - until they begin dying one by one. Because you can't cheat Death!

When a formulaic series gets to movie No. 5, you begin to appreciate any little differences that set it apart from the rest. Thus I was happy (and rather surprised) to discover the main characters in Final Destination 5 were all adults working at a paper company – not one high school kid in the bunch! Okay, the vast majority of the cast (including Miles Fisher, Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, Arlen Escarpeta and Ellen Wroe) happen to be young and attractive, but that's par for the course. By the way, the fact that having any story focusing on the employees of a paper company is now going to evoke The Office doesn't seem lost on the filmmakers, who amusingly cast Todd Packer himself, David Koechner, as the office manager. I also enjoyed P.J. Byrne's goofy performance as the guy in the office who is lecherous, thieving and causally racist - and thus just asking for a nice, long, prolonged death scene.

Saved by the Bell Meets Final Destination!

Yes, of course, the bread and butter of this series are the deaths – the glorious, glorious deaths. And Final Destination 5 has some excellent ones. We know exactly when these sequences are beginning (even without the flickering lights and spooky wind and such) and it all becomes about the growing anticipation, followed by the big payoff. The screw that seems ready to rip out… the dripping water… the unattended machine… Throughout the film, director Steven Quale does a great job of setting the scene and creating a nice amount of tension as we near the inevitable moment of doom for these characters – which often includes a bit of a swerve when it comes to what seemed likely to be the most obvious cause of their demise. Kitchens, factories, Lasik surgery offices, college gymnastics... Once again, this series will make you afraid of doing, well, anything, anywhere, lest you be Final Destinationed to death.

It's nice to see the always cool Tony Todd reprise his role as Bludworth, the mysterious coroner who always knows more than he should about this whole "Death has a plan" thing. Except for an audio cameo in the third film, Todd's been MIA from this series since Final Destination 2. Upon his return, he brings a ton of his usual gravity, humor and menace to the role – though having seen him show up for a scene here and there now in three Final Destination movies, I hope the next sequel (come on, you know it's coming) might finally go a bit more into the backstory on this overly knowledgeable fellow.

Screenwriter Eric Heisserer (the Nightmare on Elm Street remake) does a serviceable job hitting the beats we all expect from the series – let's face it, these movies are about getting from set -iece to set-piece and no one watching really cares if Sam and Molly can work out their relationship woes. The one major new element this time out is the idea that if these survivors kill someone else, then they can save themselves. It's an intriguing new addition to the storyline, though I wish a bit more had been done with it and that we'd seen more of the characters have some true turmoil over this potential "out" rather than use it to fuel a bit of a psycho-slasher conclusion that seems a bit forced.

Fortunately, the very ending of Final Destination 5 contains a clever little turn of events that is an affectionate nod to a the history of the series – which is appreciated, considering the Final Destination series have had almost no ties to one another since the second film. Final Destination 5 is a much-improved installment for the series on the heels of the terrible fourth film, The Final Destination, and an example of getting what you pay for in a suitably satisfying manner.
Now let's talk about the 3D, since, like with the fourth film, it's a much touted aspect of the movie that the studio is pushing hard.

Personally, I'm sick to death of 3D. I've seen great 3D and I've seen crappy 3D, but in the past two years, it's all become, well, a blur, as I've simply seen too much 3D. And I hate to argue with the King of the World, James Cameron, but the vast majority of the time, I don't find 3D to be all that "immersive" and to help draw me into a film – I find it distancing. Even when it's well done, it makes me hyper-aware of the technical aspect of the film and the fact that I'm sitting there wearing uncomfortable glasses, rather than simply getting swept up in the story like a great movie can do.

Cameron has also spoken out against "gotcha" type 3D – the classic B-movie horror movie use of 3D, where things jut and poke out at you, often comically drawing attention to themselves in the process. Which is amusing, because Final Destination 5 director Quale is a Cameron protegee who's worked on a ton of his films and co-directed Ghosts of the Deep with Cameron – and yet he's making exactly the kind of 3D movie Cameron has complained about. And guess what? It looks great! Quale knows his way around this technology (he was a second unit director on Avatar) and uses it in very effective and clever ways.

At this point, being so burnt out on 3D in general, Final Destination 5 is the only kind of 3D movie that I can have a lot of fun with. Because no one is going to see this movie to get immersed in a complex story and characters. But seeing some poor girl's intestines shoot out at the camera in 3D? Now that's just a good time at the movies! So, yes, in a summer where I've basically scorned 3D altogether, I can endorse Final Destination 5 and say 3D is the best way to see this movie – even though the higher price still sucks.