Death as Rube Goldberg

To truly appreciate Final Destination, you have to understand how unique it was at the time.

Released in 2000, it followed a string of ‘90s modern slashers: Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, The Faculty. It features a very ‘90s cast—Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith—whose characters are somewhat genre savvy. Not in the meta Scream way, but these aren’t the dumb teens of the past. Alex, played by Sawa, instantly picks up on what’s happening and acts accordingly.

The uniqueness really stems from the film’s villain (and its methods): Death. An unknowable, invisible entity who doesn’t like being thwarted. Death follows a design: there is an order to things, and fuck with that order, Death is coming for you (and does so in the craziest of ways). It’s essentially the Rube Goldberg of Death.

Take the teacher’s demise, for example: a coffee mug leaks vodka, creating a trail to the computer, which then starts a fire, exploding the screen so a shard stabs the teacher in the neck. But that’s not all! As she’s stumbling around for something to staunch the blood, she grabs a rag from the counter, which brings a knife down with it…right into her chest. You think that’s it, but it takes a chair falling onto the knife to actually do it.

It’s that formula that carries across the Final Destination series: how long Death can keep the machine running before the final blow lands. Death is a tease!

Tony Todd makes a seemingly random appearance as a coroner or some kind of funeral director. He’s got the movie’s lore—the keeper of Death’s design. He also knows that these kids have circumvented it somehow. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the middle installments, so I cannot recall if there’s a bigger explanation as to how/why he knows this much. Maybe the filmmakers just really liked Candyman. That’d be reason enough for me.

But for all the lore Bludworth hints at, the movie doesn’t really explain why Alex has premonitions. The airline staff member mentions that his birthdate is the same date and time as takeoff, but that was the only thing I could connect to it. Or perhaps this is just a lesson in trusting your gut.

As much as the concept still works, the movie itself is very much a product of its era. I can’t say this film is well-acted, but maybe that’s because the dialogue is pretty ridiculous. The CGI is obvious, but in some ways, that makes it accessible for older kids. There’s more blood than gore, and the suspense is less about where the evil lurks than how absurdly long Death can keep the fun going.