By Final Destination with Devon Sawa and Ali Larter was a bit of a hit when it first came out in theaters in 2000, which is probably why we’re on film five in the series. The build-up of tension and the ultimate release of a kill was what drew me in… also Devon Sawa is super cute. It was almost like watching a beautiful opera with certain environmental elements set carefully in place until “Death” took its glorious toll. It felt classy, like an old Hitchcock film. The characters were likable enough that you didn’t want them to die, though you felt the pleasurable inevitability of it all.
Now the movies are all about kills and how to kill people in the most gruesome ways possible, like the Saw films focusing more on the traps than the actual story in its sequels. It’s as if there’s some unwritten rule that horror films always have to devolve into blood and gore in order to entertain audiences these days. It’s not enough to have nuanced direction with foreshadowing to tell an interesting story. Now audiences have to actually see the blood smeared on their faces in order to get their fix. Snort it up, rub it all over. Whatever pleases people these days.
I admittedly haven’t seen The Final Destination (not to be confused with the first one in the series; this is the fourth), but with a title like that it’s as if they’re just trying to redo the whole series and trample over that interesting little film about death that was more about a steady build-up to a climax than about the climax itself… and Devon Sawa. When’s he gonna make a cameo appearance in one of these?
[Via Empire]