Some time ago, my wife and I watched the first Final Destination movie and both of us loved it. It managed to be scary with just enough gore to get our attention without looking too fake and we loved it enough to watch all the sequels.
Unfortunately, as is usually the case, the sequels failed to live up to the expectations set by the first movie. And, when we finally got around to watching Final Destination 5 the other night, I felt extremely disappointed.
For those of you who have not seen this movie, it has the exact same plot as the other films. You have a group of 20-somethings (or perhaps 30-somethings) who narrowly avoid dying from some freak disaster (in this case, a bridge collapse) because one of them has a vision and gets them to safety. And, a short time after that, they all start dying in the same order as the vision because Death doesn’t like to be cheated.
Some of the previous sequels still managed to add just enough differences to keep the movie somewhat interesting (though still not as good as the first one). However, this one really didn’t seem to even make an effort. The death scenes were pretty cool and still managed to have some sort of unforeseen twist (especially the one in the massage parlor). But, unlike the other movies, there really wasn’t much of a build up to those scenes. In other words, you could pretty much fast forward through the filler material without missing much of anything.
The only exception to this is the ending. I have to admit, that part was actually pretty clever. I especially liked how the movie manages to connect the end of the fifth film to the beginning of the first film, making it a prequel of sorts rather than a sequel.
However, the ending only carries the movie so far and, while I would probably rate this movie slightly higher than Destination 4 and maybe even the third one, I don’t think it was quite as good as the first two and I’m glad I waited until it came out on DVD rather than spending my money on it when it was showing at the movie theater.
My Grade: 3 stars out of a possible 5.