Slasher films will always have an audience, regardless of quality. Horror is generally a social experience, and if a get-together between friends takes a turn for the dull, it's easier to put on one of the later, particularly awful Friday the 13th films and laugh with each other than to go out to the theater and see The Tree of Life, uncomfortably talking about feelings and your terrible childhood. The story elements of the genre are so thin and so similar in such a paste pudding extreme that it's easy to completely disregard the film, and the amount of social commentary in The Final Nightmare is probably minuscule enough to be looked past, allowing someone to take a bathroom break or socialize without missing much.
The Final Destination series is one of said genre, and despite there not being a physical entity doing the killing, it follows the archetype: pretty teenagers die systematically, lead character survives, everything is okay in the end OH WAIT NO IT ISN'T. And, like a lot of slashers, the franchise is doing pretty well for itself. It's onto its fifth installment now, with each one before it turning a significant profit. Compared to Saw, the other "people dying in moderately inventive ways" franchise, it's definitely holding its own. But there's something in this equation that doesn't seem right to me - these are bad movies.
Sure, slashers never progress well. A franchise is lucky if its sequel is even mediocre. But Final Destination wasn't even good at its start. The first entry in the franchise sits at a tepid 33% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the sequels actually scoring better, despite still being pretty poor. Some of the deaths are neat, and there are even a few examples of actual talent in the casting, but other than that, there's not much here. The movies are slow and the writing is particularly awful, both in terms of dialog and actual story content. Let's look at an example, shall we?
Every film in the franchise has a "twist" ending where a death occurs after everything has returned to normal, with the protagonist and his/her significant other and best friend/mortal enemy turned best friend now enjoying their life, ignoring the fact that they've witnessed the gruesome deaths of their friends and loved ones. In the ending of Final Destination 3, Mary Elizabeth Winstead's character has another premonition about the crash of a vehicle, this time the train she's on. The deaths of every passenger play out in her head before she comes to and tries to stop the train. It doesn't happen, and the screen goes black as the train is heard crashing. Wait, what?
Yes, folks, the writers of the Final Destination films are so incompetent that they went through with the train crash, because they couldn't think of any other way to end the film. The only explanation I can come up with for this is that the writers were trying to establish some sense of drama. You know, tension and conflict. In a Final Destination film. Which features a death that is physically impossible in multiple ways.
So now that we've established the poor quality of the franchise, let's go back to that Saw comparison, shall we? The first installment holds a 48% on the Tomatometer, making it a totally watchable film. It has performances from actual actors, a good sense of atmosphere, and even elicits some thought on morality and the death penalty. Granted, the franchise fell from whatever grace it had in a heartbeat, but even after Saw had become a blockbuster, yearly franchise it was still able to make a movie that was all about the unfairness of medical insurance (though the quality of that commentary is a whole different discussion.) Compared to the underlying theme of Final Destination - sometimes people get hit in the head or torso and die - Saw seems to have a lead concerning writing.
Things get weird when comparing the profits, though. Looking at the profits of the first installments of each series, Saw made around 102 million dollars, where Final Destination made slightly less at 90 million. This is pretty expected, until you consider that Saw hit American theaters on October 29, giving it a perfect window for Halloween. Final Destination, on the other hand, came out in the middle of March. Were one to take the holiday edge out of Saw's release, Final Destination would most likely have earned much more. In an even stranger turn of events, the 3D installments of each film (incidentally marketed as the last films of their respective franchises) saw The Final Destination's 142 million destroy Saw 3D's 116 million, with Saw again having the Halloween edge. Granted, at eight hundred million dollars, the Saw franchise has turned a significantly higher profit than the 384 million of Final Destination, but with more films and better marketing, the franchise could very well have toppled Saw.
So Final Destination has turned a significant profit in the face of a franchise that is generally better than it. So that only leaves one question - why? Why do people continue to flock to theaters to see this? Save for Final Destination 3, every film in the franchise has come out at a time where better and/or more popular films are out in theaters, and the first one wasn't good enough to have people come back to the sequels expecting something good. Are we as a film-going society so barbaric that the idea of a bunch of people dying is something worth wasting an evening for?
But there's one reason why I continue to keep up with the films - I'm fucking terrified of them. Despite my love for film, I'm willing to say that I'm not affected by movies much. There are only a few comedies that can make me laugh, I've never cried at a scene in a movie, and horror films don't do much for me, either. Final Destination is the only film that I can say has truly affected me, because it makes me afraid to do anything. Step outside? Nope, a falling branch is going to make a car swerve and hit a mailbox, sending it flying into my heart. Stay inside? I'm going to end up with my head in a blender somehow. These are the movies that make me stay awake in bed for hours, thinking about how everything is going to kill me.
So I'll admit it: I have a soft spot in my heart for these movies, but that doesn't make them any better. They're pretty awful in a non-campy way, and I'll most likely never understand why theatergoers would pay money for this instead of something they'd enjoy more. All I can do is take solace that Final Destination 5 isn't called 5nal Destination, and keep watching New Romance because I've already watched it like twenty times today and oh man it's really good.
The Final Destination series is one of said genre, and despite there not being a physical entity doing the killing, it follows the archetype: pretty teenagers die systematically, lead character survives, everything is okay in the end OH WAIT NO IT ISN'T. And, like a lot of slashers, the franchise is doing pretty well for itself. It's onto its fifth installment now, with each one before it turning a significant profit. Compared to Saw, the other "people dying in moderately inventive ways" franchise, it's definitely holding its own. But there's something in this equation that doesn't seem right to me - these are bad movies.
Sure, slashers never progress well. A franchise is lucky if its sequel is even mediocre. But Final Destination wasn't even good at its start. The first entry in the franchise sits at a tepid 33% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the sequels actually scoring better, despite still being pretty poor. Some of the deaths are neat, and there are even a few examples of actual talent in the casting, but other than that, there's not much here. The movies are slow and the writing is particularly awful, both in terms of dialog and actual story content. Let's look at an example, shall we?
Every film in the franchise has a "twist" ending where a death occurs after everything has returned to normal, with the protagonist and his/her significant other and best friend/mortal enemy turned best friend now enjoying their life, ignoring the fact that they've witnessed the gruesome deaths of their friends and loved ones. In the ending of Final Destination 3, Mary Elizabeth Winstead's character has another premonition about the crash of a vehicle, this time the train she's on. The deaths of every passenger play out in her head before she comes to and tries to stop the train. It doesn't happen, and the screen goes black as the train is heard crashing. Wait, what?
Yes, folks, the writers of the Final Destination films are so incompetent that they went through with the train crash, because they couldn't think of any other way to end the film. The only explanation I can come up with for this is that the writers were trying to establish some sense of drama. You know, tension and conflict. In a Final Destination film. Which features a death that is physically impossible in multiple ways.
So now that we've established the poor quality of the franchise, let's go back to that Saw comparison, shall we? The first installment holds a 48% on the Tomatometer, making it a totally watchable film. It has performances from actual actors, a good sense of atmosphere, and even elicits some thought on morality and the death penalty. Granted, the franchise fell from whatever grace it had in a heartbeat, but even after Saw had become a blockbuster, yearly franchise it was still able to make a movie that was all about the unfairness of medical insurance (though the quality of that commentary is a whole different discussion.) Compared to the underlying theme of Final Destination - sometimes people get hit in the head or torso and die - Saw seems to have a lead concerning writing.
Things get weird when comparing the profits, though. Looking at the profits of the first installments of each series, Saw made around 102 million dollars, where Final Destination made slightly less at 90 million. This is pretty expected, until you consider that Saw hit American theaters on October 29, giving it a perfect window for Halloween. Final Destination, on the other hand, came out in the middle of March. Were one to take the holiday edge out of Saw's release, Final Destination would most likely have earned much more. In an even stranger turn of events, the 3D installments of each film (incidentally marketed as the last films of their respective franchises) saw The Final Destination's 142 million destroy Saw 3D's 116 million, with Saw again having the Halloween edge. Granted, at eight hundred million dollars, the Saw franchise has turned a significantly higher profit than the 384 million of Final Destination, but with more films and better marketing, the franchise could very well have toppled Saw.
So Final Destination has turned a significant profit in the face of a franchise that is generally better than it. So that only leaves one question - why? Why do people continue to flock to theaters to see this? Save for Final Destination 3, every film in the franchise has come out at a time where better and/or more popular films are out in theaters, and the first one wasn't good enough to have people come back to the sequels expecting something good. Are we as a film-going society so barbaric that the idea of a bunch of people dying is something worth wasting an evening for?
But there's one reason why I continue to keep up with the films - I'm fucking terrified of them. Despite my love for film, I'm willing to say that I'm not affected by movies much. There are only a few comedies that can make me laugh, I've never cried at a scene in a movie, and horror films don't do much for me, either. Final Destination is the only film that I can say has truly affected me, because it makes me afraid to do anything. Step outside? Nope, a falling branch is going to make a car swerve and hit a mailbox, sending it flying into my heart. Stay inside? I'm going to end up with my head in a blender somehow. These are the movies that make me stay awake in bed for hours, thinking about how everything is going to kill me.
So I'll admit it: I have a soft spot in my heart for these movies, but that doesn't make them any better. They're pretty awful in a non-campy way, and I'll most likely never understand why theatergoers would pay money for this instead of something they'd enjoy more. All I can do is take solace that Final Destination 5 isn't called 5nal Destination, and keep watching New Romance because I've already watched it like twenty times today and oh man it's really good.
