Final Destination

Year - 2000
Director - James Wong
Genre - Supernatural Thriller

Final Destination is a brilliant concept for a film, and one that I personally find to be a very good example of the Thriller genre. It's a Supernatural Thriller, based in real life with a fictitous undertone, centering around a group of students at University, who are being watched by 'Death'. When they escape a burning plane, when Alex (Devon Sawa) has a premonition of its' malfunction, they watch in fear as his vision comes true, the plane exploding before their very eyes. As they were supposedely 'meant' to have died upon the plane, they are persued by death throughout the film, one by one dying in the order that they would have on the plane. What entails is fate intervening with the characters, and some gruesome deaths occuring as they slowly get killed off.

The film itself is well made, in that attachments to the characters are made, so that their deaths have meaning; these are not just mindless drones being killed, but real people that the viewer can sympathise with. The low-key lighting and falsetto arrangements that occur just before the characters deaths, with particular implements focused on by the camera creates a thrilling since of disturbia. For example, at one point, we hear a whisper of wind, and a metallic piece of shrapnel is shown blowing upon a train track. We know that this metal IS going to kill one of the students, but we don't know how, which is part of the mystery behind Final Destination; often the deaths themselves are predictable, but the way in which they occur breaks the obvious mould. When the train eventually passes over the track, the group all look safe, standing by the roadside and talking. Then all of a sudden, deaths plan comes into action, the metal is flung up as the underside of the train strikes it, and it hereby decapitates one of the characters. The deaths are theatrisiced aptly, and seem genuinely chilling. The film itself is a good example of a modern and unique take on death and the Thriller genre. As much of the film incorporates low-key lighting, we often have a distorted look at what's going on. There are things easily missed this way and further watchings can reveal far more to the film than an initial viewing.

One of the best set pieces is how death seems to not only kill the characters, but torture them sadistically as well. At one point, the teacher of the students, who was also on the trip with them when the plane exploded and has thus been marked for death, is drinking coffee from a mug. We see the mug crack, and water starts dripping out. She places the mug upon her computer monitor, and the water leaks into the electrics. The screen explodes, and glass flies into her neck. This could have easily killed her, but instead we watch her bleeding and clutching her neck, gasping for air. The mise-en-scene here shows continuous ways for her to help herself, with rugs and mats that could have soaked up the blood, yet in her panic we watch death arduously and tauntingly abusing her, making her run for help in a nearby room. Her house catches fire as she rushes into the kitchen, slipping over on some of the spilt water from the mug earlier. The way that everything plans out to fit together has integral continuity to the storyline, and on this level Final Destination succeeds, with it's macabre density and gritty realism. She finally reaches up for the towel on the kitchen counter, which slips down far enough to just be in her reach, her throat still bleeding and impaled with glass. However, a knife rack is resting on top of the towel, and as she pulls the towel over the edge of the counter, the knives fall, stabbing her in numerous places. Final Destination is clearly aimed at an audience that can tolerate cringe-worthy moments, and is certificated 15 in the United Kingdom, with good reason. The violence isn't inherantly brutal, but it is deceitfully wicked.

Another reason that made me pick Final Destination as my featured Thriller, is the characters names. It sounds bizarre, but the many of the surnames of the characters are designed to be tributes to existing film directors, particularly for the Film Noir and Thriller Genres. The characters in the film are as follows, paired with their historic counterparts:

Billy Hitchcock: Named after Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, The Birds)

Ms. Valerie Lewton: Named after Val Lewton in first and surname (I walked with a Zombie, Cat People)

Tod Waggner: Named after George Waggner, an American Film Director, Actor and Producer (Phantom of the Opera, The Wolf Man)

The idea was to provide a homage to inspirational directors who influenced the filming of Final Destination. We can clearly see the Psycho tendencies running through the production, and there is a definitive Film Noir edge, particularly in the low-key lighting and characterisations employed. We see the excelled bombast of classics of George Waggner, and the theatrical labeling of the film provides us with a production in Final Destination that combines much of the appeal of past films made by the respective directors listed above. In this way, Final Destination not only captivates the imagination with it's prolific darkness and psuedo-realism, but also expresses the Thriller genre delightfully.