Review: Final Destination 5

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Death is angry again in this latest film in the Final Destination series. Anyone familiar with this series knows that death is going to get creative with some really nasty accidental deaths. A group of office workers at a factory are going on team building exercise. As they travel over a suspension bridge it starts to fall apart, killing everyone as they try to escape, except for Molly Harper (Emma Bell)  who gets saved by her boyfriend Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto).

Then Sam wakes on the bus just before disaster strikes and when Dust in the Wind starts playing on radio he leaps into action grabbing Molly’s hand and taking her off the bus, warning the others to follow him as the bridge is going to collapse. His best friend Peter follows as does Peter’s girlfriend Candice (Ellen Wroe). Others soon follow them too including the boss Dennis (David Koechner), Nathan (Arlen Escarpeta), Olivia (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) and creepy IT tech Isaac (P.J. Byrne). When the bridge does start collapsing these eight people have enough of a head start to get to safety but Sam saw seven of them die in his vision, including himself. These are who death is coming for.

These films all follow the formula established in the first film, death will come for each of them in the same order that they should have died on the bridge. At the funeral of their co-workers William Bludworth (Tony Todd) the creepy coroner turns up to warn them that death doesn’t like being cheated. I’ve been increasingly suspicious of Mr Bludworth and in this one he increases my suspicions when he tells them that death is coming for them and casually drops in the idea that you can stop death coming for you by stealing someone’s else’s life so death can balance the books. This seems to be confirmed when Nathan avoids death but causes the death of a co-worker while trying to save him.

As is usual the film spend little time on character development except for the main couple Sam and Molly the rest get enough plot to set them up for their death scene which is what this series is all about – the elaborate accidental death scenes. The bridge disaster that they avoid is pretty well shot an although it not as good as the car crash scene from the second film or the roller coaster deaths from the third it is still very well filmed. The first death that of Candice in a gymnastic accident has a long scene of almost tortuous tension created as the camera dwells on every flaw and safety hazard and the resultant accident is a nasty and effectively squicky mixture of physical effects and CGI. I think it was the best of the death scenes though the drawn out game death seemed to play with the sleazy Isaac was pretty amusing too.

This film gives fans of the series more of what he have come to expect. There’s no more answers about the main questions about where the visions come from, and how connected Bludworth is to the events.There is a neat little surprise at the end which seems to a hint that the film-makers might want to bring the series to an end. The film nicely plays with tension and plays along with audience with the close-ups highlighting each step in the chain of accidents that cause the deaths and including just a few false leads (or are they?) I think the popularity of the series is down to how easy it is to put yourself in the place of the characters. I also enjoyed seeing how the death scenes play out. I recommend to anyone, especially those who enjoyed the other films in the series

Rating 8/10

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