Before making Final Destination, Glen Morgan and James Wong cut their teeth in the film business working as part of the writing staff on the hit TV series The X-Files. The two left the show to pursue their own interests, including a few other genre series for Fox like Space Above and Beyond. While The X-Files has continued to thrive in their absence, Morgan and Wong have failed in their attempts to carry their success over into these other
shows, perhaps because these shows strayed too far from the supernatural plot elements that made The X-Files so successful.
With this movie Morgan and Wong try to return to their roots, producing a film that is very much in the same vein as The X-Files. Final Destination deals with very real concepts while incorporating otherworldly ideas into the story. Moments before his flight leaves for a class trip to France, Devon Sawa, the film’s main character, has a dream that the plane will explode shortly after take-off. When the premonition comes true after Sawa and six others leave the plane, they realize that they have somehow cheated death.
But death won’t let them win, and it slowly begins killing off the survivors one by one in a series of totally absurd and highly unlikely accidents (including the death of the surviving high school teacher, caused by a leaky coffee mug full of vodka, an exploding computer, and a dishtowel). Eventually Sawa figures out death’s plan for who will die next and tries to save the others before they too are killed. But he is hindered in his objective by the FBI, who believe that his foreknowledge of the deaths might mean he is their cause.
In true X-Files fashion, how Sawa knows what will happen is never really explained, leaving us with many unanswered questions in the end of the film. Death’s actual plan also seems to contradict itself at various times throughout the film, changing the order of their deaths and thus muddling the plot further. The FBI subplot is likewise dropped and then picked up again repeatedly, as the G-men alternate between accusing and believeing Sawa. In the end we are left with a story that is unbelievable in some parts and confusing in others.
If you can turn your brain off, however, and just simply sit back and enjoy the ride, Final Destination is not too bad a film. There are a few genuinely shocking and suspenseful
moments in the film, such as Sawa’s distrubing dream sequence that starts off the plot. Similarly there is an especially shocking sequence that teaches us the benefits of looking
both ways before we cross the street. Also the idea of exploring the way teens look at their own mortality in the context of a horror film was an admirable pursuit by the filmmakers, but it was just too ill-conceived to work. There isn’t any room for
philosophizing about the nature of death in the face of its imminent strike.
If Morgan and Wong had simply kept things simple, left the plot twists alone and allowed the movie to be a little less serious at times, the thrills would have been enough to carry the movie toward success. As it stands, however, Final Destination aspires to rise above its teen slasher film context by providing as the villain an abstract concept such as death itself. Without a personified villain to frighten us, the movie can’t succeed in this lofty goal, instead hurriedly rushing on to its own final destination: obscurity on the video store shelves.
