In 2000, director James Wong issued the first of a series of blatantly unrepentant escapist horror films which unabashedly exploit the genre by housing a premise that is mere set dressing for a high body count as provided by Grand Guignol. Granted, Final Destination’s unseen antagonist, Death, makes for a stalker film sans stalker, the film nonetheless accomplishes what it sets out to do: Provide its audience with a truly entertaining piece of horror eye candy.
When, as prophesized by Alex Browning (Devon Sawa), Flight 180–en route to France–explodes, the local police become suspicious. However, once those which abandoned the flight prior to take off begin appearing as murder victims, Alex fervently attempts to save those remaining while eluding the authorities which have reason to believe that he is a serial killer.
At no time does Wong expect his audience to do anything but enjoy his thriller-cum-postmodern horror film because, unlike Steven Spielberg and Minority Report, the director never attempts to veil the plot incongruity behind a premonition (which imports predestination and, therefore, vetoes free will) being altered by the seer (who, to exacerbate logistics, is included within the prophesies). As such, I have no problem with Final Destination in lieu of the philosophical contradiction it poses for it does not, unlike Spielberg’s film, attempt to package Daniel Steele and attempt to promote it under the label of James Joyce or, for you diligent cineophiles, Ed Wood in place of Stanley Kubrick. Granted, we have a premise which is prime grounds for an examination of death and humanity’s obsession with immortality but sometimes Freud’s cigar lies unsmoked, much to the chagrin of many a critic, upon the psychologist’s otherwise vacant couch.
This being said, we are tossed into a slasher film which removes the stalker and his butcher knife as Wong flips genre cliché on its head (after coyly beginning with an “It was a dark and stormy night” opening) by telling us exactly what will ensue. Cleverly, the director replaces the void where tension would normally be allocated via the presence of a stalker by–not the “who” in relation to the impending deaths–but the “how” (outside, that is, the Hitchcockian foreshadowing during the opening credits) as even more anxiety is created with Alex’s sympathy-inducing Cassandra complex as he continues to foresee the inevitable and, amid attempting to change the course of soon-to-be history, evades the police, which, rightfully, believe–due to the accuracy of the young man’s predictions regarding a string of recent deaths–Alex to be the culpable party.
Even more admirably, Wong places enough red herrings with this audience to keep us delightfully, wryly entertained as would-be (and should-be) demises slide by, only to give way to more gruesome fatalities moments later. Such instances aptly substitute for the trite “boo moments” of the traditional stalker film.
What can be said for a film which posits Death as a showman (with the pitch-black humor insertion of John Denver, who died in a plane crash, throughout the soundtrack) in that the Grim Reaper could have easily laid back and had all of the survivors of Flight 180 die quietly in their sleep as opposed to, haggardly, executing–Grand Guignol-style–the handful of victims to much ado. But, again, we aren’t looking at death under the philosophic microscope, but rather with the aide of a tub of overly buttered popcorn amid a mile-a-minute narrative.
Yes, James Wong’s Final Destination does house several traditionally sustentative cinematic techniques, such as foreshadowing, allusion, metaphor (watch for the clever implementation of the number “180” inserted, one last time for good measure, during the close scene), but such is only posited so far as to promote the entertainment value of his film, a work which carries no delusions as to its objective, outcome, and what it has to offer its audience, nor does it attempt to convince its viewer otherwise. As such, what we are left with is an enjoyable postmodern horror film which revels in itself and hopes that its audience will do the same.
Conversation piece: During Tod’s (Chad Donella ) eulogy, he quotes, at length, Marcel Proust, a French writer acclaimed for his philosophy upon time and death. Also, most every character in the film carries the surname of a famed horror director or actor: “Chaney,” “Wagger,” “Browning,” “Murnau,” “Schreck,” “Lewton,” “Hitchcock,” “Dreyer,” and “Weine.” Though such allusion is only implemented for horror aficionados’ idle chatter between death sequences and to no other aesthetic ends, cynics will find Wong’s characterization of the Master of Suspense highly rewarding.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
