Final Destination 5 didn’t bode well when announced as the film following Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark on the opening night of Frightfest 2011. The previous instalment The Final Destination (2009) proved to be both a lie and completely terrible. The ‘3D’ tag, as it always should do, lowered expectations rather than raising them. And it’s a fifth instalment in a horror franchise – see Friday 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985), A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989), Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) and Saw V (2008) for reasons as to why this is never normally a good thing. Lucky for us then that Final Destination 5 (3D) proved to be arguably the best in the series so far and one of the most well-received films of the entire festival.
Directed by Steven Quale, second unit director on Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009) (and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000) but the less said about that, the better), Final Destination 5 once again takes the formula of the franchise (attractive teens cheat death before death comes back to get them one by one) but spices it up by introducing the idea that the teens can kill someone else who will then take their place in death thus sparing them a grizzly end.
So the disaster. So far we’ve had a plane explosion, a motorway pile up, a rollercoaster derail, and a crash at a speedway. This time its a bridge collapse and its the best opening to one of these films so far (and the ending is sure to please anyone who has followed the franchise from the off). The explosive premonition makes great use of the 3D and even rivals the spectacular train crash in Super 8 (2011) for sheer wow factor. Alongside this moment of destruction, the 3D in the film is actually worthwhile, never overly darkening the action and the opening credits sequence makes for the best use of 3D I’ve seen in a film alongside the slow-mo sequences in Jackass 3D (2010).
The film is consistently funny, the deaths always surprising and inventive with one set at a gymnastics try-out ranking as one of the best ‘meeting-your-maker’ moments ever seen in a Final Destination movie. The only worry in terms of how much this film surprised and entertained me comes with regard to the audience. I watched this with a Frightfest crowd who laughed on cue, applauded every death scene (almost giving the gym one a standing ovation) and gave the film a perfect atmosphere. Whether Final Destination 5 will be half as effective in a cinema full of chavs, mobile phones and talkers remains to be seen.
A horror panel discussion later in the festival saw directors Adam Green, Joe Lynch, Lucky McGee, Larry Fessenden, Ti West and Andrew van den Houten agree on how remakes, sequels and prequels tend to be on the whole bad and how irritating it is to see people pay money to see them, only to then slag them off when to actually stop the buggers getting made, you need to avoid giving them any money at all. Luckily no one pointed out to them that up to that point, the film that had got the best reception was a 5th instalment of a franchise as formulaic as they come. Oh, and it was in 3D.
And that’s why Final Destination 5 stood out as one of the best of the festival. In an age where every other film is a bad remake or sequel, Steven Quale has managed to make a film so funny, so surprising and so purely entertaining that it provides some hope enough to remind us that in the right hands, even the most tired of formulas can be resurrected into something worth watching.
Having said that, is it enough to make anyone hopeful about the upcoming The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D?.
No.
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