FINAL DESTINATION 5 (2011) Review

Directed by: Steven Quale

Starring: Nicholas D'Agosto, Emma Bell, Miles Fisher, Tony Todd

I'm not ashamed to say that I love the FINAL DESTINATION franchise. I guess it's one of my guilty pleasures. I know that they are all basically the same movie with different characters and different death scenes, but I just find them so enjoyable and satisfying. So obviously I was really looking forward to the fifth installation, although I wasn't too keen on the 3D aspect. Luckily I had a chance to see it in regular old 2D, and I loved it.

I guess I don't really need to go into too much detail about the story because as I said they all have the same basic plot. Every movies starts off with somebody having a vision, which then leads to themselves and their friends avoiding a huge disaster. In this case it's a bridge collapse while a group of colleagues are taking a trip to a business retreat. The remainder of the movie then follows these survivors as they try (and usually fail) to survive. Death doesn't like being cheated.
In this case however, the storyline is given a bit of a twist when these survivors realise that they can save themselves by killing somebody else in their place.

FINAL DESTINATION 5 was obviously made for 3D. There are things constantly flying toward the camera, but even watching it in 2D was fine for me. The acting is what you'd expect, not great but not too bad to frustrate or piss you off. The death scenes are over the top of course and somewhat unbelievable but there are plenty off inventive uses of environment as always and a few suspenseful moments where you expect something to happen but it doesn't. But the one part of this movie that made it (for me at least) the best of the franchise was the ending. It's clever, unexpected and cool how it brings the whole franchise full circle. I hope that's not too much of a spoiler..

Anyway. FINAL DESTINATION 5 is exactly what you'd expect, nothing more, nothing less. If you're a fan of the previous instalments then you will enjoy this. If you haven't liked any of the other films then you will probably want to stay away.