Final Destination 5 Spoiler

The Final Destination series is a series of horror films based on an unproduced script written by Jeffrey Reddick for the X-Files television series. Distributed by New Line Cinema, all four films are centered on the themes of determinism, predestination, and precognition, in relation to death (i.e. how to foresee, avoid or control it). In a less abstract sense, each film features a group of people dying in a series of elaborate, often gory death scenarios that frequently resemble Rube Goldberg machines in their complexity. The franchise has also spawned a related book series (published by Black Flame) and comic series (published by Zenescope Entertainment Inc).

Premise

The premise of each film or book in the franchise is essentially the same: A group of people are gathered together at a public venue, when suddenly a member of the group has a premonition of a disaster that will kill most/all of the people present, for example a plane crash. Horrified and motivated by the vision of impending doom, the person with the premonition then tries to prevent the incident by warning the others to leave the scene. The other members have doubts over the incredible claims but the visionary is persistent, fracturing the group into hostile skeptics, dubious believers, or those that had no choice but to accompany the visionary. Soon afterward, disaster strikes as foreseen, proving to the survivors that the visionary was right, and their attitudes change drastically.

Over the next few days, weeks or months, the same survivors begin to die in a series of gruesome and unlikely accidents. The same visionary is made aware of this and concludes that, although they survived the initial disaster, they are all still destined to die. The killer responsible for the accidents, although invisible, is assumed to be the personification of Death itself. The visionary usually teams up with a fellow survivor of the opposite sex, and, determined to cheat Death once again, they devise various plans to stay safe. Although they are sometimes able to protect each other from fatal incidents, their attempts almost always ultimately end in failure as everyone dies in the end.

However, each movie and book leaves a legacy for new generations of survivors: each disaster is noted by the media, law enforcement agencies, paranormal fanatics, and disaster survivors who notice the similarities between the incidents. The survivors of each story use whatever they learn from past disasters, or enlist the aid of a survivor of a previous disaster, in order to postpone their inevitable deaths.

Cheating Death

A recurring theme in each film is the inevitability of death and the impossibility of truly defeating it. Death is portrayed as a sadistic, supernatural entity intent on killing the main characters in each book or film. When the victims learn of this plan and manage to disrupt it, Death pursues them all individually, killing them off in the same order they would have died if they had not been forewarned.

If Death is thwarted during the second attempt on a survivor's life, it ignores the survivor and moves onto the next victim. When it has finished attempting to kill all the survivors in order, it restarts its attempts from the beginning again, sometimes waiting a number of months while the survivors are lulled into a false sense of security.

The films have yet to explain what is sending the premonitions and omens to the protagonists, and more importantly why. One exception is the protagonist from the first film, Alex Browning (Devon Sawa), who suggests that they are messages from someone, hinting at Death's designs. It seems it does no good to escape the particular accident hinted at, since Death subsequently attacks the survivors.

Films

In 1996, screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick sold his treatment for Final Destination to New Line Cinema. The treatment was based on an The X Files spec script Reddick wrote in order to get an agent. In an interesting twist, television director James Wong, who worked with Reddick on The X Files, ended up co-writing and directing the first film. David R. Ellis directed the second film after Wong dropped out, but Wong returned to direct the third film and intended to shoot it in 3-D, but was unsuccessful due to insufficient budget. The third film was intended to be the final installment of the series, but Ellis returned again to direct the fourth installment, which was filmed in New Orleans, Louisiana and shot in 3-D. After releasing the fourth film, producer Craig Perry announced that the fourth film was the final installment of the series, and decided not to make the fifth installment. All four films received an R rating by the MPAA. Critics' rates were going down since the second film for "lack of ideas" and "gory scenes".

Novels

Throughout 2005 publishing company Black Flame released a series of Final Destination books which faithfully follow the premise of the films, with each involving a group of people who find themselves targeted by Death after surviving a catastrophe of some sort due to a character experiencing a precognitive vision. Set in Los Angeles the first novel, entitled Dead Reckoning, has punk rocker Jessica Golden saving herself and several others from the collapse of Club Kitty, earning Death's ire.[Novels 1] Set in LA as well Destination Zero has magazine employee Patricia Fuller and few others survive a train bombing and afterward, while being stalked by Death, Patti learns this is not the first time her family has been hunted by the entity.[Novels 2] End of the Line has a group of New York subway crash survivors, led by twins Danny and Louise King, trying to escape Death, who uses an unknowing agent to hasten its acquisition of the survivors.[Novels 3]

In Dead Man's Hand a group meant to die in the crash of a Las Vegas glass elevator are stalked by both Death and the FBI, the latter believing the group's savior Allie Goodwin-Gaines was responsible for the elevator crash.[Novels 4] Looks Could Kill has beautiful New York model Stephanie "Sherry" Pulaski stopping her friends from boarding a yacht when she has a vision of it exploding, but is left horribly disfigured and comatose by flying debris moments afterward when her vision comes true; eventually awakening the embittered Stephanie makes a deal with Death, aiding it in claiming her friends in exchange for having her good looks restored.[Novels 5] After the run of the original series of books Black Flame released novelizations of the first three films in January 2006.[Novels 6][Novels 7][Novels 8] Black Flame's last Final Destination novel was Death of the Senses released in mid 2006. Taking place in New York the book has a homeless man named Jack Curtis saving policewoman Amy Tom from a maniac after having a vision of Amy's death; Amy's attacker is later revealed to be a serial killer who was meant to murder six other people (representing the first five senses and a sixth) who Death begins targeting as Jack and Amy rush to find and warn the intended victims.[Novels 9] A tenth novel, subtitled Wipeout and written by Alex Johnson, was planned, but cancelled; the book would have featured a pair of surfers and several others, after surviving a plane crash in Hawaii, being hunted by Death and the survivor of another disaster, an unstable soldier who had nearly died in an ambush in Afghanistan.