Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10647 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-11-06
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Letterboxed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 94 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
While hardly a spiritual upgrade of the slasher film, this high-concept teen body-count thriller drops hints of The Sixth Sense into the smart-alec sensibility of Scream. Helmed by X Files veteran James Wong, who co-wrote the screenplay with long-time creative partner Glen Morgan, Final Destination is an often entertaining thriller marked by an unsettling sense of unease and scenes of eerie imagery. It suffers, however, from a schizophrenic tone and a frankly ludicrous premise. A high school Cassandra, Alex Browning (Devon Sawa of Idle Hands), wakes from a pre-flight nightmare and panics when he is convinced the plane is doomed. His ruckus bumps seven passengers from the Paris-bound plane, which immediately explodes into a fireball on takeoff, but fate hasn't finished with these lucky few and, one by one, death claims them. Wong brings such a funereal tone to these early scenes of survivor's guilt and inevitable doom that the already far-fetched film threatens to veer into unplanned absurdity. Thankfully, the tale loosens up with a playful morgue humour: one of the victims winds up the splattered punch line to a grim joke and elaborate Rube Goldbergesque chains of cause and effect become inspired spectacles of destruction. Final Destination is a pretty silly thriller when it takes itself seriously, and the filmmakers play fast and loose with their own rules of fate, but once they stick their tongues firmly in cheek, the film takes off with a screwy interpretation of the domino effect of doom. --Sean Axmaker

On the DVD: A superb commentary from writer Jeffrey Reddick, director James Wong and producer Glen Morgan goes into great detail about the film's background. From the team's involvement with The X-Files through to the fight to keep their title "Flight 180", they're pretty candid about the movie's secrets (cameos and character names) and bringing "Death" to life. There are also eight minutes of deleted scenes from an expunged sub-plot that led to their original ending. The explanation for its rejection comes in a 13-minute featurette ("The Perfect Souffle"), which demonstrates the result of Hollywood's reliance on test screenings. There's a trailer, cast and crew biographies and two games--"Your Psychic Eye" and "Death Clock"--which are scary enough by themselves. Rounding this exceptional extras package off is a 20-minute featurette on real-life premonitions. --Paul Tonks

DVD Description
When Alex (Devon Sawa) starts having a premonition of Flight 180 crashing and tells everyone to get off the ill-fated aircraft. Several people including Alex , are forced to disembark, moments later in the departure lounge the students see the plane explode. You can't cheat death and the grim reaper picks off the survivors one by one, will anyone survive?

DVD Description
DVD Special Features:

Theatrical Trailer
Cast and Crew
Deleted Scenes
Interviews
Featurette on Premonitions
Letterbox Ration 16:9
Subtitles: English
Dolby Digital 5.1

Customer Reviews

DEFYING THE FICKLE FINGER OF FATE...
This teen scare flick is a cut above most others. Here, it is not some crazed killer who does away with most of the cast but, rather, the fickle finger of fate that selects the next denizen of the great beyond.

The movie starts off happily enough with a class of high school seniors about to depart for Paris. Once they board the plane, our main man, Alex, cannot quite overcome his fear of flying, as he has a premonition that the plane is going to blow up upon takeoff.

His hysteria is such that he, as well as four other students are escorted off the plane and accompanied by faculty members, one of whom returns to re-board the plane. No sooner does the plane take off, that it blows up in mid air. It seems that fate has snatched these lucky individuals out of death's clutches...or has it?

Their relief, at having escaped being blown up on the plane, turns to terror, as it appears that fate will not have them cheat death. The lengths that these young people go to evade fate, and the steps that fate takes to hunt them down one by one, makes for a crafty and clever thriller. Teens and adults alike will enjoy this flick.

You can run, but you can't hide from Death
Final Destination manages to find its own little niche among psychological thrillers such as Scream and The Sixth Sense. With X-Files veterans James Wong and Glen Morgan at the helm, the movie is all but guaranteed to be entertaining and gripping. The plot works well as a whole, but some of the minutiae and details may make your brain hurt if you try to delve too deeply into them. Some impressive special effects and exquisite timing squeeze as much fun as possible out of the twists, turns, and thrills collected here, and the actors play their roles quite convincingly.

Alex Chance Browning (Devon Sawa) obviously does not love to fly, but he shakes off several bad omens to board the plane taking a large group of his classmates to Paris. Just before takeoff, he has a premonition of imminent disaster and ends up getting himself, five classmates, and a teacher, thrown off the plane. While his fellow stranded travelers tell him off and ridicule his claim to have somehow seen the plane explode after takeoff, the plane does indeed explode just as Alex predicted. These six other people seem more upset than grateful to Alex for having essentially saved their lives, and he finds himself a social outcast and even a person of interest to the FBI. Things only get worse from here. His circle of seven survivors begins to die off one by one, and Alex begins to see a pattern in these events. He comes to believe that he somehow messed up Death's plan, and now Death is coming to claim the lives of the seven who were supposed to die in the plane crash. He figured out that plan once already, and he is determined to figure out whatever new design Death throws at him. If he and any of his friends are to survive, Alex must outsmart the Grim Reaper yet again, a tough task indeed.

There is not as much character development as I would have liked in Final Destination, but this does keep one from getting too attached to a character slated to die. The relationship between Alex and Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) is especially ambiguous. One character really stands out in the movie, despite his relatively short appearance: Tony Todd (of Candyman fame). He plays a disturbingly dark, strange mortician whose ruminations about death really push the horror aspects of the movie to a higher level. The death scenes are, for the most part, quite delightful. One in particular occurs so suddenly and out of the blue that you have to just stop and give the moviemakers a little love. A decapitation scene came off a little unrealistically, but all of the other special effects were quite impressive. I have to say I really love the ending of the film; it is such a rare thrill to see a cold-blooded concluding moment rather than a sappy fairy tale ending.

Speaking of fairy tale endings, that is exactly what the first cut of this movie had, along with a romantic element that ultimately found itself on the cutting room floor. Not only can you see the deleted scenes and alternate ending on the DVD, you can learn the reasons why the changes were made. The DVD includes a short documentary discussing the screen tests done for the film; as a result of these screen tests, the movie was altered rather dramatically in order to better please the intended audience. This documentary provides some great insight into how movies actually get made. A second documentary tells the story of a real-life "intuitive investigator." While this 19-minute feature is interesting up to a point, I really do not see why in the world it was included here. Back on the plus side, there are several commentaries of the movie included on the DVD. Final Destination is quite a good movie in and of itself, and this bounty of extra features makes the DVD a great purchase for those who enjoy psychological thrillers.

My favourite movie
Final Destination is my absolute favourite ever movie. It has everything you could ever want from a horror movie: unique and likeable characters; brilliant plot twists; extremely inventive deaths (or "accidents"); loads of chilling suspence and enough gore to make the movie scary and fun but not enough to put you off or make you look away.

Alex Browning has a horrific vison of the airplane, which he and his friends have just boarded on a school trip to Paris, exploding shortly after take off. He panicks after the vision and he, four other students and a teacher are forcible removed from the plane by the airline staff. The airplane takes off without them and a few seconds later, explodes just like in Alex's vision as it is ascending into the air.

Thirty-nine days pass and everything seems fine, but then, after the funeral of the victims of the crash one of the survivors dies in a freak accident that is at first dismissed as suicide. But then the other survivors start dying in equally bizzare accidents and Alex and his friends learn that maybe they didn't cheat death after all as the grim reaper is stalkin them one-by-one...

The movie has lots of suspence and just the right amount of gore. It is an absolute must see for any fans of the genre or anybody looking for a good movie.