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Final Destination - New Line Platinum Series

Final Destination - New Line Platinum Series

List Price: $14.96
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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Will Leave You Shaking and Paranoid
Review: Upon looking at this cover of the "Final Destination" video/DVD/poster, I thought that this film was just going to be your average teen-slasher flick, but it turned out to be much more, a lot scarier because here the killer is not a person but Death, powered by Fate itself. It's hard to tell how, when or where exactly the next person is going to die, and each gorey murder will leave you clutching to your seat. This film also promises more-in-depth characters than we are used to with the typical teen film. Devon Sawa does a great job as the unfortunate soul who foresees the deaths of his classmates, Ali Larter offers a beautiful AND intelligent on-screen female character, and Seann W. Scott (best known as Stifler from "American Pie") gives great comic relief to the film. All in all, this film will have you scared and paranoid for days, wondering if and how death might take you at any second.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fresh Horror Movie
Review: This movie was a breath of fresh air in the horror industry. Lacking many overdone cliches of 1990's horror. The highly foreshadowed elaborate deaths were real eye candy. Special effects were tight and sound was nerve racking. This film is a must own if you are a horror afficienado or if you just want quality story telling.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: On the edge of your seat movie
Review: This was a very good movie. It really kept me on the edge of my seat. Job well done with the suspense.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: I'll See You Soon.....
Review: The central conceit of "Final Destination" is that Death has a plan for us all. Each day of our lives, the actions we take, however minute, will one day lead us to the grave in fulfillment of "Death's sadistic design." What happens when someone sees the clues Death has left and figures out the design for himself? What happens if he is able to violate the design and escape Death? These are the questions explored by "Final Destination."

What appears on the surface to be what Roger Ebert refers to as a "Dead Teenager Movie" is actually a meditation on the nature of death and how the experience of near-death can change our perception of that nature. Alex (Devon Sawa) and the other characters in the film engage in a few interesting discussions on this subject, which you would not expect to find in a typical slasher movie.

In the end, what most strikingly sets this film apart from others in the genre are the elaborate scenes of "accidental death." Death appears as a liquid or a gust of wind to reclaim those who have escaped his design. These scenes are some of the only truly frightening scenes I have viewed in a film. To reveal any more about these scenes would take away from the fun of actually watching them.

As for the title of my review, I took it from one of the lines in the film that manages to be funny and creepy at the same time, spoken by Bludworth, the mortician (Tony Todd from "Candyman"). To learn the significance, watch this film!

In short, "Final Destination" is one of the most entertaining films to be released this year so far, and hopefully will gain a cult following now that it will be released on DVD and video.

I'll see you soon...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: I can't understand all the hype
Review: This movie starts out good, but than goes down hill from there. I was expecting more after seeing the crash. It had my attention until after the teens started getting killed. The first one to go in the bathroom was interesting. But the others deaths were pretty lame. A rehash of what we have seen already. This movie didn't make me jump once. I was waiting to be scared. The ending was terrible. They should have left it like it was before showing them in France. An ending can ruin a movie. Final Destination was a good idea gone wrong.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Must See
Review: I went in hoping very much to like this film, and I came out being surprised that I actually did.

A group of students bound for Paris leave the plane when one has a terrible vision, only to find that it comes true a few moments after takeoff. Oh, but death doth not allowth such an easy route out. Soon the ole Grim Reaper begins to hunt down each of these students one by one and kill them off. Wow, a slasher flick with the ultimate slasher, huh? Yep, and it works beautifully.

The film starts off with the best plane crash perhaps ever seen on screen and is quickly followed by two very original death scenes. And well, then it kinda goes downhill. What started out clever becomes cliché, and the last few deaths are not nearly as original as the first. The ending is also very lame and seems more tacked on for sequel purposes than for a "complete film."

Still, even with those flaws, and the semi-bad acting, the dialogue shines and the movie itself blazes. Final Destination has its flaws, but in spite of them it ranks as one of the most entertaining films so far this year. Go see it, but beware if John Denver comes on the radio...

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A nice twist on the conventional horror film
Review: What I like most about "Final Destination" is that it is different from most horror movies. Sure, it's filled with good looking teens who inevitabley start to die one by one - but it has a neat twist. In movies like "Scream" or "Friday the 13th" the threat is ultimately human, and therefore can be gotten rid of. The good guys can triumph in the end, because their enemy is just as mortal as they are. But in this movie, the characters are up against an unseen but nevertheless terrifying opponent: death itself. You can temporarily avoid it, but you can't win in the end because you are human. There can be no face-to-face conflict, and no final showdown will save you. It's an interesting premise, and the movie explores it well. And I was surprised, because watching the movie I thought it would be impossible to end the movie satisfactorily (without cheesinesss or overdone amounts of morbidness), but it is pulled off well. And it leaves you with a lot to think about - which is always a good sign in a film. One word of caution: do not see this movie if you are going on any plane trips in the near future. I saw it the day before I got on a plane, and I spent the whole flight with a death grip on the armrests fearing for my life. Anyway, if you like horror movies you'll like this, if not you should probably stay away. But at least this one is original - all those killer-in-a-mask/hood movies blend together after a while.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Simply frightening
Review: The horror genre has been revived in the past couple years, particularly with some good movies (the Original Scream) and some not so good movies (Hause on Haunted Hill and a few other stinkers) Final Destination, however, has to be on of the most thought provoking of them all. Not only is it top notch for edge-of-your-seat thrills, but it tackles some pretty intense topics (destiny and mortality.) I bit my nails through the whole thing, as it was one of THE SCARIEST films I've seen to date. I'll never feel the same way about crossing a street, boarding a plane, or any other everyday "dangerous" activities! I highly recomend it!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: By-the-book slasher flick... but you WANT them to die
Review: First, a word of warning. (I won't call it a spoiler.) The marketing team for this movie has been playing up Tony Todd's involvement in its ads. I gotta tell you, Tony Todd's only in one scene, for about three minutes. However, if you're me, three minutes of one of America's Most Underrated is worth ninety-two minutes without him. But take the advertising with a grain of salt. (Now, back to your regularly-scheduled review.)

Glen Morgan and James Wong, the team that brought you Chris Carter's two most successful TV outings (The X-Files and Millennium), team up for their first big-screen outing (assuming that the other one they've co-written, _The Mark_, hasn't seen the light of day yet; if it has, I'm unaware). Morgan and Wong take a genre-- the hip, funky serial killer flick revitalized a few years back by Wes Craven-- and send it up gloriously, playing the humor over the horror and giving us another cast of uppity teens who deserve the worst.

The plot is simple and original-- a teen has a premonition that the plane he's about to go to Paris on is going to blow up. He warns the people on the plane, gets a punch in the schnoz for his efforts, and the combatants, plus some others, are removed from the vehicle-- which then proceeds to blow up. According to a nameless mortician (Tony Todd-- he's actually in the credits with the rather amusing name 'Bludworth'), by getting themselves off the plane, those who survived the crash cheated death-- which is coming back for them. Great plot for a slasher film, which is exactly what this is, except that the slasher, instead of being the class dork who didn't get enough attention at home, is Death himself.

it's a clever twist, and many previous reviews have harped on the fact that it's the _only_ clever twist, and that the rest of the movie is by-the-book slasher film, with every cliche in the genre since Hitch gave us _Murders in the Rue Morgue_. And those reviewers are not in any way wrong; I saw every death at least a few seconds before it came. (Here's a hint, and it's an ironclad rule in slasher films: the second someone talks about getting away from the whole thing, that person will be dead within the next five minutes. The first known occurrence of this is in _The Mummy_, the version starring Boris Karloff, and it's been a cliche since about five minutes after that movie's release.) What those reviewers are forgetting is this: because of that particular plot twist, this movie is going to attract a slew of people who have never been to a slasher film in their lives, and they haven't seen it all before. The audience I sat in was full of people who didn't expect a single twist, laughed at every gallows joke, and generally had a fine time. (The rest of us came because Tony Todd was in it, and by default, if you like Tony Todd, you've seen Candyman, thus lengthening the cliche line.) Don't get me wrong, I laughed in all the same places, and even if I knew when body #2 was going to happen, it was still filmed so effectively that I think I may have actually squealed (warning: if you had to close your eyes during THAT scene in American History X, this will bug you).

So anyway, this one almost requires a split-personality rating. If you've never seen a film of this type before, you're probably going to like it more than if you can sit down with a plot summary in hand and map the whole thing out.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: brown trousers time
Review: OK, SO IT'S NOT REALLY BELIEVABLE, BUT IT IS QUITE SCARY WITH PLENTY OF GORE. BY TAPPING INTO OUR WORST FEARS(DEATH AND WHEN IS IT MY TIME) THE FILM PROVIDES THE SCARES AND JUMPS THAT RECENT HORROR FILMS(SCREAM 3 I'M TALKING TO YOU) LACKED. AS WITH MANY HORROR MOVIES THE RELATIVELY UNKNOWN CAST AT TIMES CHEW THEIR WAY THROUGH THE PROCEDINGS, BUT RIGHT FROM THE OFF SET WITH THE VERY NASTY PLANE CRASH, FINAL DESTINATION WILL LOCK YOU IN AND KEEP YOU ROOTED TO YOUR SEAT, WITH JUMPS A PLENTY AND MORE THAN IT'S FAIR SHARE OF GRISLY DEATHS. SIT DOWN, SWITCH OFF YOUR BRAIN AND ENJOY THE FAST PACED ACTION.


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