2. The Final Destination Series (2000 - 2011)
Official Films - Final Destination, Final Destination 2 & Final Destination 5Ignore -Final Destination 3 & The Final Destination Staying with horror for a moment, I recently saw Final Destination 5 and was actually rather pleasantly surprised with it. It went back and and offered a nice bookending with the first film with a twist that I genuinely didn't see coming and also served as a full stop to the franchise as a whole. I'd held off seeing it, due to the sheer mind numbingly boring parts 3 and 4. Which despite the fourth offering having the title of The Final Destination, it was noticeably not The
Final Destination. The films for those unawares depict a person having a premonition about upcoming deaths and this prompts them to act to avoid the premonition coming true. The first is that a plane will crash after take off, then a motorway pile-up, then a rollercoaster crash, then a Speedway pile-up and finally a bridge collapsing. The person who has the premonition, manages to save themselves and also a few others. Then death comes to hunt down all who managed to cheat him, through a series of elaborate mousetrap"accidents". The first film is a solid thriller that offers a nice resolution and has greatly likeable characters including Stifler from American Pie. The second film ties in perfectly as it features characters whose lives were changed due to the deaths from the first film and has death working backwards to claim them. The third and fourth have almost no relation to the first two films beyond the inital set up and imaginative death sequences. So just forget they exist. I have. Trust me, it's easy. The fifth film offers a conclusion as the big twist is that SPOILER! the film takes place in the late 1990's and is actually a prequel to the original film. The main characters thinking they have ended death's cycle, board the plane to Paris from the original film. The films work well and all have a sense of naturally coming from that original plane crash organically, rather than have them shoveled around it in a poor attempt to relate to the original film. Three has too many problems with it's initial set up, the cause of the crash, a camera, is taken off the rollercoaster and yet it still crashes. Part Four just feels like a straight to video release. Not the perfect trilogy but certainly better than most extended horror franchises.