REVIEW: THE FINAL DESTINATION OR LOOKING AT A SYMBOL OF TRUE CINEMATIC DECOMPOSITION

   Ah, it’s that time of year again – when shadows stalk than follow, when superstitions again float to the surface of human consciousness, when specters, omens and apparitions seem to be peeking with macabre mischievousness around every street corner, anticipating and savoring Mr. Everyman’s naïve, unassuming approach. In spite of these statements, this written piece is actually not going to explore the realm of the supernatural in light of Halloween looming on the world’s event horizon. I’m not interested in separating fact from fiction, narrating eerie occurrences or considering the idea of there being ‘greater forces at play.’ No, what I want to do is highlight the massive opportunity that ‘All Hallows’ Eve’ presents to filmmakers – be they in the States, Korea, Japan, Thailand or elsewhere – to take advantage of the menace that seems to hang in the air, cloud our minds and stifle our powers of reasoning and rationality. Is it by coincidence that movies slated for release this October include Zombieland, Antichrist, Horrorween, Saw VI, After.Life and Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant? Indeed, one could say that cinemagoers, for this month and the next, will most likely be in the mood for terror, and that their desire for skin-crawling suspense can be satisfied by movie-makers with relative ease. It is with this taken into consideration that I find myself having no choice but to pronounce The Final Destination a wretched, pathetically mumbled excuse for a horror movie, an undisguised insult to both scare supremos - Alfred Hitchcock, John Carpenter, Wes Craven and Co. - and advocates of human intellectual evolution alike.
    Harsh, you find me? Cruel, you deem me? Well, if that’s the way the cookie crumbles, let’s analyze the sequence of picture frames (I refuse to use the word ‘film’) in question, to fully understand the point of view I’ve put forward.  If actors are supposed to make or break a film, it’s safe to say that TFD has been comprehensively shattered by the performances of its cast members.  Pretty faces and enviable figures frequently flit across the screen, but fail quite magnificently to make viewers care about the fates of the characters being portrayed. When audience members chortle at the sight of intestines being sucked through and expelled from a high pressure pool draining pump, one realizes that a film has gone horribly, horribly wrong. Melodrama aside, I will honestly tell you that TFD’s gore-filled universe is populated by more stereotypical characters than any self-respecting human being would care to imagine.
     I’ve just realized that I haven’t provided you with a terse, cogent summary of this incredibly complex cinematic production. Please excuse my lack of foresight and allow me to do so. Here goes: people die. OK, fine, I’ll try to be less sadistically vague: people die AFTER escaping death once. There really is nothing more I can say, simply because any other aspects of the film are but blatant attempts to hide the gaping black hole that exists where TFD’s plot should. Needless to say, the baptism of set after set in industrially copious quantities of bright red corn syrup and latex organs is incapable of adding any semblance of purpose or direction to a movie that seems to have been made for lack of better things to do. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of TFD is the fact that its director and screenwriters have made no attempt to even try and be original. In short, this film is excruciatingly, almost surreally formulaic – and I sincerely doubt that the formula employed will be winning the Nobel Prize for Physics any time soon.  
        I was tempted to detail the exuberantly crass nature of TFD’s heavy metal soundtrack, but I abstained from doing so because a realization dawned upon me as I closed my eyes and reflected upon Hollywood’s recent offerings in the ‘Thrills and Chills’ department. I thought to myself “The Final Destination isn’t an unprecedentedly bad film: it’s a cry for help!” Sadly, it seems apparent that life is draining out of the American horror film industry, a body starved of inspiration and fresh ideas, a group that has desperately turned to grotesquely creative makeup artists, medieval instruments of torture, exhaustively used premises - and the ‘art’ of remaking. It is ironically depressing the answer to an inquiry about which recent American horror films have experienced critical success is the question ‘What do The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water and Shutter have in common?’ Was it really that long ago that Damien and Reagan scared the world senseless?  Will the likes of Norman Bates, Michael Myers and Jack Torrance never have true contemporary counterparts? Is it too much to ask for unsettling subtlety, unforgettably nerve-racking theme songs and conceptual, intellectually constructed terror to re-enter the scopes of American filmmakers? Is the answer to my last question ‘Yes?’ Now that really does give me the willies. 




by Pratik Raghu (June 09)