Ali Larter Movie:

		List Price: $28.99		Label: Warner Salesrank: 10745 Released: April 7, 2009
		Our Price: $8.11
		Used Price: $8.23
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: Blu-ray

Editorial Review:
After an eerie premonition leads a handful of passengers to disembark an ill-fated flight, Death with all its ingenious contraptions of doom at the ready stalks those survivors (Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith and more) one by one in the gory, gleeful shocker that launched the fright-filled film series. Final Destination: the start of it all!

Description of Final Destination [Blu-ray]:
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-aleck sensibility of Scream. Helmed by X-Files veteran James Wong, who cowrote the screenplay with longtime 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 preflight nightmare and panics when he's 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 humor: 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

Final Destination [Blu-ray] Reviews:
does not age well
2009-11-08 - 7.9 THE FILM ITSELF
6.9 VISUALS
7.5 SOUND
7.0 PACKAGING
8.4 EXTRAS

Remembering that Final destination came out in 2000, it's easy to see how old the film looks - especially on blu-ray. But even more so, the dialogue, the some what hammy / cheesy acting and just how young the cast is makes you understand you are not watching an Oscar award winning film.

Final Destination is an above average thriller / horror flick that deals with a young man who has visions of death. When he escapes the "death" that was imminent, the count down is on until death "catches up" to those who escaped. It's an interesting premise and it's handled decently. But after 9 years, it's certainly not the most engaging of stories, it sometimes doesn't really hold your attention and the characters feel cookie-cutter at best. But if you're looking for something different and slightly entertaining, you can do a lot worse than Final Destination.

VISUALS 6.9
There's no reason this should be bought on blu-ray. It looks okay at best, but for visual nuts they will certainly call this "horrible". From the bad haircuts that are really shown well here to the blotchy skin / makeup, some movies just should be left on DVD. Of course, being 9 years old doesn't help, but I've seen movies had 20 years ago that look stunning compared to this. It seems like no remastering has been done here at all.

SOUND 7.5
It's good, but nothing special. And after listening to the entire "isolated score" feature, I'm even more less impressed with this than I originally was. The rest of the sound - dialogue and explosions - are better, but still, nothing that makes you crank up the surround sound or anything.

PACKAGING 7.0
No main menu, the movie just starts with a menu bar that pops up on the bottom. The cover kind of resembles a cheesy teen-horror / action flick, and that's exactly what the film is.

EXTRAS 8.4
Two commentary tracks, one of which is really good (the one with the crew) while the other is average at best (the one with some of the cast members). There is a feature that is commentary by the composer as the entire score is presented over the dialogue. I never listened to one of these before, and this was not a good first selection for a film to do so on. The score just isn't that interesting here and the dialogue is "blah" at best.

"The Perfect Souffle: Testing Final Destination" is an inyteretsing feature I have never seen again. The creators talk about what a testing piece does for the film and what changes after it. Kind of interesting, but glad more films don't have this as it won't be watched by many fans.

"Premonitions" is an obnoxiously cheesy piece about a woman who believes she has the power to see when people are dead or in danger, and that she can see the future. Maybe if she didn't try to force her kids to believe it (that's how it seems anyway) it wouldn't be so bad, but this just seems like a family that will be in the news one day for joining a cult or something.

Then there are 3 deleted scenes that show a radically different ending. These are good because it shows just how far off the ending was, but they're bad because this ending is a horrible decision. So I'm glad they changed it and this is a very interesting original ending.

FINAL VERDICT
Final Destination is a decent film that offers something new to a tired genre, but it certainly hasn't aged well in the 9 years since it was released. The special features are impressive, but aside from the crew commentary and the shocking alternate ending there isn't much substance here.

8.1/10 "IMPRESSIVE"

great horror that deserves the many positive ratings and reviews
2009-09-23 - The first Final Destination is actually a really good horror film. It's significantly better than the third Final Destination movie (that's the one with the carnival and roller-coaster ride segment, right? I like this one a LOT more).

The only flaw with this film is that the first 20 minutes start off rather predictable, but give the story some time to develop and I believe you'll find yourself really getting into it.

Maybe it's just me, but I found it kind of disrespectful that they'd keep playing John Denver's classic "Rocky Mountain High" throughout the film. The song plays whenever something bad is about to happen.

It's disrespectful because, as you probably know, John Denver lost his life in an airplane accident a few years before this movie was created and released. The writers should have honestly picked a different song.

Now about the storyline. Are you the kind of person that believes you can cheat death? If so, do you believe if you happen to cheat death that death will rear its head shortly after in ANOTHER attempt to take your life? These are the kind of serious and curious questions that many of us probably ask ourselves, and these same questions are the reason this kind of horror is a few steps above the generic slasher kind (and honestly, slasher flicks are the kind of horror stories have been done to the point of exhaustion by this point).

I often wonder about these questions personally, though obviously it's important not to let these questions interfere with enjoying your life. But it makes you wonder exactly what your destiny is and when it will happen, doesn't it?

Anyway, great horror suspense.

Extremely Underrated Sci-Fi Movie
2009-08-29 - Final Destination has an interesting concept. Death hunts people who overcame his plan for them. A script originally written for X-Files, it is intelligent, cerebral, and witty. It is not your average "kill-teens" flick. Each teen has their own personality and you can actually tell the difference between all of them. You sympathize with the teens and hope they don't die; instead of rooting for the killer (in this case Death itself). The teens have actual intelligence and are not idiots. The cliffhanger ending is truly excellent.
Among the Final Destination series, this is the best. Final Destination 2 (second best) suffered (in my opinion) from a relatively happy, hopeful ending compared to this cliffhanger ending; the new life concept seemed too hopeful. The Final Destination (third best) was relatively good but suffered from "show everybody die and not leave mystery" syndrome. Final Destination 3 suffered from stupid characters who no one cares about syndrome.

Useless, dumb POS movie
2009-08-27 - As they are, horror movies are for the most part useless and have no cultural value at all unless you're some kind of sadist. Final Destinations 1, 2 and 3 aren't so much horror as they are safety films that show what happen if you don't put safety first. People are decapitated, suffocated, immolated, defenestrated, and the only lesson we learn from this movie is... they shouldn't make a sequel... but they did anyway, 2 of them! Then they're making this new dumb Final Destination movie, with the word "The" in front of it as though they are trying to have more respect for the English language somehow by making the title a complete sentence on its own.

Don't watch Final Destination. You'll only destroy your mind and your dignity.

No Cheating The Reaper
2009-07-28 - The "Final Destination" series started off with this low-key and middle-budget suspense film. Cast with a bunch of young actors in a twist on the old slasher formula, except this time, the mad killer is old Grimm himself. It makes this movie a minor classic, in that there's never anyone chasing these kids through the woods (so to speak). You don't need to set up a story about the killer that got killed by the angry mob or tormented by nasty classmates. Death doesn't need that kind of contraption, Death just is.

Of the actors, only Sean William Scott (aka "Stifler") and Heroes' Ari Larter have moved up from this series starter. Then one of the kids - Devon Sawa - has a premonition that gets him and six classmates plus one teacher booted from the flight. Said plane then explodes upon take-off. This team of cast-offs realize they've cheated death...or did they? Seems Death's Design isn't to crazy about being disrupted, and comes back for the stragglers. This is where "Final Destination" slips back into formula, and became more inventive in the way the teens get killed off. This does sort of make FD a precursor to the Saw series, in that the kills had to be elaborately set up and executed (har har).

Even with the beach-blanket-bingo of the FD plotline, the suspense is real. Who goes next and who beats the reaper? The concept was so successful that the Big D came back for two more sets of teens (Final Destination 2 and Final Destination 3) with a 4th in the works with little variance in the formula.