Eight people who survived a horrific bridge collapse learn you can’t cheat Death.

CRITIQUE

Why do they even bother with the stuff between the death scenes? I’m talking about the people who keep churning out these Final Destination flicks, of course. No one’s going to these things to see the characters (and I use that term loosely) sit around and talk about what’s possibly coming next. You go to these things to see some poor bastard get hit by a bridge’s suspension cable and turned into a cloud of red jelly. The audience for these things doesn’t want talking anymore than the audience for porn wants talking (I’m assuming). Just get the hell on with it.

That’s my beef with this fifth installment. (Yeah, yeah, the title of the fourth one implied it would be the last, but those suckers who forked over their cash to see people get hit by flying car parts in 3-D helped it turn enough of a prophet to ensure the franchise would live on. Thank/blame them accordingly.) I got something of a sick charge out of watching these saps die in horrible, laughably overwrought ways (I still don’t know why Death doesn’t just make them all die of heart attacks, strokes, or pulmonary embolisms; after all of these Rube Goldberg-esque demises, something that simple would actually be a surprise), but I was bored out of my flipping skull by all of the stuff that separates the death scenes.

At times the dialogue in the non-death scenes steps over the line into parody--straddling the line between stupid-smart and just plain stupid--with the movie becoming a winking, knowing send-up of itself and its progenitors. But there’s not enough of this. Most of the time the dialogue is wooden and banal, and it’s delivered by the actors (and I use that term loosely; Tony Todd [reprising his character from the earlier installments], Courtney B. Vance [playing a cop who is incredibly dumb early on but becomes clairvoyant near the end], and David Koechner [who obviously improvised most of his dialogue and plays down to the material] are good, but all of the younger players are awful) in a manner that’s equally wooden. I don’t know if writer Eric Heisserer (who also had a hand in the script for the recent The Thing prequel) was going in the spoof direction and was reigned in by the higher-ups or what, but at this point in time the franchise would do well to stop taking itself at all seriously.

The plot here follows the template established by the original movie and then “perfected” by the first sequel. There’s a bunch of boring nonsense at the beginning, ostensibly to establish the characters and their relationships. Then you get the big setpiece, which in this case involves the collapse of a suspension bridge under renovation. Despite some shoddy special effects, it’s an impressive piece of work, gleefully dispatching supporting characters left and right. This is followed by a few moments of reflection, after which the survivors begin dying in ridiculously contrived fashion.

As I said, some of the deaths do supply a bit of fun. They’re often stupid as heck (why would a Lasik machine be capable of generating a laser of higher wattage than is safe? Did the optometrist jerry-rig it out of something he bought at Goldfinger’s garage sale?), but I suppose that’s half the fun. You get crushed skulls, squished eyeballs, heads impaled by flying rebar, and girl who literally gets folded in half. Who doesn’t want to see that? (In typical Final Destination fashion, seeing this girl get folded in half doesn’t really faze anyone. It would freak me the hell out, but the people who witness it here take it in stride.)

Director Steven Quale (who shot 2nd Unit on Avatar, which I promise not to hold against him) keeps things moving at a pretty good clip. The only time the movie slows down is during the climactic confrontation, which is a huge letdown, playing more like something you’d find in a Lifetime suspense programmer. The movie’s also refreshingly brief, requiring ridiculously overlong opening credits and a montage of footage from the earlier movies to push it past the 90-minute mark.

There’s a bit of a nice twist near the end. I was surprised by how relatively clever it was, acting as both a good way of connecting things and covering up some lingering questions raised by what had come before. But it goes on too long, climaxing with a moment that even for this series is dumb and forced (in the process raising a question--and it’s a pretty big question--I doubt anyone will bother to check to see was ever answered). The movie also wastes time explaining the series’ internal logic, which still doesn’t make a lick of sense. Nobody cares, so why bother?

This is easily the best entry since the original, which really isn’t saying much. It delivers the goods just enough to not be terrible, which at this point may be the best you can hope for.        

THE VIDEO

The 2.40:1/1080p transfer--encoded with AVC onto a 25GB disc--replicates the slightly cold look of the movie quite well. The color palette is dominated by cool blues and steely grays, which is a rather unsubtle way of making the movie look like it takes place in a morgue. The movie was shot digitally (and in 3-D; some of the more obvious 3-D gags look a little silly in 2-D), but the image here looks pleasingly film-like (although some of the more lackluster effects look a little plastic). There are some nice splashes of well saturated primaries, and the ubiquitous sprays of blood have some good pop. Detail is strong. Some of the effects-heavy shots can get a little soft (for obvious reasons), and there’s some aliasing on display. (A 3-D version is also available, but at this point it’s a retailer-exclusive release.)

THE AUDIO

Lossless audio comes in the form of a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. Like the movie itself, it takes a little while for the sound mix to really get going. Despite the blaring, overbearing music in the opening credits, there’s no punch or weight to the audio. This lackluster quality continues through the first couple scenes, but things really pick up during the bridge collapse, which is just as nuts as you want it be. The subsequent kills are loud, active, and meaty, but the scenes that separate them are a little on the front-heavy side, which is typical for this sort of flick. Dialogue sounds good, allowing you to enjoy the lethargic line readings all the more.

French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included; English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

All of the extras (all three of them!) are presented in high-def.

What’s dubbed Alternate Death Scenes (16 minutes) is a collection of footage that isn’t all that different from what you’ll find in the movie. There are a couple seconds of footage that are slightly different, but they’re nothing special and are actually less sickeningly satisfying than what made the final cut. 

Visual Effects of Death (12 minutes) is a split-screen look at two effects-heavy sequences. On one side of the screen you’ll see raw footage, on the other the corresponding finished footage.

Final Destination 5: Circle of Death, Your Final Destination (6 minutes) is a bland making-of featurette.

Some copies will also include a DVD copy and a code to access an UltraViolet digital copy.

FINAL THOUGHTS