Midweek Mention... Final Destination

FINAL DESTINATION (2000) follows student Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) who saves the lives of himself, a teacher and several classmates after experiencing a terrifying premonition that their plane bound for Paris will explode shortly after take-off. Afterwards, as each of the survivors begins to die in appalling and unexpected ways, Alex realises that Death is coming for them anyway...When SCREAM forever altered the horror landscape in 1996, with subsequent  movies forced to deal with post-modernism and genre aware characters or seem quaint by comparison, horror films accordingly had a period of readjustment to contend with savvy and educated audiences. Taking the structure of a standard slasher flick but replacing the conventional killer who stalks and murders a group of people with the unknowable force of Death and Fate is a clever conceit, allowing the set-up and execution of multiple elaborate set-pieces in which we know a particular character will be killed, just not precisely how. X-FILES writer James Wong directs from a screenplay written by himself, regular collaborator Glen Morgan and Jeffrey Reddick, based on Reddick's initial story which gleefully dispatches our characters in creative ways, whilst encouraging the viewer to conjure up their own horrors with multiple hinted at red-herrings. I've always loved these movies, not just for the fun of the elaborate death sequences or because the impenetrable nature of the antagonist encourages the characters to have earnest conversations about free will and determinism, or because the movie leans just far enough into its outlandish premise without devolving into a load of silly supernatural nonsense but also because they are filled with an atmosphere of pure paranoia and nihilistic existential dread and who doesn't love that?You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!We love to hear from our listeners! By which I mean we tolerate it. If it hasn't been completely destroyed yet you can usually find us on twitter @dads_film, on Facebook Bad Dads Film Review, on email at [email protected] or on our website baddadsfilm.com. Until next time, we remain... Bad Dads