The Final Destination Trailer (2009)

Trailer for The Final Destination.

On what should have been a fun-filled day at the races, Nick O'Bannon has a horrific premonition in which a bizarre sequence of events causes multiple race cars to crash, sending flaming debris into the stands, brutally killing his friends and causing the upper deck of the stands to collapse on him. When he comes out of this grisly nightmare Nick panics, persuading his girlfriend, Lori, and their friends, Janet and Hunt, to leave... escaping seconds before Nick's frightening vision becomes a terrible reality. Thinking they've cheated death, the group has a new lease on life, but unfortunately for Nick and Lori, it is only the beginning. As his premonitions continue and the crash survivors begin to die one-by-one--in increasingly gruesome ways--Nick must figure out how to cheat death once and for all before he, too, reaches his final destination. The film marks the latest in the highly popular Final Destination series, and its first 3D installment, giving horror fans an especially visceral thrill ride.

Despite the title, The Final Destination, emphasis on “The”, was not the final installment. Final Destination 5 followed in 2011.

This fourth installment was the first of the franchise to be shot in 3D, which allowed audiences to endure the frightening action scenes better than ever before.

The Final Destination is the highest grossing film of the franchise, earning $186 Million worldwide.

Since audiences cannot get enough of teenagers escaping death temporarily only to be later killed in a much more creative way, we get The Final Destination. The fourth installment of the franchise, which doesn’t even attempt originality with a title, finds a group of teenagers once again minding their own business, living life, when one of their weird friends has a premonition that they are all going to die a grisly death. From the previous Final Destination movies, we have learned that planes are bad,  freeways are dangerous, and rollercoasters are just going to fly off their tracks and murder you. Now these poor kids cannot even watch race cars go around a track without cars just hitting ridiculous speeds, flying up and landing on them. If these movies have taught us anything, it is just to stay home, maybe get a pizza and stream something in the comfort of your own home.

Oh, but wait, these movies also tell us that nowhere is safe, not even our home, because you can still die from an elaborate chain reaction started because you forgot to place the cap back on the ranch dressing, or something. Back to the trailer for The Final Destination, where we get all of the classic images of grotesque ways in which these teens die, such as, metal shards ripping toward someone’s face, things exploding, drowning, cars falling off jacks, death by carwash, and every other terrifying moment that will surely keep audiences anxious and disgusted.

The cast is filled with relative unknowns, the kind of actors you recognize from a few television show or movie but may not know their name, which I find to be one of the better things about horror films. Casting familiar faces along with less familiar faces keeps audiences from dwelling on the death of the characters too long because killing off these characters one by one is pretty much the reason we are all watching these movies. Just like other Final Destination films, The Final Destination trailer appears to be exciting enough to entertain, but isn’t banking on any film awards, and so with that in mind, the trailer for The Final Destination accomplishes just that.