Final Destination 5 (2011)

Nice poster

If you've seen any of the Final Destination movies, you know the deal from the get-go. A character has a premonition of a spectacular disaster and, along with a handful of tag-alongs, escapes death by fleeing the scene before it goes down. From then on, these survivors who "cheated death," find themselves being  offed in fantastically splatteriffic ways - apparently by Death himself - in the order in which they would have died in the plane crash, highway pileup, roller coaster collapse, or what-have-you. It's a grim premise, but the Rube Goldberg-esque machinations of the characters' demises make the movies more about cheering on the increasingly implausible kills than they are about the existential morbidity of the idea that Death is always stalking us and can take us at any time.

In Final Destination 5, a group of office workers (from a paper company!) are saved from death when one of them has a vision of a bridge collapse and gets some of the workers off of their corporate retreat bus before the collapse happens. From there, we see these survivors face deaths involving gymnastics, acupuncture, LASIK eye surgery, industrial machinery, and a restaurant kitchen full of knives, deep fryers, gas burners, and other frightening implements. This installment adds in the concept that maybe if a survivor kills another person, that death will balance Death's books and He'll leave the survivor alone. That's it. That's all you need to know.

Did I mention that the coroner in these movies is played by The Candyman?

Watching it on the big HD tv at home makes me wish I had seen the movie in 3D at the theaters. The opening credits looked like a grizzly James Bond credit sequence with flying body parts and sharp everyday objects replacing the bouncing bimbos and bullets of the 007 movies. That would have been worth the extra three bucks right there.

The rest of the movie was equally "in-your-face" with gruesome objects flying right off the screen, but unlike the 3D-ified fourth installment, there was actually tension to go along with the gore. Every loose screw, every pointy object, every mechanical device the characters encounter was given an ominous, menacing quality and kept you guessing at what grizzly fate awaited the next victim.

I was frankly amazed that in the fifth movie of the franchise they were able to recapture the slow-burning suspense that had drifted away from the films as the series progressed. That tension, combined with satisfying payoffs for most of the character's deaths, makes for a real return to form after the missteps that almost killed the series in part 4. Maybe the producers saw Part 4 as a premonition and were able to save the series from box office death by making number 5 a lot better. Of course, this means they'll really have to be on their toes when they make the inevitable sixth installment. Or else.