Everybody knows going in that "Final Destination 5" isn't really a movie any more
than a meat grinder is. A factory franchise even more predictable than the "Saw"
series, each of these little "FD" money machines produces gruesome, intricately
designed "snuff" shorts, separated by lame chat among bland-blander-blandest
meat puppets fighting to stay out of death's spotlight. Folks who pay money for
this entertainment know exactly what they're in for. Eager to applaud some
especially outrageous form of execution, during which the human body suffers
horrendous mutilation, cheering "FD" fans eat up the equivalent of Grand Guignol
comedy.
Honoring "FD" tradition, the fifth chapter starts out with a slambang
catastrophe -- the collapse of a suspension bridge -- foreseen by one of the
young professionals (Nicholas D'Agosto) heading for a
corporate retreat in a school bus. In his vision, everybody on the bus dies
hideously -- because "FD"'s Grim Reaper is a real cutup who can't resist slicing
and dicing human flesh to a dramatic fare-thee-well. Skillfully orchestrated,
this sequence is actually enhanced by 3-D: Holes in the disintegrating bridge
seem to pull the gaze down -- dizzyingly -- to the river below, and jagged
camera angles on hanging railings and sliding debris muddle our sense of what's
up, what's down. The bodies that dance and die in the midst of this mayhem seem
incidental to the architectural kinesis, the incremental breaking down of every
part of what was once a solid, dependable construction. As "FD5"'s borrowed
theme song advertises, "All we are is dust in the wind."
Naturally, after Sam or Dick or whatever his name is -- sorry, these
nonentities and their names are like dust in the wind -- wakes up and saves
eight lucky souls, Death feels cheated of his fair share of dead meat. We know
this because Tony Todd (remember his truly creepy "Candyman"?) turns up as coroner Bludworth,
smirking and sliding his eyes suggestively while explaining the rules of the
game to the Eight Little Indians. (If this "FD" alumnus had a mustache, he would
twirl it.) They remain only to groove on the Reaper's elaborate practical
jokes.
It's probably way irrelevant to wonder why "FD"'s victims couldn't be a tad
less animatronic. (One of them -- Miles Fisher -- stands out a bit because he
looks like a puffy Tom Cruise.) Possessing only the most rudimentary
personalities, this gaggle of survivors lack any life outside their function as
sitting ducks. Who cares if such ciphers pack it in? Maybe that's the point. If
Tom, Dick and Mary are barely animate objects -- Untermenschen, if you like --
then there's no real guilt in dismembering, impaling, burning, boiling, mashing,
blinding them, is there? Since empathy doesn't enter into it, we're never forced
to tap into our own night terrors. All the gain, without any pain.
Sad to say, the cast of "FD5" includes one Courtney B. Vance, playing a federal agent given
to popping up after each horrific demise to whine, "What's happening?" What
humiliation for this silky-voiced, top-notch actor to find himself an extra in
such tripe. We can only hope that his wife, the beautiful and muscular Angela Bassett, doesn't punish him too severely
for such slumming.
At its most interesting, "FD5" conjures visual paranoia about the physical
world as deathtrap. Investing ordinary places and things with potential
lethality, the movie comes as close as hackwork can to one of the grand staples
of true horror movies -- and Hitchcockian thrillers. When the spatial normalcy
we take for granted -- say, that of a kitchen or a gym -- is
penetrated or degraded, the whole construct of what keeps us sane is undermined.
In all of the never-"Final Destination"s, objects like leaking air conditioning
fans, a popped screw, and an electrical plug can become linked in a network of
sinister coincidence, a series of falling dominos set in motion by a killer Rube
Goldberg. When stuff that serves us turns deadly, we're in a world of
hallucinatory hurt. "FD5" occasionally generates that kind of frisson, but it
never goes bone-deep.
Kat Murphy once had the pleasure of writing a book-length comparison of
Howard Hawks and Ernest Hemingway, friends and fellow travelers in fiction
(Quentin Tarantino reckoned it "cool."). She's reviewed movies in newspapers and
magazines (Movietone News, Film Comment, Village Voice, Film West, Steadycam)
and on websites (Reel.com, Cinemania.com, Amazon.com). Her writing has been
included in book anthologies ("Women and Cinema," "The Myth of the West," "Best
American Movie Writing 1998"). During her checkered career, Kat's done
everything from writing speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack Lemmon, Harrison Ford,
et al., to researching torture-porn movies for a law firm. She adores Bigelow,
Breillat and Denis -- and arguing about movies in any and all arenas.
For more movie news, follow MSN Movies on Facebook and Twitter.
Everybody knows going in that "Final Destination 5" isn't really a movie any more
than a meat grinder is. A factory franchise even more predictable than the "Saw"
series, each of these little "FD" money machines produces gruesome, intricately
designed "snuff" shorts, separated by lame chat among bland-blander-blandest
meat puppets fighting to stay out of death's spotlight. Folks who pay money for
this entertainment know exactly what they're in for. Eager to applaud some
especially outrageous form of execution, during which the human body suffers
horrendous mutilation, cheering "FD" fans eat up the equivalent of Grand Guignol
comedy.
Honoring "FD" tradition, the fifth chapter starts out with a slambang
catastrophe -- the collapse of a suspension bridge -- foreseen by one of the
young professionals (Nicholas D'Agosto) heading for a
corporate retreat in a school bus. In his vision, everybody on the bus dies
hideously -- because "FD"'s Grim Reaper is a real cutup who can't resist slicing
and dicing human flesh to a dramatic fare-thee-well. Skillfully orchestrated,
this sequence is actually enhanced by 3-D: Holes in the disintegrating bridge
seem to pull the gaze down -- dizzyingly -- to the river below, and jagged
camera angles on hanging railings and sliding debris muddle our sense of what's
up, what's down. The bodies that dance and die in the midst of this mayhem seem
incidental to the architectural kinesis, the incremental breaking down of every
part of what was once a solid, dependable construction. As "FD5"'s borrowed
theme song advertises, "All we are is dust in the wind."
Naturally, after Sam or Dick or whatever his name is -- sorry, these
nonentities and their names are like dust in the wind -- wakes up and saves
eight lucky souls, Death feels cheated of his fair share of dead meat. We know
this because Tony Todd (remember his truly creepy "Candyman"?) turns up as coroner Bludworth,
smirking and sliding his eyes suggestively while explaining the rules of the
game to the Eight Little Indians. (If this "FD" alumnus had a mustache, he would
twirl it.) They remain only to groove on the Reaper's elaborate practical
jokes.
It's probably way irrelevant to wonder why "FD"'s victims couldn't be a tad
less animatronic. (One of them -- Miles Fisher -- stands out a bit because he
looks like a puffy Tom Cruise.) Possessing only the most rudimentary
personalities, this gaggle of survivors lack any life outside their function as
sitting ducks. Who cares if such ciphers pack it in? Maybe that's the point. If
Tom, Dick and Mary are barely animate objects -- Untermenschen, if you like --
then there's no real guilt in dismembering, impaling, burning, boiling, mashing,
blinding them, is there? Since empathy doesn't enter into it, we're never forced
to tap into our own night terrors. All the gain, without any pain.
Sad to say, the cast of "FD5" includes one Courtney B. Vance, playing a federal agent given
to popping up after each horrific demise to whine, "What's happening?" What
humiliation for this silky-voiced, top-notch actor to find himself an extra in
such tripe. We can only hope that his wife, the beautiful and muscular Angela Bassett, doesn't punish him too severely
for such slumming.
At its most interesting, "FD5" conjures visual paranoia about the physical
world as deathtrap. Investing ordinary places and things with potential
lethality, the movie comes as close as hackwork can to one of the grand staples
of true horror movies -- and Hitchcockian thrillers. When the spatial normalcy
we take for granted -- say, that of a kitchen or a gym -- is
penetrated or degraded, the whole construct of what keeps us sane is undermined.
In all of the never-"Final Destination"s, objects like leaking air conditioning
fans, a popped screw, and an electrical plug can become linked in a network of
sinister coincidence, a series of falling dominos set in motion by a killer Rube
Goldberg. When stuff that serves us turns deadly, we're in a world of
hallucinatory hurt. "FD5" occasionally generates that kind of frisson, but it
never goes bone-deep.
Kat Murphy once had the pleasure of writing a book-length comparison of
Howard Hawks and Ernest Hemingway, friends and fellow travelers in fiction
(Quentin Tarantino reckoned it "cool."). She's reviewed movies in newspapers and
magazines (Movietone News, Film Comment, Village Voice, Film West, Steadycam)
and on websites (Reel.com, Cinemania.com, Amazon.com). Her writing has been
included in book anthologies ("Women and Cinema," "The Myth of the West," "Best
American Movie Writing 1998"). During her checkered career, Kat's done
everything from writing speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack Lemmon, Harrison Ford,
et al., to researching torture-porn movies for a law firm. She adores Bigelow,
Breillat and Denis -- and arguing about movies in any and all arenas.
For more movie news, follow MSN Movies on Facebook and Twitter.
