Final Destination 5 (3D)

The Circle of Death

Director: Steven Quale
Writers: Eric Heisserer, Jeffrey Reddick

Cast: Nicholas D'Agosto, Emma Bell, Miles Fisher, Arlen Escarpeta, Ellen Wroe, Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, P.J. Byrne, David Koechner, Courtney B. Vance, Tony Todd

SYNOPSIS: On the way to a corporate retreat, Sam has a premonition that the group dies in a bridge collapse. After saving seven of his co-workers, mysterious accidents start killing each of the survivors.

REVIEW: Steven Quale, a relatively newcomer to big screen directing, but accomplished as a second-unit director on Avatar, takes a script from Eric Heisserer, screenplay writer of A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) and the upcoming prequel The Thing (2011), that deals with the greedy, petulant professional that is death.

The fifth in a franchise that started in 2000 with Final Destination with Devon Sawa and Ali Larter, Final Destination 5 (3D) tells another tale of a man's premonition that saves the lives of a group of people from a tragic demise, pissing off the entity that is Death, and starting a cascade of chain reactions that starts picking off each of the survivors.

Nicholas D'Agnosto stars as Sam Lawton, a paper salesman with a passion for the culinary arts and a chance to pursue an internship in Paris, who steps up as the man with the dreams in this installment. During the bus trip to a corporate retreat for Prestage Paper, Sam, his freshly turned ex-girlfriend and co-worker Molly (Emma Bell), Peter Friedkin (Cruisesque Miles Fisher), Peter's intern girlfriend Candice Hooper (Ellen Wroe), bespeckled Olivia Castle (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood), slimy IT supporting, womanizer Issac (P.J. Byrne), plant supervisor Nathan (Alren Escarpeta) and branch office boss Dennis (David Koechner) narrowly escape with their lives as the bridge they are traveling on collapses, kissing the of the riders on the coach and many others on the bridge. After the event, the microscope of the FBI, in the form of Agent Block (Courtney B. Vance) looks squarely at Sam as the mastermind of the bridge failure until the experts rule the collapse as a natural event due to high winds and structural damage caused by roadwork. At the Prestage Paper memorial and at the scene of each death, the diminishing group of survivors keep running into William Bludworth, a coroner who seems to have experience in similar strange events involving accidents and death.

Initially conceived as an episode for the X-Files, the original became a lower budget box office surprise hit, prompting a rush for a sequel. While Final Destination 2 propelled the franchise forward with a grander break-neck highway pile-up, the story already looked like death was losing interest. Final Destination 3 and its tame roller coaster ride offered great kills if little depth. Unsure of whether The Final Destination (part 4) was slated to be the final entry in the series by the studio, its use of 3D did rejuvenate interest in the franchise. Now, continuing in a new tradition of three dimensions, Final Destination 5 provides more classic cringe-inducing deaths as well as a new wrinkle to the 'death conquers all' formula. While Devon Sawa's Alex realized that saving a life would cause Death to skip its next target, In Final Destination 5, Sam, by way of Mr. Bludworth, re-writes the formula with the advice that sacrificing another life would satisfy Death's books.

Fans of the franchise, I believe, will enjoy the additional layer of complexity that the idea of taking a life will be as effective of saving a life. Another part of the franchise that brings the fan back involves the complex Goldberg-esque methods and lengths that Death will go to in order to take its pound of flesh. Most excellent in part five involve an air conditioner screw on a gymnastics balance beam and an eye-averting, Clockwork Orange date with a Lasik machine. Filled with nods of the cap to the previous films throughout, writer Eric Heisserer gives the audience something in Final Destination 5 that only the characters felt in the earlier films, a cool sense of deja vu.

WORTH: Matinee or DVD