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Released by: New Line Cinema
Released on: December 27, 2011.
Director: Steven Quale
Cast: Nicholas D'Agosto, Emma Bell, Miles Fisher, Tony Todd, David Koechner
Year: 2011
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The Movie:
Directed by Steven Quale, who worked as James Cameron's second unit director on Avatar, this latest entry in the Final Destination series was written by Eric Heisserer who, for better or worse, is probably best known for penning the scripts for remakes of The Thing and A Nightmare On Elm Street. But how does this latest entry in the splat-tastic franchise hold up? Well, nobody is reinventing the wheel here, but there's plenty of entertainment value to be had from the film.
When the movie begins, a bunch of co-workers are all getting herded onto a bus to head off to a work retreat with their boss, Dennis (David Koechner). When they cross over a large suspension bridge, Sam (Nicholas D'Agosto) has a premonition that something terrible is going to happen and he receives a powerful vision of the bridge collapsing and killing many of his friends and co-workers in the process. Of course, Sam's premonition turns out to be prophetic, and before you know it concrete is crumbling, cables are snapping, and people and cars are being torn up and tossed into the water below.
A few people, Sam being one of them, survive the encounter but they soon learn, as the others did in the films before this one, that you cannot cheat death and that it will come for you. And that's exactly what happens - the rest of the film follows the few survivors as they attend their co-workers' funeral and then go about their lives, getting picked off one by one in increasingly gruesome ways - but some of the survivors are smart enough to figure that just maybe they can survive if they can somehow manage to get someone else to die in their place.
Like the earlier films, the draw here is the kill scenes. None of the characters are given much in the way of personality and in fact quite a few of them are downright unlikeable. As such, we really don't care about them and so we more or less just want the movie to get on with the gore, and it does. The filmmakers are savvy enough to know that at this point in the history of the franchise we're watching these films for the 'mouse trap' style kills and so the film more or less just gets on with it. There's enough plot happening here to keep us interested but you're not going into this movie for deep storytelling or superb acting. All involved do a fine job and the cameos from both Tony Todd and David Koechner are fun, but this is all about the blood and guts.
Without wanting to spoil things, the death scenes are well done here. They not only deliver the grue but also manage to ramp up the tension to the point where the film will keep you guessing - is that screw that's coming loose going to cause something to fall apart and kill somebody or not? Situations like that are placed cleverly throughout the movie and are frequent enough that you really don't know ahead of time when it's going to hit the fan for 'character X' and that's where the enjoyment from this film comes from. As there's no unrated version of the film included here the gore scenes never move past the R-rating as they have on previous entries that have been released without the MPAA stamp of approval, but there's still plenty of well played splatter. A modern horror classic? Nope, not even close, but a fun way to kill an hour and a half for sure.
Video/Audio/Extras:
New Line presents Final Destination 5 in a strong VC-1 encoded 1080p anamorphic widescreen presentation that looks sharp and colorful throughout. This is a glossy looking film and at times maybe it looks a little over-sharpened but color reproduction is spot on while black levels stay strong and deep throughout. The ruby red of the bloodshed and the various colors of goopy helpings of gore that splatter across the screen all look, um, nice and sticky while detail stays strong throughout the presentation. There are no problems with mpeg compression artifacts or ringing to note and skin tones look quite natural whenever they appear on screen.
The DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio mix, which comes with optional subtitles in English SDH and Spanish, is pretty impressive stuff. This is a movie that lends itself to some pretty bombastic sound design and this mix proves more than capable of bringing all of the punch and power home. This is a very aggressive mix with near constant use of the rear channels to ensure that you're always right in the middle of the chaos and the carnage. The opening race car scene sounds terrific and sets the stage nicely for what's to come, with each subsequent death scene sounding just as good. Bass is nice and strong while dialogue is always clean and clear. The ambient noise that is emitted from the rear speakers runs the gamut from subtle to obvious but it's always appropriately balanced. There aren't any problems with hiss or distortion to report and everything sounds clear and concise from start to finish. All in all, the film sounds excellent
Extras are pretty slim on this disc, though what has been included is fun. First are up sixteen minutes worth of alternate death scenes, so the gorehounds out there will have something to dig into. Unfortunately most of this 'alternate footage' is so similar to what was used in the finished cut of the movie that you probably won't notice many differences.
Aside from that, we get a six minute featurette called The Circle Of Death, which is really just a glorified promotional spot for the movie, and twelve minutes worth of split scene comparisons showing how the computer effects were done for two of the intricate kill scenes in the film. All of the extras are presented in high definition. This is a combo pack release, so it includes both a Blu-ray disc and a DVD with identical content. Both discs fit inside a keepcase which in turn fits inside a cardboard slipcase.
The Final Word:
Not the best of the series by a long shot, Final Destination 5 is still a fun watch and it stands to reason that if you enjoyed the movies in the series that preceded this one that you'll enjoy this latest entry as well. New Line's Blu-ray looks and sounds great, offering up a very strong transfer and amazing audio, though the extras are slim. Fans of the series, however, should not hesitate to pick this one up.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
