Worst to Best: Ranking the Final Destination Movies – Hot

The Final Destination franchise lands somewhere on the spectrum of horror movies between slashers where we get to see a killer stalk and murder a group of people (usually teens) and the Saw franchise with its creative and complicated murder machines. The Final Destination movies don’t have a specific slasher and the featured Rube Goldberg machines of death aren’t created by a human being, they’re constructions of Death itself.

The standard narrative for each movie follows a group of people who are saved from a deadly event (a plane crash, for instance), but are then hunted down by Death for escaping. That means there’s no iconic villain, though some of the films have appearances from Tony Todd who explains different aspects of Death to those who have escaped it. So instead of someone like Freddy or Jason, what makes the franchise distinct and memorable isn’t a character but the deaths themselves.

For the most part these movies will be ranked by which has the most exciting, disturbing, and, yes, maybe even funny deaths. Other aspects of filmmaking will of course also play a role, but what most separates the best Final Destination movies from the worst are the deaths they offer us.

 

Final Destination Ranked

5. The Final Destination (2009)

Director: David R. Ellis

The Final Destination’s greatest sin is that its inciting event, a major accident at a Nascar race, feels like a repeat of the initial incident in the second movie, a high speed multi-car accident on the highway.

Sure, there are stands and fans in The Final Destination, but some of the best parts of these movies are the excitement and absolute chaos of the would-be deaths that the characters escape, so to closely follow a mass death event that had already been done immediately sets it off on the wrong foot. The Final Destination also includes laughable computer generated effects that look worse than anything in the other movies, which doesn’t help its cause, even if we can blame some of that on the late 2000s 3D craze.

There are some funny deaths in the movie, though. A leaking bathtub falling through a soaked ceiling and crushing someone, and a carbon dioxide tank forcing someone into a fence so powerfully that their body is cut into pieces by the fence are some highlights. But the real gem here is a character being disemboweled by a pool’s drain pipe – it’s the kind of death that counts just as much as a negative and a positive.

 

4. Final Destination 5 (2011)

Director: Steven Quale

Returning to the numbered naming convention, Final Destination 5 offers us a sneaky prequel to the series. It’s one of the best simple yet satisfying reveals I’ve ever seen. It also adds a good amount to the film as there are clues throughout that attentive viewers can pick up on.

The fifth installment in the series also introduces a new aspect to the mythology that we haven’t seen before: those hunted by Death can kill someone not on Death’s list to steal the remaining lifespan. This of course offers the movie a new aspect for tension and physical conflict as some of those who are on Death’s list are desperate and willing to do whatever it takes to stay alive longer.

That aspect is interesting, but also sees the movie veer into a tone that’s a bit too serious for the franchise, which is why it lands lower on the lower side of this list.

 

3. Final Destination (2000)

Director: James Wong

Final Destination suffers most from its low budget in the scenes that aren’t Death sequences and center on a group of teens (and one teacher) trying to figure out exactly what’s going on and how they can survive. The script isn’t horrible, but it’s not great and the actors aren’t entirely up to the task of selling the less than good dialogue, except (unsurprisingly) for Tony Todd.

But the death sequences are undeniable and that’s what these movies are all about. From the initial vision of a plane exploding mid-flight shortly after take off, every suspense and horror sequence is almost equally nerve-shredding and heart-pumping. The first death we see after the characters escape the plane explosion, with Death making sure to frame it a suicide no less, introduces us to just how complicated and Rube Goldbergian (if you will) these death sequences can be.

The movie also establishes the tone of the series beautifully as these deaths can be just as funny as they are horrifying. Especially the many near misses that are immediately undercut by abrupt and unexpected deaths, and the final deaths in the movie that result from a giant sign.

 

2. Final Destination 3 (2006)

Director: James Wong

James Wong, director of the first Final Destination film, returned for the third installment and it’s easy to see that the man is just great at these movies.

The inciting event turns the horror from the more everyday activities of driving on a highway and taking a plane ride to a rollercoaster. The fact that going on a rollercoaster is a more avoidable activity makes the opening sequence here impactfully horrifying in a way that the first two films’ openings aren’t, even if they are more viscerally thrilling.

Final Destination 3 is also helped by being the only one of these movies with a veritable movie star at its center in Mary Elizabeth Winstead. And the fact that it includes some of the most iconic deaths in the series including the dual tanning bed deaths (with a fantastic match cut to coffins at the end of the scene) and the elaborate hardware store sequence makes it a strong contender

 

1. Final Destination 2 (2003)

Director: David R. Ellis

It’s perhaps an odd thing for the best and worst entries in a franchise to have the same director, but that just goes to show how much other factors count for making a great movie. Ironically, the thing that makes Final Destination 2 the best of the series is the same thing that makes The Final Destination the worst: their opening mass death events.

Final Destination 2 includes the most mundane activity to turn into a series of horrific deaths, driving on the highway. The fact that it’s an activity everyone has participated in makes it hit hard, but it’s the multiple explosions, multiple car flips, and the decapitation by loose logs that make it the most exciting opening sequence of the series.

Of course it’s not just the opening sequence that marks Final Destination 2 as the best of the series. The deaths that follow include a dismemberment by flying barbed wire, a character who’s about to be saved from a car accident being murdered by their airbag, and even more explosions (it’s certainly the most explosion-heavy of the films, which doesn’t hurt). It’s also the only movie with a significant connection to the movie that came before, as one of the characters from the first film returns to help the new group, allowing the mythology to grow more naturally and more interestingly than it does in any of the other sequels.

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