Wednesday 31 August 2011

Final Destination 5 - Fright Fest Review #2



Just in case you don't know how this works......

A group of colleagues on a team building weekend get caught on a collapsing bridge.  One of the team has a premonition of them all dying on the bridge, freaks out and gets them off the bus.  Cue Tony Todd to tell them they cheated Death and it will be coming for them one by one.  Haven't gone through the plot in too much detail as it's more or less only there to engineer the way to brutally murder some good looking Americans.  Only this time there is a slight change to the rules.

Very slight!! This is essentially same film, different actors and different death defying set piece.  And all shot completely unnecessarily in 3D. An improvement on, certainly, the last one and probably on a par with 3, you get what you pay for with this film. 

The title sequence is nicely put together with imagery showing the instruments of death from this films predecessors and the film itself ties up quite nicely with them. 

The film, as you'd expect, contains more inventive deaths but as with the other sequels you get a long build up but the actual death is over very quickly.  I found the original's extended death sequences (shower strangulation, and the teacher's death for example) made the film far more intense.  When you know that you're going to get a few seconds of over indulgent CGI gore then the impact is dampened. That said, the deaths are gruesome with the laser eye surgery being one of the better ones.  I would expect a number of people cancelling their appointments after this.

But once again at the core of the film is weak dialogue and very little characterisation.  But then that's not what you go into these films for so it can be excused for overlooking these elements just like the previous films.  As for the slimline plot, well it simply feels like it merely gets in the way of getting to the next death sequence.

Overall an enjoyable film experience but don't expect anything highbrow or original as you get exactly what it says on the tin. 

3/5


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