When Final Destination premiered on March 17, 2000, no one really expected it to be the long-running franchise it became. Creator and multi-hyphenate Jeffrey Reddick (Day of the Dead) originally penned the idea as a spec script for The X-Files. However, after he shared it with colleagues at New Line Cinema, they encouraged him to write a feature-length film treatment instead. The studio bought it and hired two writers, James Wong and Glen Morgan (Black Christmas), who happened to be writers for The X-Files.
In honor of its 25th anniversary and the upcoming sixth film, Final Destination: Bloodlines, we’re looking at the thrilling first installment that tapped into our deepest fears while also creating new ones.
Reddick’s initial idea of someone experiencing a premonition remained at the center of the story, but Wong and Morgan made some changes and introduced the Death’s Rube Goldberg-like domino effect. New Line, aka “the house that Freddy built,” wanted a personification of death as the killer. However, creatives behind the scenes opted for an invisible, omnipresent entity. Death as a looming presence and intangible force, often visually represented as a sudden breeze, can be scarier than a classic slasher villain. Where do you hide when death is inescapable?
The opening credits sequence of Final Destination sets the ominous tone with a foreboding score composed by Shirley Walker (Batman: The Animated Series), a staple throughout the films. We’re in the bedroom of Alex Browning (Devon Sawa, of Casper and Chucky fame), a high schooler packing for a class trip to Paris, France. His dad lays everything out for us in one expositional line: “So: seventeen, on the loose, senior trip with your friends in Paris, ten days in the springtime.”
At the airport, Alex gradually becomes hyper-aware of every unsettling detail. While his best friend, Tod Waggner (Chad Donella), and their classmates are excited, he’s silently wary of these bad omens, including hearing the song “Rocky Mountain High” by John Denver, who died in a plane crash. This is the anxiety-inducing setup that kicks off every entry in the franchise.
Everyone boards the plane, and they’re barely past takeoff when the plane gets rocky, with luggage falling out of bins and people trying to secure their oxygen masks from above. The side of the plane explodes, and passengers are either thrown out or burned alive. Alex’s face is engulfed in flames…but then he wakes up.
In the first few moments he’s on screen, Carter Horton (Kerr Smith, who starred in Dawson’s Creek at the time) establishes himself as an arrogant jock with a major chip on his shoulder. He regularly targets Billy Hitchcock (American Pie’s Seann William Scott), a seemingly nice guy who doesn’t fit the nerd stereotype but is still one of the people, other than Alex, Carter’s ready to fight on sight.
One common criticism of all Final Destination films is the trope-y characters, especially when it comes to teenagers. There’s always a raging skeptic, usually the jock, or in at least two cases, the only Black guy in the group. That’s another thing; these movies aren’t known for diversity, which is a shame considering the creator is a biracial gay man.
Carter’s girlfriend Terry Chaney (Amanda Detmer) and quiet loner Clear Rivers (Ali Larter, then primarily known for Varsity Blues) mostly stand by while the boys fight. The former has one of the franchise’s most shocking deaths, while the latter is the only main character to make it to the sequel.
Of course, no one believes Alex when he starts yelling about the impending crash. Carter immediately tries to punch him, a very on-brand response as we’ll continue to see. In the chaos, he’s taken off the plane, along with Carter, Terry, and Billy who got caught in the crosshairs, followed by concerned friend Tod and an intuitive Clear. One of the teachers, Valerie Lewton (Kristen Cloke), stays behind with the evicted group.
Just as he saw in his premonition, the plane took to the skies and promptly exploded, the impact shattering the glass windows of the airport. Most people would be shocked but grateful that someone just saved their lives, even if it was under unbelievable circumstances. Instead, everyone except Clear is afraid of him.
After a memorial is held for the 39 casualties, Alex gets another weird feeling about Tod. Sure enough, his friend slips on water in the bathroom, falling into a shower cord that inexplicably wraps around his neck before he even knows what’s happening. The plane crash is harrowing, but Tod’s death is brutal. When I watched this as a kid, it was the scene that genuinely scared me because seeing the blood vessels in his eyes burst while he struggled was horrific. It’s still the death that affects me the most.
Clear takes Alex to investigate Tod’s body in the morgue, where they meet William Bludworth (Tony Todd), the mortician who oscillates between a wise man in tune with death and a creeper who enjoys being around dead bodies. He greets the teen trespassers, emerging from what I can only describe as a cave. Final Destination 2 added a comical amount of fog and red lighting for his entrance. Bludworth is consistently elusive, only offering up morsels of helpful information about Death’s design.
The last act sees Alex trying to save Clear from a flailing electrical cord. It’s a wild sequence that shows Death really struggling to kill these teens and ultimately failing. Six months later, Alex travels to Paris with Clear and Carter. But Death’s design just took a hiatus, and in another series of events, Alex gets skipped again, and Carter gets killed by a falling sign. In an alternate ending, Alex dies saving Clear, and she later gives birth to his baby. Test audiences didn’t like the happy, soulful ending with the hero dying and the bully living.
Final Destination spawned four sequels. Ali Larter reprised her role as Clear for 2003’s Final Destination 2, which focused on a group of strangers nearly killed in a highway pile-up instead of friends and classmates. Final Destination 3 (2006), my personal favorite, centered on another group of seniors. The much-derided fourth film made the most money at the box office but relied so heavily on the spectacle of 3D that the story, acting, and effects failed to deliver. 2011’s Final Destination 5 was a welcome return to form and had an interesting twist ending.
The trailer for Final Destination: Bloodlines, releasing May 16, 2025, shows a guy getting strung up by his septum piercing before falling into a fire and ends with the tagline, “Death runs in the family.” With so many characters in the decades-long franchise, these new characters could be related to anyone. Bloodlines is also the iconic Tony Todd’s last film before passing in November 2024.
Final Destination kicked off a horror franchise credited with traumatizing a generation by portraying everyday things as terrifying traps of death. Some fans may prefer the sequels and their increasingly elaborate kill methods, but there’s no denying the power of the original.
All five Final Destination movies are currently available to stream on Max.
