By: Cameron Tyo
May 4th, 2025
Warning: There will be what some people consider major spoilers for the movie Final Destination 5
We have now arrived at the end of our journey of watching all the Final Destination movies for the first time as the long-awaited release date of Final Destination: Bloodlines draws ever closer. We’ve come to Final Destination 5, released in 2011.
What I want to mention right off the back is how much of an improvement this movie was from its predecessor, which made me scared that the series was to continue with that quality content, but I was surprisingly and happily proven the opposite of that.
Out of any of the movies in the series, Final Destination 5 does a great job of presenting its ensemble cast. In this case, the employees of Presage. We are introduced to the standard pervert character, friends, and higher-up figures, as well as the main character’s conflict with his girl. This happens seemingly during the retreat in which the traditional premonition occurs.
And regarding the premonition. It was the most exciting scene of the movie, as it should have been. The suspense and red herrings leading to the bridge collapse were great to see, and all the deaths that happened in the premonition were creative. While CGI was used for some of the gory moments, it didn’t take you away from what was going on with the characters.
I feel like my reviews, specifically for the Final Destination movies, are similar, so let’s retread some similar wording I’ve used from other reviews.
In Final Destination fashion, the main characters, Sam Lawton (Nicholas D’Agosto) and Molly Harper (Emma Bell), discover a pattern with the people dying. They figure out that everyone who was supposed to die in the bridge collapse but survived is being reclaimed by death in the order they were supposed to die.
We also get Bludsworth’s (Tony Todd) return, which was nice after not seeing him for two movies, and he explains a new rule regarding the death system. Anyone who kills another person will get that person’s lifespan and cheat death for the time being. In this movie, more than others, Bludsworth seems to be the personification of death itself, finding himself always at the scenes of death.
This idea is shown in different ways. Through accidents, moments of mental shutdown, etc.
The deaths in the movie are implausible to happen in real life. I mean, unless you have the freak of nature following you around, occur. But this goes for most of the details in the series film. People watch for these dramatic death scenes, including me.
The whole sequence leading to Candice’s (Ellen Wroe) death at her gymnast practice is intense and exhilarating to watch. The rapid pop cuts between Candice and another gymnast on beams and bars make what is going to happen in the scene seem very unsure.
Issac Palmer’s (P.J Byrne) and Olivia Castle’s (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) deaths are also pretty memorable. Unlike the last few movies, the deaths seem more drawn out. You still have your “got ya” moments, like in the last few movies, but you could predict how one would die in those ones. In the case of this movie, after all the Rube Goldberg moments happen, something unexpected or unrelated to that moment occurs, leading to the character’s demise.
There are more thriller elements in this movie than there are in a lot of the other movies, and these are noticeable because of how the death scenes happen.
I really liked the mix of suspense and humor that was included in the movie. For one of the darker movies in the series, there were many lighthearted moments that connected the people of Presage together.
Speaking of characters, the development of them, while not as great as of other movies, was quite decent in this movie.Seeing things like Peter’s (Miles Fischer) mental state getting professionally worse as he learns how death works or seeing the quarrels between Nathan Sears (Arlen Escarpeta) and Roy Carson (Brent Stait) and the end resulting in them is interesting. You also have the conflict between Sam and Molly prevalent throughout the movie, and the decisions made to resolve said conflict spur lots of important things that happen in the movie, especially the decisions leading to the final scene of the movie, where we learn that the whole movie was a prequel to the other movies to come.
When I saw Carter and Alex getting taken off the plane and Sam looking at his ticket showing he was on flight 180, I was floored. It didn’t even occur to me that there was no mention of the events of the past movies as we got to this point. I honestly wasn’t expecting this series to include a prequel movie. I’m sure there were clues showing how these movie events slide in the timeline, but I wasn’t paying any attention. Getting to see the plane crash from a victim’s point of view was crazy. It was a fun and clever reveal.
I thought a lot of the final scenes of the movie were great. The whole fight and chase scene got me rooting for so many of the main characters. This scene is where I started to realize that “hey, this series now has a villain other than death.” If you know, you know.
The music and cinematography in the movie helped show the creativity of the death scenes and added emotional depth to the scenes, no matter what scene they were. A scene of chaos or a scene of reflection. The two elements made these scenes more effective.
I’m going to be honest, but going into this movie. I was very hesitant to watch it. I thought I wasn’t going to enjoy it as I didn’t like the fourth movie, but this movie shocked me in a good way. Every element in the movie is combined togetherto create an interesting story with somewhat decent characters. The dialogue was still a bit wonky, I will admit. The cinematography and music created an extra depth to the emotion the directors wanted you to feel in the film’s scene. With that, Final Destination 5 is one of my favorite movies in the series, and I think it just barely beats Final Destination 2.
And with that, here are my standings of the movies so far. At least until Bloodlines is released, and then who knows where it might stand:
1. Final Destination 3
2. Final Destination 5
3. Final Destination 2
4. Final Destination
5. The Final Destination