#ellen wroe

Different scenes from previous seasons look different now.

For All Mankind rewatch

Final Destination 5

Once Buran engages its missile lock system, there’ll be only seconds until they fire on Sea Dragon, so we gotta be ready. Ride, lock weapons system on target. ...Ride?

Date watched:  17 November 2019

At this point, ngl, I was pretty burnt out. It had been a solid full day of watching nothing but people getting ripped apart in increasingly violent and random ways, but I knew that if I didn't commit and watch them all in one day, I wouldn't finish the series.  So I just had to do it.

And I was glad I did!  I bloody enjoyed this movie.  Honestly, if I see it for cheap on DVD I'll probably buy it.  Enough was different about this movie that it kept me engaged – it's almost the same story, but with a twist, and then a surprise twist ending (that I spoiled myself about).

It also stars David Koechner and Courtney B. Vance, as well as the guy from Trial & Error, which was a pleasant surprise.

So this movie starts with an epic bridge collapse, and as a lover of disaster movies, I was here for it.  Epic, scary, gruesome – yes, yes and yes. That's why the bridge collapse is my no. 2 opening to a Final Destination movie.  It was very well done.

We've now got six people from the same company who survive, and everybody else who works in the office there dies.  Our hero, the Trial & Error guy, is trying to win his girlfriend back – there was some bullshit reason they broke up but I don't remember what it was. This movie also reintroduces the creepy funeral director guy from the first two movies, who adds and new and exciting plot twist – if you kill someone, you take what's left of their life.  So you can essentially "buy time" by killing someone else.

Why this twist has only been added in the fifth movie I don't know.

So the remaining survivors talk this out, and the climax is one guy going mental and trying to kill our hero and his girlfriend, but the tables are turned when our hero kills the would-be killer.

The twist to the twist is that you would then only live as long as the person you killed would live – so if they only lived five minutes longer than you, you'd only gain five minutes.

And then, guys, PLOT TWIST – it turns out this movie is set pre-Final Destination 1, and our hero and his girlfriend are flying to Paris on the same plane that explodes in the first movie. Amazing.  I so wish I hadn't spoiled myself for that because I don't think I would've seen it coming, but there are a few clues – you never see anyone talking on a cell phone, for example, which would give away the time period.

Honestly, way to go out with a bang.  10/10 ending.

Not sure how the take-a-life-gain-a-life plot twist works into the fact that our hero dies in the plane crash – does that mean that he was always meant to die in that plane crash, or did he take the life of a guy who wasn't going to live that long anyway, or was it part of death's original plan, or did he get caught up in it accidentally?  It is not clear.  I've thought too much about this.

Disaster ranking:

10/10.

Just epic.  The bridge swaying and collapsing, the high tension wires snapping, David Koechner getting tarred and screaming and then falling to his death, like, it's the little details that make this special.  One dude gets skewered, another guy gets smushed – it's everything you could possibly ask for.  This would be my number 1 but there's just something special about the highway pile-up in FD2.

Death rankings:

·  Special shout-out to David Koechner – honestly, if him being tarred hadn't happened in the vision of the bridge collapse, it would be number one.  Unfortunately, his ultimate demise wasn't quite as special – he took a wrench to the head.

·  Courtney B. Vance gets shot, but he's not even really part of it (he's investigating), so does it even count? I can't believe they got Mr Angela Bassett himself for this role.  Errbody gotta get paid, I guess.

·  A guy who was not on the bridge but works in the warehouse of the company gets a hook to the head – this is important, because the guy who "killed him" and gained his life is the last person to die in the movie.  Turns out warehouse dude had a fatal heart condition and was going to die in a matter of days anyway.  TWIST.

· So there's a whole laser eye surgery sequence where this poor chick gets blinded by the super powerful laser, but she ultimately dies because she falls out the window.  It's a missed opportunity for some more laser-related shenanigans.  I couldn't watch that scene, by the way.  It got the better of me.

· The annoying dude who wants to have a bunch of sex goes to an Asian massage parlour thinking he's going to get a happy ending, but instead he gets a bunch of acupuncture needs embedded in his face and body as the room he's in burns around him, but he is ultimately taken out by the Buddha that falls off the wall and crushes his skull.

· Then we had the plane explosion sequence, which is shown from the perspective of the new characters – the poor girlfriend gets sucked out the window of the plane and cut in half by the wing, but the hero of the movie (the guy from Trial & Error) burns to death as the plane explodes.  The guy who was responsible for the warehouse dude's death is squished by a plane engine.

· But the best death, in this movie and all of the movies tbh, in my humblest of opinions, is the poor gymnast bitch who comes off the parallel bars and is literally snapped in half when she lands, with her legs over her head.  It was very unexpected and very creative.

So yeah, skip Final Destinations 3 4, and go right from 2 to 5.  You won't miss anything by skipping the middle two.  I bloody enjoyed no. 5, I was thinking it was going to be the worst of the bunch but ultimately I felt the series went out on a high.