Final Destination is scarier than ever amid rise in freak accidents

Kyle MacNeill, The Independent

A golden rule of horror is that there must be a fiend or a foe. A gross mutant; a bloodthirsty vampire; a demented ghost; a psycho killer. It needs to be something we can actually see (through the slits of our fingers) and fear for days, or years, to come. Something to infiltrate our dreams like those poor residents of Elm Street. Something really, truly terrifying. It’s these somethings that tend to sell tickets — relative to how much cornea-popping, popcorn-chucking trauma they cause. Then 25 years ago this month, Final Destination broke the rule.

The iconic Noughties horror franchise doesn’t feature a single tangible monster, either supernatural or human. There’s only Death. Each of the five films follows a group of teens, one of whom has a premonition of an imminent freak accident that comes true. The survivors soon realise that they have defied destiny and no matter what they do, they will meet their demise in the most bizarrely brutal ways possible: car crashes, rollercoaster malfunctions, plane explosions and the kind of workplace accidents that would get Injury Lawyers 4U spamming your voicemail. Crucially, though, we never see Death. It’s just there... it’s everywhere.

And Final Destination, a quarter of a century on, is freakier than ever. Look away, those with a nervous disposition: according to a Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents report from November 2024, freak deaths are 42 per cent higher than two decades ago, becoming the second biggest killer for under-forties.

More time spent indoors has proved fatal; over 55 per cent of preventable deaths now happen at home. Poisonings are up by 96 per cent in the past decade; exposure to inanimate mechanical forces (like, being crushed by machinery) are up by 23 per cent and fatal contact with animate forces (like, say, being charged by a cow) is up by 66 per cent. Whether it’s down to more DIY, an increasingly blasé attitude to danger or — most likely — being superglued to our phones, there’s a genuine epidemic of bizarre deaths.

Jeffrey Reddick, the creator of the classic franchise, isn’t shocked by the stats. “I’ve been nearly hit so many times by someone who is turning when they’re not supposed to be, they’ve got their phone covering their view. It’s crazy.” He’s even noticed the potential scene unfolding out his window. “There’s construction everywhere outside my flat. And I’m just like, I hope nothing happens. But if it does, I already told Craig [Perry, producer], you guys can milk it for marketing,” he laughs.

It makes for creepily prescient timing: a new movie is on the way after a 14-year hiatus, with Final Destination: Bloodlines set for release in May. But back in the late Nineties, the lack of any tangible enemy made it tricky for Reddick to get his idea off the ground. His flash of inspiration came after reading an article about a woman who had changed her flights after her mum had a vision of it crashing (scarily, Reddick read this story while he himself was on a plane). The mother was, somehow, right. It got his mind whirring. “I had this thought of: what if she had cheated death? I thought that was a really cool idea.”

Originally writing it as a spec script for The X Files — “the hottest show on TV” at the time — one of Reddick’s colleagues at New Line Cinema said it would make a great full feature film. With Perry and Warren Zide – both producers on American Pie — joining the team, they honed Reddick’s vision. The adults, for example, were changed to more splatter-friendly teens. “I just wanted to get this made,” Reddick laughs. “I’ll kill old people. I don’t care.” But New Line still had concerns and were worried it would be all filler, no killer — literally. “They said there’s nothing you can see or fight. They didn’t understand it.” Forced to throw something in, Reddick added an Angel of Death character that would taunt the teens.

Call it fate, but Glen Morgan and James Wong – both writers on The X Files — were then invited to join the team. Reddick had originally envisioned the characters committing suicide after suffering from survivors’ guilt, but Morgan and Wong crucially changed it to Death getting its revenge.

The new duo also bravely killed off the Angel and fought to make sure that Death wasn’t shown at all — beyond the occasional shadowy presence. The result was Final Destination, released on 16 March 2000. The film follows a group of college students who narrowly miss a plane crash and are then bizarrely butchered through a horrific chain reaction. Critics were savage but that didn’t stop it from pulling in $112.9m off a $23m budget. Four other lucrative films followed over the next 11 years; Reddick only worked directly on the first two, but is still close to the team to keep his original vision intact.

The new instalment is being directed by duo Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (Freaks) who got the job after a Zoom audition with Warner Bros. During the video call, Lipovsky and Stein’s office suddenly went up in flames and the ceiling fan came crashing down, decapitating them both. Thankfully, it was all pre-recorded SFX. The stunt landed them the honour of directing one of horror’s most storied franchises.