Final Destination: Into The Void

🎶Talking to myself all the way to the station

Pictures in my head of the final destination

All left off are the ones who aren’t allowed to stay

Trying to save myself, but myself keep slipping away🎶 - Nine Inch Nails (Into The Void).

This is the first verse from the song titled “Into The Void” by the band Nine Inch Nails. The song was featured on the soundtrack to the 2000 supernatural horror smash Final Destination. That opening verse from “Into The Void” tells the story of the entire Final Destination series and on this 25 year anniversary of this supernatural nerve shredder of a series it’s time to take a look back at why.

Released on March 17, 2000, Final Destination tells the story of Alex Browning, portrayed by Devon Sawa. Alex is headed on a school field trip to Paris, France with his friends and classmates. Before the trip gets underway, Alex falls asleep and has a premonition that his plane, Voleé Airlines flight 180 will explode once it is airborne. After waking up from the premonition Alex finds that everything that took place in his premonition before the plane exploded is now playing out in his reality.

Alex then freaks out with the assumption that the plane will also blow up just like in his dream and is removed from the plane with several of his classmates and one of his teachers. Shortly after their removal Flight 180 explodes in mid air just like it did in Alex’s premonition. But this isn’t even the beginning of the story. After a few months pass by following Flight 180’s explosion all the survivors of the crash start dying in freak accidents in the order that they would’ve died if they had remained on the plane. Alex discovers that he and his friends cheated death when they got off of Flight 180 and that death is coming back for them all with a new design. Alex now scrambles to understand this new design of death and fights nail and tooth to beat it once more, setting in motion a franchise that becomes a void of death.

For the past 25 years Final Destination has been developed into one of the most successful horror franchises ever. It has already spawned five films with a sixth one on the way. What makes this series so iconic is how it plays into the human conscience’s everyday fear of death. This franchise has managed to take every day activities such as driving, flying and even riding a rollercoaster and has made the audience paranoid with caution every time we partake in these activities on the regular. There are a lot of things that didn’t scare you before you watched Final Destination that scare you now such as riding behind a big 18 wheeler truck with logs on it and as crazy as it sounds that’s what makes the series so enjoyable.

Final Destination is truly the perfect void of chaos because the series villain isn’t a monster, ghoul or any kind of physical being, the antagonist is just the essence of death itself, coming back to reclaim what belongs to it. Because of this the main character’s war with death is never over. We all have to die at some point, so the protagonist are just fighting a void of nothingness through premonitions and freak accidents until they’re all dead, watching the ominous signs of death lurking as they desperately fight to stay alive.

Of course no brand is complete without the cast and crew behind it. Originally written by Jeffrey Reddick, Final Destination was originally pinned to be a teleplay episode of the sci-fi hit series The X-Files. Without a doubt Reddick and the fans would all agree that it was gift in disguise that it didn’t work out that way. Along with it’s crazy scenarios of terrible ways to die, the Final Destination series is carried by a great cast of actors including: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, AJ Cook, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Bobby Campo, Nicholas D’Agosto and of course the iconic late great Tony Todd as William Bludworth.

I’ll never forget when I first watch Final Destination. It blew me away with how complex it was and it even had me questioning the void of reality that I was living in. Like many of my closest friends and loved ones this too is one of my favorite horror franchises. Fast forward to the present day and Final Destination is still a horror forced to be reckoned with. Highly successful, loved by fans, now has a highly anticipated sixth film on the way and still carrying the world of horror into its void.