With this year’s Final Destination: Bloodlines threatening to bring a major horror franchise of the 2000s rushing back into the hearts and minds of the people, just when we need it the most, there’s hardly a better time than to look back at the franchise that was. The five-film series, which kicked off in 2000 with a movie adapted from an X-Files spec script and follows Death’s increasingly elaborate design to claim the lives of people who somehow avoided disaster, is one of the most thrillingly consistent franchises of the modern age, so this was a particularly tough ranking to hammer out.
The Entire Final Destination Franchise Ranked
#5 The Final Destination (2009)
I have a chinchilla-level soft spot for The Final Destination, and it’s not just because of its extreme willingness to objectify male characters at the same level as the female characters, but even I must agree with the general populace on this one. It’s demonstrably at a lower level than the others. There’s no appearance by franchise stalwart Tony Todd (RIP), for one thing, and the questionable 2009 CGI is also incredibly damaging for a franchise that is primarily a delivery system for horrible onscreen deaths.
That said, there is something charming about the brutal efficiency of its storytelling. It’s painting in strokes so broad it almost becomes a fable, and it is still more clever than it gets credit for in its Rube Goldberg approach to Death, especially in the way that most people become undone by their own good luck tokens.
#4 Final Destination 2 (2003)
Final Destination 2 is definitely the movie in the franchise that I’ve flip-flopped on the most over the years. Its conceit, following Death tracking down people whose lives were saved by characters from the first movie who shouldn’t have been alive in the first place, is solid. Plus, it has that unimpeachable opening sequence with the 18,000 car pileup on the freeway.
However, there’s a lot of running around in circles between the death sequences that never amounts to much, A. J. Cook delivers one of the blander protagonist performances in a franchise that isn’t exactly known for textured and interesting leads, and the mini-premonitions she has during the main part of the movie are chintzy and goofy.
#3 Final Destination 3 (2006)
Forgive me for the inexcusable pun, but this one is a roller coaster ride. Mary Elizabeth Winstead delivers a solid leading lady performance, it’s downright nasty to its dead meat characters, and the “prophetic photos” trick is a fun way to get the characters involved in trying to stop their own deaths. This one also suffers from a severe lack of Tony Todd (he has a voice-only cameo at the theme park in the beginning), but at least it remembers that the franchise sometimes gives Death a theme song (“Rocky Mountain High” in the first movie, “Dust in the Wind” in FD5).
The one they chose here – “Turn Around, Look At Me” by The Lettermen – is maybe the most perfectly creepy oldies needle drop this side of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.”
#2 Final Destination 5 (2011)
This miraculous sequel is not only deeply interested in ways to push the premise of the franchise forward (“take a life, steal their remaining time” is one of the most narratively satisfying approaches to giving the dead meat characters something to do), it also contains some of the best pre-death sequences in the franchise. Every installment has at least one terrific Rube Goldberg sequence where random events pile up into a violent death (the beauty parlor in TFD, the fire escape in FD2, and the tanning beds in FD3 come to mind).
Still, there has hardly been a better tension-building setpiece than the “sharp screw falling on the balance beam” scene in this movie. It harnesses the wicked glee that is always present in Death’s fuckery throughout the franchise, but it also captures the way that some of the most effective horror comes from the most mundane, everyday threats.
#1 Final Destination (2000)
It’s very common for any ranking to have the first movie at the top, but frankly, I don’t know that this is the case for Final Destination. Because all the movies are so good, and the sequels are bigger and splashier (sometimes literally), the original 2000 installment can get short shrift. And sure, later on they found more ways to push the envelope of what is set up here, but it is set up so damn effectively.
What this movie lacks in the slickness of the sequels, it makes up for with brutality. Moments like seeing a strangled teenager’s veins burst in his eyes or the miserable way that Ms. Newton clings to life until she just can’t anymore during her kitchen misadventure have a profound power. This is by far the most emotionally excoriating installment in the franchise, where the weight of the deaths is felt by the characters in a real way, rather than just as yet another link in the supernatural slasher chain the movie is building.
The franchise’s ability to play on common real-life fears is also introduced with one of its brashest set pieces. That Flight 180 explosion is second only to Final Destination 2’s logging truck for lodging right in the back of your brain for the rest of your life.
For a ranking of our favorite deaths in the Final Destination franchise, click here!