DVDFile

Warner / 92 Minutes / 2011 / Rated R / Street Date: December 27, 2011

The setpieces that serve as overtures to the Final Destination flicks are grotesque, almost operatic whirlwinds of body parts and screeching metal. A multi-car pileup on a foggy interstate, a rollercoaster mishap gone horrifically wrong, a bridge crumbling in upon itself (that's how Final Destination 5 kicks off) - whatever the nightmarish vision of mass death, that's how the folks behind the FD franchise want you to start eating your movie theater popcorn.

In this era of somehow continually popular torture porn, endeavors like Final Destination 5 are able to find an audience. In fact, this fourth sequel to the hit original is the second-highest-grossing installment of the series - somehow it found an exceptionally lucrative international audience. Horror fans are known to like their material grisly and inventively disgusting, I suppose, and Final Destination 5 offers more of the same in that regard.

This being said, the phrase 'more of the same' unsurprisingly fits FD5 like a glove. The premise of the movie is identical to its earlier installments - because beefcake Nicholas D'Agosto and a handful of people had a vision of their bus falling off a bridge and had the wherewithal to get out before it happened, Death spends ninety minutes tracking them down (YOU CANNOT ESCAPE!) - but even shitty horror sequels can find some kind of camp or fun in their redundancy, and Final Destination 5 doesn't even accomplish this.

There will likely be many more Final Destination movies: With Saw (temporarily) gone, the franchise owes their devout followers as much dismemberment and hideousness as possible. But Final Destination 5 is a genre flick designed exclusively for the initiated and no one else - there are technical aspects to the movie's construction that merit a tacit viewer approval, but this one ends up being for dyed-in-the-wool horror junkies only, and even then, it will probably only play as being 'more of the same'.