But there’s one important thing missing from Final Destination‘s impressive kill scenes. There’s no distinctive mask, no ironic one-liner, no signature murder instrument. Death, the killer in Final Destination, has no face or form. The closest thing it has to a one liner are the clues it gives to main character Alex (Devon Sawa) before claiming another victim.
That omission of a clearly defined killer is enough to help Final Destination redefine the horror genre. By erasing the monster, leaving only its effects instead of the character, Final Destination allowed the kills to stand out. We suddenly have more room to care about the characters, broadly drawn as they are in this movie. There’s more space to watch clever and well-constructed kills, which had turned arbitrary or silly in the 1990s but now feel inventive, surprising and tragic.
Without having to worry about building a horror icon, Final Destination could just worry about the most important thing in a horror movie: the horror.
After Death, Horror’s Resurrection
Perhaps the biggest indicator of Final Destination‘s influence on the genre can be seen in the other films that flourished during the 2000s. Saw led the torture porn subgenre and, on the surface, seems to follow the standards set in the ’80s and ’90s. The franchise seems to have an iconic figure in Jigsaw, who uses a pig mask, a toy puppet, and follows a set of rules. However, Jigsaw operates as a misnomer and distraction from the main character John Kramer, a more complex character than Michael, Jason, or Freddy.
Moreover, the primary appeal of the Saw movies (outside of their wild ongoing narrative) are their approach to kills. The traps set by Kramer and his acolytes have much in common with the Rube Goldberg sequences designed by Death in Final Destination – intricate systems to induce pain and suffering.
To be sure, Final Destination wasn’t the only influential horror film of the period. The Sixth Sense led the way for respectable scary movies, which eventually found their fullest expression in today’s A24 and elevated horror entries. Gore Verbinski’s remake of The Ring (2002) opened the door (for better or worse) to movies such as The Grudge (2004). The Blair Witch Project showed how to create maximum scares on a minimum budget, making room for the Paranormal Activity franchise and other found footage movies.
