There’s something delightfully straight-forward about the “Final Destination” franchise, a series that knows what it is and doesn’t pretend to be anything else.
It also knows why you’re here: to see a group of witless young adults miraculously cheat death, only to have it catch up with them one by one in ever-more complex ways. The biggest surprise is that, five films in, the fran-chise is actually at its best, managing to work in macabre laughs and a clever twist that rewards eagle-eyed viewers. But what about those infa-mous death scenes? Some are more elaborate than others, but all are executed with tension. Let’s just say you’ll never watch a gymnastics competition the same way again.
