Editorials
Bloody Gets Face-to-Face With Death on the Set of ‘Final Destination 5’!
Set for a quickly-approaching release date of August 12, New Line’s Final Destination 5 3D continues the long-running franchise with a whole new cast of characters to be sliced, diced and generally mangled by that most merciless and relentless of horror-movie killers: Death itself.
Last November B-D was invited to visit the Vancouver set of the latest sequel to get a behind-the-scenes look at the production process, during which I was given the opportunity to witness the filming of one particularly bad-ass action sequence, chat it up with several members of the cast and crew – including first-time franchise director and James Cameron protégé Steven Quale – and marvel at the uncanny smoothness of ageless producer Craig Perry’s baby-soft skin. See inside for the full report.
“One of the things we’ve always tried to do is try to find the right tone between what is pretty morbid and make it entertaining, so one of the reasons we hired…actors who have comedic capabilities is to know that we can tap into that if we want to. There are some sequences that are pretty brutal, pretty intense, and if you don’t have at least a little bit of humor it becomes almost overwhelming and a bit too unrelenting. There’s one scene in particular that if we didn’t have that as a valve, we’d have to cut it down…it was too much.” -Producer Craig Perry
Helped along by 3-D surcharges, 2009’s The Final Destination – the fourth installment in the long-running supernatural horror franchise – topped all other entries in the series when it raked in more than $180 million worldwide. Interestingly, it was also the worst reviewed of the films, coming in at a mere 29% average on Rotten Tomatoes and plagued by what most saw as a slump in quality compared with the previous efforts. New Line, of course, laughed all the way to the bank.
And here we are with yet another sequel on the way, again in 3-D but with renewed promises from the creative team that they learned from their mistakes on the previous entry and are poised to deliver something much better this time around. The first corrective they put into place was a change in directors, ditching David R. Ellis (who also helmed the second film) for James Cameron protégé Steven Quale, who previously had only two major directing credits under his belt: the 2002 made-for-TV disaster movie Superfire, and the IMAX underwater documentary Aliens of the Deep, a 3-D effort that he co-directed with Cameron. In addition, a return to the more character-centric, suspense-oriented dynamics of the first film have been trumpeted as an effort to bring the franchise back to its roots.
To make their case, last November the studio flew a coterie of entertainment journalists – including yours truly – up to a rainy and bone-chillingly cold Vancouver to visit the set, which at the time was located on a massive soundstage containing a giant partial reconstruction of Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge (officially the First Narrows Bridge), which serves as the location of this entry’s main disaster set piece.
This reconstruction, which looked stunningly true-to-life despite being set against a gigantic green-screen, was truly a sight to behold: set perhaps two stories off the ground, the bridge – set atop a massive hydraulic gimbal (the same one used for the airplane sequence in the first film, incidentally) was like a living, breathing metal-and-cement behemoth as it exploded into motion at Quale’s direction, the 3-D cameras – set on enormous cranes floating above the mayhem – capturing all the action as actors and stuntmen tumbled about, dodging barrels and cars and widening cracks as the bridge began to buckle and split apart at the seams, threatening to crumble to a pile of steaming debris before our very eyes. This, I thought to myself as I took in all the controlled havoc, is what shooting a ‘Final Destination’ movie is all about.
Despite what was obviously a busy day for him (to say the least), prior to the filming of this precisely-calculated action sequence Quale stopped by to give us a little context to all the carnage.
“What we’re setting up right now is a hydraulic ram system to have a car…smash into this tar kettle,” he told us. “Basically when you’re resurfacing a road, you have to put tar on it, incredibly hot tar that helps surface the cracks and so forth. The construction workers are working on that, the bridge collapses, and in that section the car rams into [the kettle], it happens to flip it over and [one of the characters who] is hanging on[to] the very edge [of the bridge] there…just happens to be right in the spot where this tar kettle hits, turns over and he’s going to get completely encased in steaming hot tar. So it’s a nasty way to die.”
“A nasty way to die” is a phrase that accurately sums up the core of the franchise’s continuing appeal, for in the Final Destination movies the threat, put into motion by an intangible orchestrator of chaos from a plane of existence beyond our own, can come from pretty much anywhere – giving the filmmakers an endless variety of inventive and exceedingly gruesome death scenarios to choose from.
Of course then the question becomes: why not just cut together a series of grisly Rube Goldberg-esque kills and release a half-hour gore reel rather than a 90-minute feature? Do these things really need to be actual movies anymore? The answer is yes, for obvious reasons; there’s money to made here, and most people aren’t going to pay to sit in a theater for half an hour and watch a series of blood-soaked kills (or will they?).
And yet one of the main complaints with the last film was that it essentially did function as a plot-deficient kill montage, as if the filmmakers couldn’t even be bothered to craft a compelling story or a relatable set of characters to snuff out. Luckily, nearly every member of the cast and crew we spoke with on set seemed both cognizant of that fact and dedicated to doing things differently this time around.
“I think that this particular movie is particularly interesting because they are trying to sort of reboot [the franchise], you know, get away maybe a little bit from some of the aspects of the later films and get back to the core of what makes ‘Final Destination’ a great story,” said actress Emma Bell (“Molly”), starring as the lead heroine in this installment who gets caught on the collapsing bridge along with the rest of her co-workers while traveling for a corporate retreat. “Not just action wise but storyline wise. So there’s a number of…really interesting character developments and relationships [in the film].”
Perched beside Bell was dreamboat actor Nicholas D’Agosto (“Sam”), whose character is involved in an office romance with Molly at the paper-manufacturing company where they both work. He also functions as the character – there being one in every Final Destination movie – who experiences a premonition of the oncoming disaster and later comes to realize that there’s no cheating your destiny. Fulfilling the role of foreboding messenger once again is franchise regular Tony Todd, absent from the last film but back again in a heightened role for the fifth installment.
“Tony himself says that this is the most fun he’s had shooting a film…because it helped him explore his character in a way that he’d never gotten to explore it before,” said D’Agosto of the genre favorite, who unfortunately was not on set when we visited. “Working with him was absolutely awesome, and he is just as terrifying as you want him to be when you’re standing opposite him in [a] scene.”
So will we finally learn the secret behind Todd’s mysterious William Bludworth character by the time the final credits role on outing #5? Don’t hold your breath.
“People have debated endlessly on websites such as your own whether Tony Todd is the personification of death,” said verbose, long-standing FD series producer Craig Perry (who has clearly been spending the boatloads of money he’s made from both this and the American Pie franchise on a magical de-aging serum that’s given him the complexion of a fresh-faced teen model) when he stopped by to speak with us earlier in the day. “[But] I’m not answering that! I will not answer that…cause I like the fact that there’s a debate back and forth as to what he does represent. I like the fact that we are having Tony Todd back for this one because I think it helps bring the franchise sort of full circle. We are really sort of coming back together. I also look at this as…it’s not about a reboot, but let’s look at the same premise from a slightly different perspective.”
Keeping the franchise fresh after over a decade certainly isn’t an easy task, but of course why fuck with a winning formula? Given the series’ impressive decade-long track record at the box-office (particularly when it comes to the international market), it’s not as if they’re going to risk reinventing the wheel here. When all is said and done (plot, yada yada, characterization, yada yada) the bread and butter of the franchise will always be the kills, which is why the special effects guys working behind the scenes are an integral component of the success or failure of the final product.
“Throughout the process [of production], we’ve gotten consistently gorier,” said special makeup effects designer Toby Lindala, who also worked on the third installment, speaking to us later in the day from his nearby base of operations. “We must be sitting around 15-20 gallons of blood right now, just to give you a scale, and we’ll probably make it past 30 by the time we’re done. We’re getting into a lot of the wetter stuff over this past week.”
As for the 3-D aspect, Lindala indicated that Quale’s previous experience with the cameras (in addition to co-helming Aliens of the Deep, he also served as second-unit director on Avatar) was making all the difference in allowing them to get the most bang for the buck out of the technology.
“Even with the 3D, the resolution that we’re seeing here is crazy,” he said. “It’s really, really neat. And it’s been a real pleasure working with Steve, because he’s getting these wonderful shots. It looks like we’re just going to be splattering the first ten rows of the theatre. …We’ve been really milking the 3D angle, not in a cheesy way, but really just using that effect, designing things in ways to really get the maximum effect out of that.”
But based on the grosses from several recent 3D films – particularly in the ratio of audience members opting for the non-3D version in theaters – the technology is something that appears to be waning in the eyes of the movie-going public. And yet given his previous experience working with the cameras, Quale at the very least knows how to exploit 3D more effectively than most directors – not to mention the fact that by being closely associated with James “King of the World” Cameron, he’s also afforded access to the very best visual effects craftsmen in the business.
“What’s great about this film is that we’ve been able to elevate the series by having the resources,” said Quale. “We have the same visual FX company that did some of the visual FX on ‘Avatar’, Prime Focus. They’re doing the whole bridge sequence, so we have amazingly talented individuals that will get first-rate stereo 3D visual FX that will integrate seamlessly with the live action. It’s fun to be in charge and be able to get your vision across and make it happen.”
So does the director have a favorite among the last four films?
“I like the original just because it was the original and it set up the franchise,” said Quale. “I like the humor of #2, and I thought #3 had some interesting elements with some of the characters, but I think overall, this film is more of a cross between some of the humor in 2, but more of the character-driven stuff that was in the original one where you cared about the characters and what their plight was and what they’re doing. We really focused a lot of energy on the characters, because to me, I’m saying that this is not just about death, it’s not just about horror. This is following an interesting group of people, what they’re doing, what their life’s ambition is, what their struggles are, and how they relate and deal with this force that is thrust upon them.”
To accomplish his goal of melding the sensibilities or parts 1 and 2 specifically, Quale made sure to cast both actors with dramatic gravitas (Bell, Todd, T.V. veteran Courtney B. Vance) as well as those with the comedic chops to bring out the kind of “gallows humor” that worked so well in the second film. In the latter category he managed to score both Apatow veteran David Koechner (Anchorman, Talladega Nights) and up-and-comer P.J. Byrne (Horrible Bosses, Dinner for Schmucks) to bring the funny.
“One of the things we’ve always tried to do is try to find the right tone between what is pretty morbid and make it entertaining, so one of the reasons we hired some actors who have comedic capabilities is to know that we can tap into that if we want to,” said Perry. “There are some sequences that are pretty brutal, pretty intense, and if you don’t have at least a little bit of humor it becomes almost overwhelming and a bit too unrelenting. There’s one scene in particular that if we didn’t have that as a valve, we’d have to cut it down…it was too much.”
Okay, so to sum up we’ve got a promising director with the James Cameron seal of approval, an overall cast that’s a notch or two above the caliber of the previous Final Destination entries, and the promise of some truly nasty and creative kills (as evidenced by the already-released trailer). Sounds like a recipe for success, right? Sure. But at the end of the day, just having all the right ingredients in your cupboard doesn’t necessarily guarantee a tasty meal – after all, it’s how those ingredients are put together that matters.
But let’s not kid ourselves; this movie is gonna make money. In other words, you can expect Final Destination 6 to hit theaters sometime in 2013. Now if I can just get my hands on some of that magical youth elixir Craig Perry’s been drinking…
On July 13th, 2026, the world lost one of its brightest stars.
Beloved New Zealand actor Sam Neill passed away from pneumonia after a long battle with stage 3 lymphoma. The multifaceted movie star will be remembered by mainstream audiences for his iconic role as Dr. Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece Jurassic Park, as well as powerful turns in A Cry in the Dark (1988), The Piano (1993), and Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), and prestige TV series The Tudors and Peaky Blinders. But horror fans know him as one of the genre’s most surprising Scream Kings.
Through a handful of memorable starring roles, Neill spent the 80s and 90s bringing life to a wide variety of characters and finding humanity in the most unusual leading roles, regardless of how heroic or villainous.
The Final Conflict (1981)
After a decade on the stage and screen in New Zealand and Australia, Neill made his international debut as Damien Thorn in Graham Baker’s The Final Conflict, the third installment of The Omen franchise. Now a 36-year-old businessman, Damien is fully aware of his devilish parentage and hell-bent on world domination. But rather than a hooved and horned monstrosity, Neill’s Antichrist is a suave businessman who leads his followers in an expensive suit and seeks to bring about the apocalypse through deceptive altruism rather than grand proclamation.
Despite his austere demeanor, the man’s true evil knows no bounds. When a prophecy foretells the second coming of Christ, known in the film as “the Nazarene,” Damien commands his followers to commit widespread infanticide, murdering all baby boys born on a specific date. He seduces a high-profile reporter while transforming her teenage son into a bloodthirsty disciple, then uses the child as a human shield. This tricky role allows Neill to demonstrate his trademark versatility, easily charming the outside world while dropping his suave mask of normalcy behind closed doors. Though certain aspects of The Final Conflict are admittedly dated, Neill’s performance feels eerily prescient. He’s mastered the heinous portrayal of a politician willing to sell his soul for power that will ultimately bring about the end of the world.
Possession (1981)
Though Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession is often remembered for Isabelle Adjani’s stunning depiction of a woman on the edge, Neill delivers an equally unhinged performance as Mark, a spy returning home from a lengthy assignment in divided Berlin. Upon discovering that his wife Anna (Adjani) wants a divorce, Mark desperately tries to hold his family together even at the expense of her sanity. Filmed the same year as The Final Conflict, Neill dives headfirst into this visceral role, managing to evoke sympathy for the distraught father who becomes ever more desperate to regain control. Inspired by his own divorce, Żuławski resists blaming either party for the separation, instead showing the chaos and heartache that comes in the wake of a family’s dissolution.
Once considered to replace Roger Moore as the next James Bond, Neill has fun with the international spy persona as Żuławski’s plot grows increasingly bizarre. But the skilled actor never lets us forget that Mark is a flawed human being struggling to keep his life from falling apart. A second character emerges in the film’s mesmerizing climax, allowing Neill to lean into full villainy with a glassy-eyed stare that chills to the bone. Now a cult classic, Adjani and Neill bounce off each other’s seething rage, creating one of the most effective cinematic duets in the history of horror.
Jurassic Park (1993)
When Steven Spielberg’s creature feature first hit theaters, Neill was by no means a household name and hardly a traditional leading man. Without the swashbuckling swagger of Harrison Ford, the mega-watt smile of Tom Cruise, or the chiselled jaw of Brad Pitt — all famous action stars of the era — Neill felt like an unconventional choice for this massive role. But he perfectly captures the essence of Grant, an aloof academic who prefers dig sites to fancy fundraisers and social events. Despite an aversion to children, the dinosaur expert finds himself tasked with saving the theme park’s youngest survivors who gradually break down his emotional walls. Grant’s transformation into a courageous caretaker is a landmark deconstruction of traditional gender norms wrapped in the guise of a rugged outdoorsman.
Neill proves to be the perfect action star, effortlessly navigating Spielberg’s stunning set pieces without losing the character’s relatable hook. But perhaps the film’s most touching moment is Neill’s childlike wonder at seeing a dinosaur for the first time. Stunned to speechlessness, he channels the audience’s wondrous joy when Grant first spies a real, live Brachiosaurus. But he seamlessly weaves this infectious awe into serious concerns about the creature’s existence, amplifying the story’s prophetic messaging. Jeff Goldblum may utter the film’s iconic warning, but the duality of Grant’s performance perfectly illustrates the scientific imperative, reminding us that just because we can doesn’t mean we should.
Neill would go on to lead Joe Johnston’s 2001 sequel Jurassic Park III, in which Grant is again tasked with saving a child. In 2022, he would appear in Colin Trevorrow’s legacy sequel Jurassic World Dominion, which merges the franchise’s two distinct eras while bringing the carnage onto mainland shores. Despite turning in strong performances, neither film is able to top the magic of Spielberg’s original or Neill’s captivating performance as the stoic leading man. But his nuanced depiction of Alan Grant inspired a generation of would-be paleontologists and quiet kids who could now see themselves as courageous academics capable of surprising strength.
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
After catapulting to worldwide fame, Neill returned to horror proper to lead John Carpenter’s mind-bending In the Mouth of Madness. We first meet John Trent (Neill) as he’s dragged, kicking and screaming, into a padded cell. An unknown stretch of time later, he recounts an unbelievable story while covered in protective crosses scrawled into his skin — and the cell’s walls — with black crayon. A private investigator, Trent has been tasked with locating Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), a world-famous yet elusive genre author whose work has been driving his ravenous readers to disturbing acts of random violence.
A love letter to fans of horror fiction, we delight in watching Trent explore literary easter eggs that lead him down jarring rabbit holes. A late-night road trip takes Trent and Linda Styles (Julie Carmen), an editor for Cane’s publishing house, to a tiny New England hamlet teeming with darkness. While investigating an ominous cathedral on the outskirts of town, Trent realizes that he’s somehow been transported into the author’s interdimensional story and become its unwitting protagonist.
Neill serves as a skeptical everyman and the audience’s conduit through this bizarre tale of literary monsters that find a way to burst through the page. An often overlooked Carpenter film, In the Mouth of Madness spirals into insanity, but Neill keeps us grounded throughout each outlandish twist. A shocking conclusion leaves us gaping at our screens and contemplating our own relationship with horror fiction. After all, does free will truly exist? Or, like Trent, are we merely pawns in someone else’s monstrous creation?
Event Horizon (1997)
One of the scariest movies ever set in space, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon builds upon the heroic image Neill established for himself in Jurassic Park. Dr. William Weir (Neill) is a physicist temporarily joining the crew of the Lewis and Clark to assist in their latest rescue mission. Seven years after vanishing without a trace, a spaceship called the Event Horizon has suddenly reappeared near Neptune’s orbit. As the creator of a top-secret gravity drive designed to facilitate faster-than-light travel, Dr. Weir has been sent to explore the ship and find out what happened to its missing crew.
Still haunted by his late wife’s suicide, Dr. Weir is a sympathetic figure, particularly in comparison to the harsh Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) who commands the crew of the Lewis and Clark. But Weir’s desperation to return to the infamous ship hides a sinister secret that leads his fellow astronauts to the threshold of hell. Neill’s talent for playing the everyman pays off in spades as the formerly sympathetic widower transforms into a disciple of this frightening dimension. Resembling a long-lost cenobite, Weir claws out his own eyes and prepares to drag the crew into a world consumed with sadistic pain.
Daybreakers (2009)
Neill returns to his Omen roots in Michael and Peter Spierig’s action-packed film as a secretly sinister businessman. But rather than the Antichrist, Charles Bromley (Neill) is a proud vampire convinced of the species’ superiority. With human blood in short supply, Bromley Marks Corp. is working on a synthetic substitute to prevent the human race from impending extinction. While hematologists perfect the formula, Bromley oversees disturbing fields of humans chained to massive machines that systematically harvest their blood.
Neill chills in this sinister role with vampiric yellow eyes, a pale complexion, and subtle fangs. But more upsetting is the fact that he honestly doesn’t believe he’s wrong. Once diagnosed with cancer, Bromley was delighted to find that vampirism would totally reverse his illness and grant him the gift of eternal life. He begged his daughter Alison (Isabel Lucas) to turn alongside him, but she has rejected her father’s controversial choice and is now hunted by his bloodthirsty goons. In a heartbreaking moment of clarity, Bromley brings his daughter to the brink of death, then turns away in disgust when she will not embrace his undead lifestyle.
Daybreakers is a surprisingly thrilling exploration of survival and sustainability. Similar to a plot Damien Thorn would hatch, Bromley’s ultimate plan is to placate the vampire population with synthetic blood while allowing the human population to replenish itself. With a larger stock, he plans to sell authentic humans at a premium, hunting these poor souls to season the meat. Bromley rejects a cure that would reverse the vampiric disease, choosing to enrich himself over saving the world. The strangely captivating villain’s end is a cathartic nightmare and fitting punishment for a wealthy man who places himself above everyone else.
In the Mouth of Madness
While the world may remember Neill for his signature role as a gruff but compassionate paleontologist going head to head with a raging T-Rex, horror fans may picture the versatile actor maniacally rocking back and forth in a filthy Berlin apartment, commanding a boardroom of corporate vampires, disappearing into the darkness of a haunted spaceship, sermonizing to satanists, or giggling over popcorn in a deserted movie theater. Or perhaps you have another favorite role in the beloved actor’s stellar career. But whether he was playing a hero or villain, Neill brought undeniable humanity to every role, redefining our idea of masculinity and the very nature of goodness vs. evil. By bringing such disparate characters to life, Neill challenged audiences with a variety of complex roles, asking us to examine the humanity of each character no matter how flawed or virtuous.
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