Editorials
Death’s Sadistic Design: ‘Final Destination’ Turns 20!
“Final Destination will no doubt be a hit and inspire the obligatory sequels. Like the original Scream, this movie is too good to be the end of the road. I have visions of my own,” famed critic Roger Ebert declared in his review of the 2000 film that birthed a franchise. He was one of the few critics to give a positive review at the time, but his declaration proved accurate. Released in theaters twenty years ago, on March 17, 2000, Final Destination became a sleeper hit that earned a substantial international gross and inspired four sequels with a reboot on the way. Offering a unique slant on the slasher, Final Destination explored the concepts of death and fate in earnest while maximizing dread.
Conceived by Jeffrey Reddick as an episode for The X-Files, he later turned the idea into a feature-length script for New Line Cinema. The X-Files series writers Glen Morgan and James Wong, who also directed, took additional passes at the screenplay. All were in agreement to avoid approaching this as a standard slasher; no masked maniac or monster is hunting the teens in this story, just Death itself. In both life and horror, not much is more dread-inducing than the inescapable realities of dying.
The plot centers around Alex Browning (Devon Sawa), an unassuming teen set to travel on a class trip to Paris. He’s established as superstitious. He reads a series of strange coincidences as ill omens that leave him with a foreboding feeling. It culminates in the plane exploding shortly after take-off. Alex sees many of the passengers dying in excruciating detail, ending in his own death as flames engulf him. It turns out, though, that it’s a horrific vision that sends him into a full-blown panic that results in him and a handful of passengers getting ejected from the plane. Emotions are still at peak intensity at the gate when the plane really does explode, sending the survivors reeling from their intimate brush with Death.
They’re still sorting through their complicated feelings about the situation when Death comes back to collect, killing the passengers off one-by-one.
After the elaborate inciting plane explosion, the narrative slows down to show each character processing in different ways. Jock Carter Horton (Kerr Smith) channels the lack of control he feels over his life as wrathful aggression toward Alex, a physical representation of that helplessness. Teacher and chaperone Valerie Lewton (Kristen Cloke) recoils in terror as if Alex’s premonition is a supernatural contagion. His best friend Tod (Chad E. Donella) keeps his distance as his family holds Alex responsible over the death of the elder sibling that died on the plane. Then there are survivors like Billy (Sean William Scott), Terry (Amanda Detmer), and Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), who all represent different facets of survivors with a new lease on life, thankful for the chance to keep living.
Being that this was the first installment in a franchise, Final Destination hadn’t yet established the elaborate deaths for which it earned its reputation. At least not fully. The first to be reclaimed by Death, Tod, chokes to death in his bathtub after slipping. Water leaks out from under the toilet, following Tod’s movement, making it clear where this is headed. The second death is a jump scare; poor Terry steps out into the street and is immediately hit by a bus that seemingly comes out of nowhere. Once it’s become clear that Death is on the hunt in the precise order the victims were initially meant to die, it’s Val Lewton’s death that irrevocably changes everything. Specifically, it introduces the masterful suspense and intricate chain-of-event kills. A shard of her computer monitor slices open her throat, she’s impaled by a kitchen knife, and her house explodes, and Wong stretches the moment out with powerful coiling tension. No other death in the film reaches the same level of complexity, though Death certainly tries in the climax.
It’s the idea that death can come from anywhere and that it can happen at any time that offers up the most significant source of intensity here. As Tony Todd‘s mortician William Bloodsworth chillingly explains to the protagonists, “It’s all part of Death’s sadistic design.” Emphasis on sadistic. Even though Death is an unseen force, a fundamental part of life, there’s a feeling of gleeful sadism to the way it claims those that dared to escape it. The film takes special care to note a crying baby in first class as Alex initially boards the plane, adding extra devastating heft to the explosion, for example. It adds a lofty existential core to the slasher formula. The characters are grappling with heady thoughts of fate and survivors’ guilt while being brutally dispatched one-by-one—a fantastic setup for a horror franchise.
As if that wasn’t enough, the film is filled with nods and winks to horror fans. The most overt of which is in the character naming. Valerie Lewton pays homage to the great horror filmmaker Val Lewton, and Terry’s death makes for a literal example of the “Lewton Bus” technique. Terry’s last name pays tribute to Lon Chaney, and Billy’s is a bow to Alfred Hitchcock. It’s not just the ominous foreshadowing and multifaceted deaths that became a staple of the film series, but the horror-centric naming, too.
Final Destination, and the series as a whole, never goes quite as deep with its meditations on fate and death, but that’s probably for the better. Death is cruel, on-screen and in life, so levity is welcome. Twenty years removed from release, Final Destination makes for an intriguing entry in horror that’s both a product of its time and yet timeless. It gave a solid foundation for sequels to expand and improve upon- ranked lists often feature Final Destination 2 or Final Destination 5 near or at the top.
On its own, though, Final Destination blends existential dread with humor, heart, and atmosphere to create a unique standout of the early aughts.
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.
You must be logged in to post a comment.