Editorials
‘Final Destination’ Expertly Blended Supernatural Thrills and Slasher Brutality [You Aughta Know]
Hello, true believers, and welcome to You Aughta Know, a column dedicated to the decade that is now two full decades behind us. That’s right, it’s time to take a look back at one of the most overlooked decades of horror. Follow along as I do my best to chronologically explore the horror titles that made up the 2000s.
It was the first Saint Patrick’s Day of a whole new millennium and while many were certainly out partaking in a night (or two or three) of inebriation, Destiny’s Child was soulfully suggesting that their honey was cheating on them and a slew of titles lost to the tides of time were at the top of the charts; I mean, does anyone remember Bruiser on television or Tough Cookie as their go-to read? Yet in theaters, a film that would usher in a wildly successful franchise was being introduced. Taking bits and pieces of the successful new age slasher formula created by Scream, a tale of death and dread that was equal parts teen scream and X-Files was coming our way. That’s right, we were headed towards our Final Destination.
Originally titled Flight 180 and written with a much shorter script, Final Destination was the brainchild of Jeffrey Reddick, once written in a more condensed format and conceived as a possible episode of The X-Files. Having read a story about a woman who cancelled a flight after her mother had a gut feeling to not board, and the subsequent flight going down, the idea of skipping death was tapped into and expanded upon. Reddick had an existing relationship with New Line Cinema, having previously pitched them a prequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street that they liked, and he was convinced to flesh out the idea and try and sell New Line on it as a full length film. Obviously, it worked.
New Line loved the idea, tapping into the very popular teen-based format of the time as well as riding along with some of the standard blueprints of a slasher film, but also injecting it with a large amount of dread. Reddick was brought in to create a full length draft of the screenplay before writing team Glen Morgan and James Wong were also attached, with Wong tapped to direct. It would end up becoming quite a power team behind the scenes, with Reddick going on to write in the genre for years, and Wong and Morgan both working on a series of other horror features, including Black Xmas, Willard and even the third entry of the Final Destination series.
Now we all know the story, right? Alex, played by teen heart throb Devon Sawa straight out of Idle Hands, has a premonition that the plane their high school class is on to France is going to explode and after an altercation, seven passengers are removed and thus survive the explosion. Now, Alex is slowly realizing that they were meant to die and Death isn’t keen on glancing over that fact, now hunting the survivors down and killing them in various freak accidents.
Now the Final Destination series is well known and beloved in the community but as far as franchises go, it’s akin to Saw; although many are fun and even good films, the pressure to create more intense, dynamic and large-scale set pieces was on and sometimes, among those moving pieces, the charm was lost. Final Destination stands alone in its franchise (although the fifth would become a bit more rooted) because it is the most tethered to reality. Exploiting the common fear of flying and creating an excellent death dream sequence, our movie’s most extravagant scene is still something that is a commonplace fear among a massive amount of people. Where our sequel would arguably set up the most effective premonition scene, entries after would be just as big, if not bigger, but became less and less realistic, losing themselves in the scale of things instead of that common bond of fear amongst the multitudes of its viewers.
Final Destination really did everything exactly right for the time. They brought in a cast of attractive and talented up and coming teens to play the central characters. Sawa was a household name by this point, whereas Ali Larter, who plays Clear, had just been pushed into the teen eye because of Varsity Blues. Kerr Smith was in the middle of Dawson’s Creek and Sean William Scott was coming out of the massively successful American Pie. For some added horror credibility, they cast Candyman vet Tony Todd to play, get ready for this spectacularly badass and comic book-ish name, William Bludworth; a mortician who essentially represents the human manifestation of Death. And they leaned heavily into the idea of Rube Goldberg machines to create clever death machinations.
Now! Get ready! Here is why this movie is so damn clever, so smart, so freaking sincere with its body count: they created death from normalcy. The things you surround yourself with on a daily basis became your murderer in the world of Final Destination. Like those random stories you read where someone was killed by all the right dominoes falling into place.
How god damn brilliant is that? It’s so unsettling, so dreadful, so sly. Production designer John Willet deserves so much credit for the amount of unease the film creates, and it is because of his very basic skewering of the norm that the movie grabs onto your heart and holds on the whole way through. Washed out colors, nothing ever being completely squarely in scene, forced perspective both vertically and horizontally. These tricks were used to create that tension in us without blatantly calling for it. It’s genius.
Playing it out like a slasher also does wonders for the film. We feel like we’re watching that same game of cat and mouse but instead of a masked assailant, we have a primal force of the universe at work here, that somehow feels both completely ethereal and nearly tangible. As the scenes set up, we become precog detectives, turning the gears in our head to spot the clues and discover what schematic Death has laid out before our heroes meet their untimely demise. Reddick, Wong and Morgan all-too-cleverly had every single audience member wondering: would I catch the signs? Would we hear the creepy song, see the warnings, catch the clues? Suddenly we aren’t trying to figure out who the killer is because we already know it’s everyone’s ultimate assailant: Death. Now we’re just trying to figure out the “how” of it all.
Final Destination still holds up incredibly well. It blends supernatural horror and slasher horror in a way that hadn’t been done since A Nightmare on Elm Street and has scarcely been done since. Producing four sequels (and with a fifth reportedly on the way), the initial installment still stands true as a iconic staple in the horror halls of fame.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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