The first edition in 2000 started with a plane crash, FD2 in 2003 shows a horrible highway accident, FD3 in 2006 is set in a roller coaster and FD4 in 2009 in a race track where multiple cars crash. FD5 is now set on a long bridge that collapses while being repaired. The one who sees a vision of the catastrophe is Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) who’s on the way to a work retreat inside a bus with his officemates. When the disaster actually happens, Sam has managed to save himself along with some other survivors who all give uninspired acting.
This fifth edition of the horror franchise has a new writer, Eric Heisserer, and a new director, Steven Quale, and the challenge is for them to come up with more inventive death sequences than the previous ones, preferably delivered with a twist of macabre humor that will make viewers giggle nervously then shock them when their pre-ordained departure from this world finally occurs.
The most amusing one is the way an obnoxious character, for whom the viewer has no sympathy at all, is disposed off on a massage table with the help of acupuncture needles, loose screws (something that happens very often in FD films), a vibrating cellphone, some cleaning fluid, a lighted candle and statue of Buddha. But the other death sequences are less imaginative and less wittier, lacking in establishing the right atmosphere and drama, including the one where a gymnast lands badly and becomes a twisted heap of flesh and bones. We didn’t see this on 3-D so we don’t know if that version is more satisfying. Tony Todd pops up as a coroner who’s the special emissary of death, but he doesn’t really any contribute anything substantial to the movie. There is a twist, though, the doomed survivors thought they can further cheat death by killing another person as substitute.
Do you think they can really cheat death? Ho-hum... Not even a new writer and director cannot give anything fresh to this worn out material. Maybe it’s about time the franchise and the grim reaper both retire.