ART S
The Michigan Daily - Friday, March 17, 2000 - 9
Lacking solid story,
'Destination' hits dead end
By Erin Podoisky
Daily Arts Writer
You have to hand it to James
Wong and Glen Morgan: four years
of logging time on "The X-Files"
taught them nothing if not that set-
up is everything,
icing on the alien.
.. Final
Destination
Grade: C
At Showcase
and State
........0
and pay-off the
Though they left
the paranoia-
driven show in
its heydey a
few years back,
they took with
them a sense of
a grand design
and conspiracy
that reared its
head in subse-
quent televi-
sion series they
had a hand in,
including "Mil-
lennium," and
now in their
from the Cigarette Smoking Man,
whatever) and has a premonition of
the plane exploding in a magnifi-
cent mid-air fireball. When he
awakes from his nightmare, he flips
out and is bodily removed from the
plane. The airline officials won't let
him or the several students and
teachers who hustled him off the jet
back on. He sits outside the gate in
one of those uncomfortable airport
chairs, staring at the great beast
gracefully arc into the night sky
while trying to ignore the burning,
blaming eyes of his disgruntled
peers.
He sits, that is, until his vision
becomes a reality. The plane deto-
nates, his class is killed and he and
Tod (Chad Donella), Clear (Ali
Larter), Terry (Amanda Detmer),
Carter (Kerr Smith), Billy (Seann
William Scott) and Ms. Lewton
(Kristen Cloke) are left to try to
survive, well, surviving. It's not
easy being Alex in those subsequent
weeks, the pressure of survival
hanging over him, the feeling that
all is not quite right.
It gets even tougher when the sur-
vivors start dying under the
strangest of circumstances, one at a
time. Not only does Alex desperate-
ly need to find out how and why
these things are happening, he's
under suspicion (and eventually on
the run) from the FBI. Clear offers
him sanctuary and understanding,
but only to a point. The remaining
don't tell, I guess. Thankfully, the
movie doesn't go on forever and
force us to see every character die.
Then again, that's what sequels
are for. Maybe it wasn't such a good
idea to leave some of the kids alive
and kicking after all.
There are a lot of likable ele-
ments to "Final Destination," chief
among them its excellent opening
and eye-catching premise. But it
drops the ball as the kids start
dying, sinking into typical "who's
next?" horror genre requirements.
It's one thing to do this in a movie
like "Scream," where it's intended
as self-referential parody. It's quite
another to do it in earnest. Maybe
twenty years ago "Final Destina-
tion" would have been scary. It's our
loss that we know too much now,
expect the twists right where they're
written. The elaborate deaths
planned out for each character seem
little more than a one-upmanship
contest a couple of writers decided
to have when bored. While some of
the schemes are (intentionally) orig-
inal, their sense of boredom trans-
fers to us and it ain't pretty. The
cast doesn't help, either, with nary a
better-than-mediocre performance
to be found among them.
"Final Destination" would have
been better served if it had been
Agents Mulder and Scully who
investigate first the plane crash,
then the mystery surrounding the
subsequent survivors' deaths. It's
practically screaming for a little bit
of Mulder's wry commentary or
Scully's patented skepticism. But
why stop there? "Final Destination"
sounds like a sweeps episode of
"The X-Files" before you set foot in
the theater; when you walk out, it
still does, but it also reeks of the
most unsuccessful aspects of the
great television series - shock
value in place of story developient,
a convenient conspiracy theorythat
isn't all that great once it becomes
non-theoretical and the distinct lack
of Moose and Squirrel. The point of
speculating about what could have
been is this: Great after-school spe-
cial. Lousy flick.
DAILYARTS
HAS FREE
'FINAL
DESTINATION'
POSTERS FOR
YOU. STOP IN,
THE ARTS
OFFICE TODAY.
SUPPLIES ARE
LIMITED.
first big-screen effort, "Final Desti-
nation."
"Final Destination" starts off with
a killer (no pun intended) XF-esque
set-up, one that acts as an apolo-
getic preamble for the predictable
(if not at least gorily entertaining)
paths that the film later traverses.
Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) is
about to embark on a class trip to
Paris - is in fact seated on the
plane just before take-off -- when
he taps into something (subcon-
scious, a psychic field, a message
Courtesy of New Lne Cinema
A man with a vision, Devon Sawa stars In New line Cinema's "Final Destination."
students and Ms. Lewton offer even
less, fearing what they believe are
his psychic powers and refusing to
follow his advice about their
impending deaths.
And Alex? He makes the brilliant
deduction that because they cheated
death by not getting on the ill-fated
plane, the grim reaper is hot on
their collective tail to take what he
thinks is rightfully his. He also
decides that he should save his
peers yet again, thus interrupting
the cycle of death. Of course, he
never considers that when death
"skips" someone and goes to the
next person in his little circle, even-
tually ol' grimmy is going to make
his way back to the people who
were temporarily saved. Don't ask,
-~~~~~~9~~~ Are you waiting too long
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Congratulations
The following students will be among those recognized during the Honors Convocation program on Sunday, March 19, 2000. These
individuals have demonstrated the highest level of undergraduate academic success by achieving seven or more consecutive terms of
all A's and earning the designation of Angell Scholar. The University of Michigan congratulates these students on their superior
scholastic achievement and wishes them continued success.
Seven Term Angell Scholars
Aaron Dominic Aguirre
Andrew James Aguirre
Mary Ahwal
Melike Bayram
Theodore Alexander Betley
Lindsay Rose Boynton
Oren Cahlon
Brian Christopher Callaghan
Meredith Sue Chan*.
Jennifer M. Childs.
Danielle Marie Cross
Donald Brett Desander
Shannon Marie Farkas
Andrew Michael Floyd*
Ronald Frazier*
College of Engineering
College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
- Inteflex
College of Engineering and Computer
Science-
U-M Dearborn
College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
* College of Engineering
College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
- Inteflex
College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
* College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
College of Engineering
School of Management
U-M Flint
School of Education'
Li Liu*
Amy Elizabeth Mc Kenna
Jason Yen Sen Miao
Caroline Ruth Morgan
Jennifer Danielle Munfakh
Timothy Donald Mygatt*
Darren Neubauer
Katie Marie Phillips*
Scott Alan Shaw*
Virginia Skiba*
Sarah Lynn Snyder
Shelly Lyn Solem*
Andrea Dawn Stutzman
Krian Upatkoon
School of Management
U-M Dearborn
School of Music
College of Engineering
College of Literature, Science, and the
College of Engineering
College of Literature, Science, and the
College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters
U-M Dearborn
College of Literature, Science, and the
College of Engineering
College of Literature, Science, and the
School of Business Administration
Division of Kinesiology
School of Nursing
College of Engineering
Arts
Arts
Arts
Arts
Eight Term Angell Scholars
College of Engineering
College of Literature, Science,
College of Literature, Science,
College of Engineering and Co
Science
U-M Dearborn
and the Arts
and the Arts
)mputer
Brian Eric Beal*
Leonard Dennis Cassady*
Jennifer L. Cohen
Aaron Edward Leanhardt*
Andlrei Toma Nemoianu*
College of Engineering
College of Engineering
College of Arts and Sciences
U-M Flint
College of Engineering
College of Literature. Science. and
the Arts
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