‘Final Destination’ Was The Quintessential Horror Franchise For Millennials

Growing up in the shadow of terrorism sparks different memories for every member of Generation Y. But on the morning of September 11, most had just stepped off the school bus and were immediately rushed into their homerooms, where teachers did their best to contain sheer panic, frantically passing out busy work. This was before the populace was armed with cell phones — heck, this was before classrooms were required to have a landline — and we were more or less cut off from all information, forced to listen in on hushed whispers and gasping tears from the adults around us, frightening those of us in the tri-state area whose commuter parents had just clocked in for a day of work in Manhattan.

Every generation has their moment of truth: a day of infamy that either makes or breaks a collective age group of people. In the case of Gen-Y, it’s perhaps too early to determine whether we’ve “made it” or slipped through the cracks of globalization after growing up in a relentlessly paranoid state of mind — fed by never-ending wars in the Middle East and the relentless inundation of overstimulating technology amidst the most populated time in human history. Yet the frustration, the privilege, and the misguided angst are bundled and mislabeled as a sense of entitlement, though the truth of the matter is we had our colloquial childhood ripped out from under us. Perhaps entitlement, confusion, and pessimism mask the sheer fear of the inevitable — death — which we watched happen, almost surreally, on repeat via CNN nearly fifteen years ago. Death became a tangible reality for an age group that was still in braces and numbed many of us to the idea of a god or any sort of savior. The thought of your fate resting in another’s hands can sometimes be scarier than the thought of dying in itself, which is why the Final Destination franchise came at an odd, arguably perfect time in our culture and gave a generation of young moviegoers a way to openly discuss their angst of fatalism and predestination through a genre that knows it can’t take itself too seriously.

If you haven’t seen the teen horror staple since its release fifteen years ago, here’s a refresher: Just before boarding Flight 180 for a high school trip to Paris, Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) has a premonition that the plane will explode and kill everyone on board. Alex, of course, freaks out, starts a fight, and ultimately gets him and his buddies kicked off. Shortly after, however, they watch Alex’s prediction come true when the plane explodes and leaves no survivors, sealing their fate as a group: Death cannot be cheated and it’s coming for them, one by one.

Like any teen horror franchise, Final Destination had its glory moments (with the inimitable Final Destination 3) and its epic fails (most notably with the fourth installment, The Final Destination). Yet, it was the overarching tone that captures Gen-Y, one that actively chooses to live in the moment, rather perfectly; beginning with sinister doom and gloom and ultimately ending with a tongue-in-cheek nod to itself. Though the first film was released prior to 9/11, creators James Wong and Jeffrey Reddick seemed to have a premonition of their own as to what young America wanted from the horror genre at the turn of the century: chainsaw killers and masked monsters were simply not going to cut it for a group of people who had watched actual horror become part of the nightly news roundup. No, we needed something smart, but also light enough to chuckle at when called for, and Final Destination‘s use of the presence of Death rather than a stereotypical villain hit the nail on the head (or into the head à la FD3).

But the series wasn’t the only teen-centered film to take a dark, yet playful, look at the concept of fate. Like Final Destination, Richard Kelly’s 2001 supernatural drama Donnie Darko featured not just a predestined plane crash but also presented the idea of the manipulated living: that those living around a “receiver” (in this case, Donnie, played by Jake Gyllenhaal), have unknowingly rested their fate in the hands of said receiver. This explains why in the end — spoiler alert — Donnie was able to control the engine that would have originally been attached to the plane his mother and sister boarded in a twist of manipulated, but certain, fate.

That Death was unavoidable — and that, yes, people were taken before their time was up — directly contradicted what many young Gen-Y members were taught in religion classes: none of this felt like anyone’s “will” except Death’s. This isn’t to say all millennials aren’t religious in the traditional sense of the word — as many are — but it’s worth arguing that films like Donnie Darko and Final Destination sparked conversation about death independently from murder — the contrary being oh-so-familiar in horror franchises. Fatalism, premonitions, and predestination were rarely talked about among tweens and teens prior to Wong’s film, and by having these notions presented to us, we were able to explore our own sense of fate amidst growing up in a time where control of one’s destiny felt so last century.

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Photos: Everett Collection