"We weren't supposed to survive that bridge collapse. And now, it's kill... or be killed."
—Peter
Final Destination 5 is the fifth film in the Final Destination series, directed by Steven Quale and released on August 12th, 2011. The film was directed by Steven Quale, and written by Eric Heisserer. It stars Nicholas D'Agosto, Emma Bell, Miles Fisher, Courtney B. Vance, and Tony Todd.
The next film in the series, Final Destination Bloodlines, came out fourteen years later in 2025.
Final Destination 5 contains examples of:
- The '90s: If you look carefully, this film contains no modern technology or pop culture, and takes place in 1999, which is significant given the twist.
- 20 Minutes into the Past: As revealed in the Twist Ending. The film turns out to be set in 1999/2000, making it a prequel to the original.
- Accidental Misnaming: Dennis thinks Sam's name is 'Stan', and even tells him off for trying correct him. And he doesn't seem to know who Isaac is at all.
- Accidental Murder: Nathan accidentally kills a Jerkass coworker and ends up getting his name taken off Death's list. Too bad the guy he killed was days away from death...
- Actor Allusion: David Koechner, who plays Dennis, also worked for a paper company in The Office.
- Always Save the Girl: Sam goes above and beyond to save Molly. He also dies in the vision because he goes back for Olivia and tries to help her after Molly.
- Ambiguous Situation: The "stealing life" situation at the end leaves a few questions open about how it works.
- If a person on Death's list kills someone and claims the victim's lifespan (Peter killing Agent Block), and then another person on the list kills the killer (Sam killing Peter to protect Molly), does the second killer (Sam) gain the first victim's lifespan (Agent Block's, whose lifespan was supposedly just stolen by his murderer Peter, then Sam now gains Peter's lifespan since he killed him) by proxy?
- Or do they just claim the original (shortened thanks to Death) lifespan of the first killer if they hadn't killed their victim?
- Does this rule even work if the victim themself was on Death's list?
- Assuming Sam did gain Agent Block's lifespan by killing Peter, since Sam dies not long afterward on Flight 180, was Agent Block fated to die on that day as well from something else (like how Nathan took Roy's lifespan by accidentally killing him, but dies on the same day as Flight 180 because Roy was going to die soon anyway)?
- Anachronism Stew: Averted. While the fact that the film is set in The '90s is not so glaringly obvious, the absence of high-end laptops and i-devices should clue in anyone who is not too caught up in the violence to notice such details.
- Artistic License – Biology: In the bridge collapse vision, Sam's torso is bisected by the falling sheet metal. A short length of intestine is seen hanging loose from his upper chest, even though the point of severance is roughly at diaphragm level, far above the intestines.
- Artistic License – Physics: In Sam's bridge-collapse vision, Isaac falls the length of the tipped-up bus after it falls off the edge with him in it, and is helplessly forced down across the windshield as it plummets into the water. While he certainly could've slid that far if it slanted steeply enough before falling, he would've experienced weightlessness and gone back towards the rear end of the bus once he and the bus were falling.
- Asian Hooker Stereotype: When company sleazeball Isaac enters an Asian massage parlor, it's blatantly obvious that he tries to invoke this in the douchebaggiest way possible by harassing the receptionist, complete with inquiring if there will be a "happy ending". When the girl makes it clear that the place isn't a brothel, he still doesn't take the hint. He gets duly rewarded when the girl sets him up for an exceptionally rough massage performed by her much older mother.
- Asshole Victim: In degrees, with four of the survivors:
- Played Straight with Dennis, an unpleasant fellow who suffers a relatively quick death, having never been made aware of Death's Design.
- Exaggerated with Isaac, the ridiculous and blatant sleaze of the group, who suffers a humiliating experience at the massage parlor (detailed in Asian Hooker Stereotype) before his Karmic Death, which is almost played for laughs.
- Downplayed with Olivia who, while unpleasant at times, is still likeable and has what is probably the most sympathetic and horrifying death in the film.
- Likewise Downplayed with the abrasive factory worker Roy, who is later revealed to have an abnormal blood vessel which would have killed him had Nathan not accidentally done it first.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Once again, Death manages to kill off the entire cast and secure a fresh roster of victims thanks to the explosion of Flight 180, which takes place at the end of this film. It's even Lampshaded by Bludworth:Bludworth: It's just that I've seen this before.
Nathan: Seen what?
Bludworth: A lucky few survive a disaster and then, one by one, Death comes for them all. - Batman Gambit: Death pulls a massive one by offing Sam and Molly in the Flight 180 crash, directly leading into the events of the first film.
- Big "NO!": Sam does this in his first vision, when he witnesses Candice get impaled by the mast of a sailing yacht. And another, near the end, when he witnesses Molly being bisected by Flight 180's horizontal stabilizer.
- Bilingual Bonus: The massage center that Isaac visits is named "Ming Yun", which is Mandarin Chinese for "destiny".
- Black Dude Dies First: Inverted; Nathan is the last to go.
- Blessed with Suck: Molly is exempt from Death's List due to the fact that she never died in the premonition. For this reason, Peter wants to murder her and take her life's worth for himself. Sam saves her, which causes her to also be put on Death's List.
- Blind Without 'Em: Olivia is extremely nearsighted and her Establishing Character Moment has her take her glasses from a hook-up while wishing she could forget about them entirely. During the premonition, she loses her glasses after bumping into a pedestrian and is ultimately unable to save herself because she is unable to judge the distance between her hand and Molly's.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The three female survivors: Molly is blonde, Olivia is brunette, and Candice is light-brown as a substitution for redhead.
- Bloody Hilarious:
- Isaac's death, which began with a comedic lead-up, ends with his head being crushed by the Buddha statue he head earlier disparaged.
- The promotional music video for Miles Fisher's New Romance, featuring most of the Final Destination 5 cast doing a parody of Saved By The Bell. Death guest stars as himself.
- Bookends: "Boy, it's a good thing we survived that whole bridge collapse and aftermath, now we can enjoy our flight to Paris. Hey, why are those students getting kicked off the plane...?"
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: As part of a Visual Pun; Given that the film was shown in 3D, the opening credits make a point of breaking the "glass" separating the film from the audience
. - Breaking Old Trends: While previous films had antagonistic human characters, this is the first film in the franchise where a human antagonist actively tries to kill the protagonists. The climax of this film, unlike the others (which all had characters trying to save someone) is a tense fight/chase scene where Sam and Molly have to kill Peter to save themselves.
- Call-Back: Prior to the bridge collapse kicking off, Sam cuts his thumb on the plastic back of the bus seat, and does so again once he returns to reality. He does it again when he's seated on Flight 180 and it's implied this is Death's doing, letting Sam know exactly what's going to happen next.
- The Cameo: Olympic gymnast Brittany Rogers cameos in the scene where Candice is practicing.
- Camera Abuse: Isaac's Your Head A-Splode death has lots of blood splattering onto the camera.
- Captain Obvious: Hilariously invoked after Sam figures out the pattern in Death's design:Peter: Who is it, Sam? Who's next?
Dennis: Who's what?
[A wrench launches towards Dennis at full speed and embeds itself, horizontally, into the top half of his skull.]
Sam: Dennis! It was Dennis!
Nathan: No shit! - Cheated Death, Died Anyway: This trope is the premise of the series, but this film earns some special mention: Molly was saved from the original disaster and from Peter's attempt to kill her to save himself, while Sam ostensibly wound up with the remaining lifespan of the recently slain Agent Block when he killed Peter, but both of them wound up on the doomed Flight 180; Molly was either put on the list by Sam, or she only had a few more weeks to live anyway; Sam only bought himself the same few weeks. On a similar note, Nathan learns that Roy, whom he accidentally killed and from whom he gained some extra time, had an abnormal blood vessel that would have killed him "any day now" minutes before debris from the destruction of Flight 180 crushes him to death.
- Chekhov's Gun: The giant rotisserie skewer that Sam narrowly avoids in the kitchen and is later seen putting back in a cabinet. It's how Sam kills Peter to prevent him from shooting Molly, impaling him from behind in a manner similar to Peter's bridge-vision demise.
- Collateral Damage: Nathan dies when the burning wheel of Flight 180 crashes through the roof of the bar he's in and crushes him.
- Continuity Nod:
- There is a photo of Roy standing next to Car #6.
- Olivia has a photo from Devil's Flight.
- Sam works as a short-order cook at Le Cáfe Miro 81's New York branch, with Sam's arc being kick-started after a chef offers him an apprenticeship at the Paris location.
- The truck carrying wood is a twofer - the second movie had one setting off the highway pileup, and the company name is Tagert Logging — the ending of the fourth film took place in Tagert Cinema.
- The opening credits feature various objects tied to the various creative deaths in the series, such as:
- A set of knives, alluding to Ms. Lewton's death.
- The tire which decapitated Nadia in the fourth film's premonition.
- The fire escape ladder which impaled Evan.
- Pieces of the Devil's Flight derailment.
- ...and so on.
- Cosmetically Advanced Prequel: Despite technically adhering to 2000 period details, the technology and fashion used in the film are still noticeably more streamlined and modern-looking than that of the original film (e.g. flat computer monitors, chrome cell phones, fitted suits). This is meta justified by the fact that this was intentionally invoked to pass the film off as being set in 2011 until The Reveal.
- Dangerously Loaded Cargo: During the bridge collapse premonition, both Sam and Peter are killed after being impaled by unsecured metal cargo from a construction vehicle.
- Darker and Edgier: The film is the darkest in the series by far, with a plot involving a survivor letting grief drive him mad, giving him the resolve to murder another as a way of postponing his own death (notably, previous films' protagonists never considered it as a possibility). Then there's the Sudden Downer Ending where Sam and Molly are revealed to be passengers of Flight 180, leading to them dying in the plane explosion from the first film, and Nathan, who apparently gained a new life, shortly biting it too as the person he killed was already terminally ill.
- Downer Ending: As usual, everyone is dead by the end of the film. Making it worse, the accident that kills Sam and Molly is the plane accident from the first film, meaning they never had a chance.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Peter confesses that he had several opportunities to kill random people on the street and take their remaining time for himself, but ultimately refrained from doing so, as they did not "deserve" to die. Peter's friends are relieved, but not for long, as he soon decides that Molly deserve to die for still living as other people include his girlfriend Candice died.
- Exact Words: Bludworth tells the survivors that they can kill someone else to get taken off the list, getting the dead person's remaining years in exchange for the sacrifice. Now, if they only had a few weeks left to begin with...
- Eye Scream:
- Olivia is burnt in the eye by a LASIK machine going haywire. Amazingly, she lives through that experience, only to slip on a plastic teddy bear eye, fall out a window, smash into a parked car, and have her good eye pop out of her head. And that's run over by a passing vehicle.
- Dennis gets both of his eyes obliterated when a wrench is sent flying into his face.
- Face Death with Dignity: Although he is understandably on-edge, Sam deduces that he's most likely not going to escape Death's clutches, given that the other survivors have died in severely improbable situations, and accepts the fact as best he can.
- Failsafe Failure: Lampshaded as the FBI investigates Olivia's LASIK machine-induced death:Agent Block: Five different systems had to go wrong for that laser to fail us so spectacularly. Five.
- Final Girl: Gruesomely subverted with Molly, who was never meant to die on the bridge, and instead meets her end when she's bisected by Flight 180's stabilizer.
- Foreshadowing: Has its own page.
- The "Fun" in "Funeral": Dennis announces the much alive Isaac as a victim. Hilarity Ensues.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Sam in his vision, Molly in actuality.
- Happy-Ending Massage: Isaac tries to get one of these when he goes to an Asian massage parlor in town, using a ticket he stole from the desk of a deceased colleague, and despite the fact that the receptionist points out that their place isn't a brothel.
- He Knows Too Much: Peter murders a federal agent, thus getting his life. Molly tries to get him to back down now that he's going to live, but Peter obviously can't leave a witness if he wants to spend his life anywhere but prison.
- Heroic Bystander: During Sam's vision, you can briefly see people on the safe side of the bridge helping people jump across a gap before it widens and becomes impossible to cross.
- Hope Spot:
- Olivia manages to get out of the head clutch of a malfunctioning LASIK machine as the main characters and doctors run in to help. Her eye is fried, but there is no apparent danger to her...but then she takes a step onto a glass eye of a teddy bear that she was holding during the procedure for comfort, that had been ripped off accidentally and fallen near a large window. She trips on it, and she falls out of the same window.
- They do a similar dance with Isaac, who is skewered by acupuncture needles and then nearly burned alive, but manages to get himself into a relatively safe position. Just as he starts to relax, a Buddha statue falls on his head.
- At the end of the movie, Sam and Molly prepare to go to Paris, Death seemingly off their backs forever. Then some high school students start a ruckus on the plane...
- Human Pincushion: Isaac, during some acupuncture Gone Horribly Wrong, and Peter's death in the opening premonition.
- Ignored Epiphany: Sam dismisses Alex from the first movie having his Freak Out on the plane he's on out of hand in the last scene, not realising until it's too late that it's another premonition, meaning the plane's in danger.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: During the opening disaster vision, Candice plummets off the bridge and is impaled on the mast of a passing boat and Peter is impaled by rebar. The latter comes back into play later on, as Sam kills Peter with a large skewer to save Molly, impaling him from behind.
- Internal Homage: Sam's death is a recreation of Alex's own death from the first film's premonition. Knowing Death, this is likely not a coincidence in-universe.
- Internal Reveal: All the movies that Bludworth had appeared in implied that he was Death (before Bloodlines confirmed that he wasn't), but this one had a lot of fun with it. The first two times he appears, only the survivors seem to notice him. When they confront him about why he's following them and what he's doing there, he ominously says, "My job" before turning to the coroner's van behind him, letting the survivors see the word CORONER on the back of his jacket. Of course, his appearances in the previous movies had already shown that that was his job.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Once Bludworth lets slip that murder will get the survivors off Death's list, Peter pretty much loses it, already going mad with grief over the death of his girlfriend.
- Just Plane Wrong: During the finale, a flight attendant walks down the aisle to secure an open overhead storage compartment. While this alone isn't too out of the ordinary, the fact they remain standing to converse with a passenger afterwards is something that probably wouldn't be allowed, especially because the plane was still climbing at the time, which is generally a bad time to be moving about the cabin.
- Karmic Death: Isaac doesn't turn off his phone at the massage parlour despite the sign, so when it goes off, it vibrates and pushes the candle off the shelf and starts the fire. That doesn't kill him, however — that honor goes to the Buddha statue which he had earlier mocked.
- Kavorka Man: Isaac is regularly seen on his phone flirting with several women, indicating he has some talent in charming them. This is impressive considering Isaac is played by the husky and plain looking P.J. Byrne.
- Kitchen Chase: Sam reserves the cáfe for an after-hours date with Molly. Peter, who has become unstable after Candice's death, interrupts the date and tells them that he will kill Molly to take her lifespan. After Peter draws a gun, Sam and Molly both escape to the kitchen. Peter pursues and running chase/battle ensues.
- Laser Cutter: The LASIK machine shown above has a display that shows the power of the laser to be 5 milliwatts. In reality, a 5 mW laser has only the potential to damage the retina (and no other structure of the body) if a person stares into its beam long enough. In the movie, instead, it is depicted as being capable to burn the cornea, sclera and skin tissues instantly, it makes a classic zap sound and the beam it emits is visible and glowy. However, the display only says not to exceed 5 mW; the actual power of the laser is shown to be much higher, going far beyond 5 mW, and with the system malfunctioning out of control and the camera never cutting back to the display we don't know the actual wattage of the laser and it's entirely possible it's in the watts range allowing it to damage tissue. That being said it is also the wrong type of laser: a continuous red beam, instead of the pulsed ultraviolet laser that is actually used in LASIK operations.
- Letters 2 Numbers: The working title of the film was 5nal Destination, which caused much amusement with horror fans, who proceeded to refer to the film as "Anal Destination".
- Little "No": Sam lets out one after overhearing the flight attendant mention Alex Browning having "some kind of vision."
- Meaningful Name: Presage Paper (Pre = before, sage = know). Presage means to know something (usually something bad) is about to happen, an omen.
- Medium Awareness: Isaac asks if the Asian woman speaks in subtitles and suddenly subtitles appear. Subverted in that only the viewers get to understand what the lady says. Isaac still can't.
- Nerds Are Sexy: Averted with Olivia. Despite her need for glasses, she is not a nerd at all. And she manages to look sexy with them on.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The gymnastics scene is praised because of this. Other death scenes have the camera focus on many possible threats within the vicinity. In the gym? Nothing but bars secured on the floor. The whole time, the audience goes "What's going to happen to her? WHAT?" She is eventually done in by good old fashioned gravity.
- Offering Another in Your Stead: Victims who cheated death can add to their own life by killing someone who isn't living on borrowed time. Unfortunately, even if this works (a fairly sizable "if" in and of itself), there's no guarantee that doing so bought the victim much time, as Sam and Nathan discover at the end of the movie.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Isaac's reaction to the alcohol on the floor catching fire.
- The look on Sam's face when he overhears the attendant on Flight 180 writing off Alex Browning's vision of the plane going down. Alex was right.
- Nathan has a more subdued one upon learning that Roy, the coworker he accidentally killed and got his life span as a result, had an enlarged blood vessel in his brain, and would've died of an aneurysm "any day now". And not even five seconds after learning this, he's crushed by the landing gear from Flight 180 exploding.
- Our Slashers Are Different: 5 introduced the element that if the survivors killed someone else, they would gain their years and survive much longer. However, by the end of the movie, everybody had died anyway, so it isn't clear if it ever worked or if it only worked temporarily.
- Police Are Useless: FBI Agent Block tries to avert this, keeping tabs on the survivors and investigating the deaths that occur, as well as intervening when he hears gunshots, but all he really accomplishes is getting himself killed and giving first Peter and then Sam a false sense of security.
- Redemption Equals Death: Nathan goes to the wake of Roy, feeling horrible about accidentally killing him. Then he's hit with a fiery landing gear, after learning Roy would've inevitably died soon regardless.
- Red Herring:
- During the setup of the Disaster Dominoes that will result in Candice's death, a lot of emphasis is placed upon 1) a screw on a balance beam, 2) loose rotating metal fans, one of which dropped that screw, 3) water surrounding an electrical wire, which was dripped from the fan, and 4) the loose horizontal bar that another student was using, nearby the fan. Turns out someone else steps on the screw afterwards and accidentally knocks over a pail of white powder, which then obscures Candice's vision while she's trying to land from the horizontal bar, and she dies falling down.
- A rather brilliant inversion: The teddy bear Olivia is gripping as she is getting set up in the LASIK machine has an eye fall out, which foreshadows the inevitable Eye Scream to follow. However, the eye actually ends up causing her death. When she gets free of the LASIK machine, she accidentally steps the heel of her stiletto boot exactly on the eye. She trips backs, crashes through a window, and falls to her death.
- During Sam and Peter's fight in the kitchen, Peter's gun lands into an active stove, which causes the gun to slowly heat up. There was even more emphasis on the gun as it's heating up from the stove to make it look like it'll discharge on Peter. It does, but Sam kills Peter and the bullet doesn't come near Sam.
- Revision: Originally, Sam and Molly weren't part of the passengers for Flight 180 in the first movie, but this movie shows that they are here.
- Revival Loophole: The remaining survivors are told they can kill another human being to save themselves, since they'd be taking their victim's life - untainted by Death - and giving them their death, Balancing Death's Books. It technically works. Problem is that people don't come with a handy clock to measure how much you're getting out of the exchange.
- Scary Black Man: Inverted with Nathan. He's a squirrely little dude who gets picked on by his employees. Played straight with Bludworth as always.
- Security Blanket: Glasses-wearing Olivia goes to get eye surgery when she asks if she can have the stuffed bear sitting in the corner of the room. The ophthalmologist performing the procedure says that the bear is meant for "some of our younger patients... and sometimes our older ones too."
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: Olivia nonchalantly undresses in front of her coworkers.Olivia: They're called tits.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Sam and Molly make it to the end! ...and then their flight turns out to be Flight 180. They never had a chance. Nor did Nathan, who gets nailed by the debris when the flight inevitably explodes.
- Shown Their Work:
- The opening disaster is actually a fairly realistic portrayal of a suspension bridge collapse. Structural engineer Alex Weinberg, writing about how such collapses are usually portrayed (inaccurately) in film, noted with some disbelief that the most accurate one he'd ever seen "somehow comes from a film franchise in which people regularly get cut in half by errant kites."
- To a lesser extent, the fact that the producers were careful enough to limit themselves to using music from the 1990s, such as "I Will Buy You A New Life" by Everclear.
- The opening disaster is actually a fairly realistic portrayal of a suspension bridge collapse. Structural engineer Alex Weinberg, writing
- Soft Water: In the opening premonition, Olivia survives her fall from the bridge to the water only to be crushed by a falling car. To be fair, premonitions probably aren't beholden to the laws of physics.
- Stealth Prequel: It's actually a prequel to the original movie.
- Theme Song Reveal: After the Wham Shot revealing Alex and Carter, a snippet of Shirley Walker's theme from the first film plays once, and then again after Sam pulls out his ticket for Flight 180 as if to hammer the point home.
- The Three Faces of Eve: The three female survivors again. Naïve intern Candice is the Child, protagonist's girlfriend Molly is the Wife, and Ms. Fanservice Olivia is the Seductress.
- Token Minority: Nathan is the only black guy among our protagonists and, in an inverse of usual horror tropes, the last person to die before the credits and in the series overall (at least until Final Destination Bloodlines.
- Trailers Always Spoil: Subverted and played straight; some fans thought the trailers spoiled everything. For the most part, some of the implied deaths scene spoilers weren't the actual deaths. Except for Olivia's and Dennis'.
- Additionally, the official trailer has two shots from after the film is revealed to be a prequel shown back to back: the landing gear destroying the bar in the final seconds and killing Nathan, and Sam saying "oh my god!" when the plane catches fire. But in the former case, it only shows the roof being destroyed and cuts to the latter before the viewer can discern what’s happening, and likewise for the latter. Similarly, the second trailer, before showing the title, shows the landing gear hurtling downtown after the plane has exploded, but once again it only shows that and doesn’t give the viewer enough time to discern what’s going on there.
- Tuckerization: As with the first film, the characters are named after famous horror icons. Peter Friedkin (after The Exorcist director William Friedkin), Candice Hooper (Tobe Hooper - director of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist ), and Olivia Castle (after British horror director William Castle).
- Twist Ending: Final Destination 5 turns out to be a prequel to the other four films, ending with Sam and Molly being killed on Flight 180. To make things worse, the plane's landing gear crashes through Roy's memorial and crushes the final survivor (Nathan) to death.
- Wham Line:
- Faced with the prospect of killing someone else to earn their lifespan and avoid being killed by Death's machinations, Peter tells Sam and Molly his impending plans to murder someone who wasn't meant to die in the opening premonition.
- At the end of the film, Nathan gets one dropped on him by a coworker when attending Roy's memorial.John: Company did an autopsy for insurance purposes. Turns out Roy had an enlarged blood vessel in his brain so big; it was about to burst. They said he'd be dead any day now.
- Wham Shot: At the end, Sam and Molly board a plane to Paris. Seems like a reference to the first film, right? When Sam puts his bags away, he hears a commotion behind him. He turns around, and we see Alex and Carter from the first film fighting and being thrown off the plane. That's right, the entire film was a prequel. Sam and Molly blow it off, and take their seats, sealing their fates (alongside Nathan's).
- Worst Aid: Isaac immediately pulls out one of the acupuncture needles after he's been impaled with them, which looks like it may very well have pierced his heart.
'"You all... just be careful now."
