The remarkable true story that inspired ‘Final Destination’
For a franchise that was predicated on a single gimmick, the Final Destination series did a remarkably stellar job of keeping audiences entertained as its characters would meet intricate and elaborate demises when the hands of fate repeatedly proved inescapable.
Ironically, the fifth instalment’s release in 2011 took the saga’s cumulative box office haul to a fitting and somewhat ominous total of $666million, which would have been as good a time as any to call it quits. Of course, because no self-respecting property with the ability to make money is allowed to lay dormant for too long, a sixth entry is currently in the works.
The second movie, in particular, swore an entire generation off driving behind a logging truck for the rest of their lives, and while the law of diminishing returns would inevitably set in, every Final Destination flick was guaranteed to feature at least one memorable death scene that lived up to its mission statement.
As fantastical as it would become, though, 2000’s opening salvo was indebted to a real-life incident that sparked screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick’s imagination. In fact, the seed of the idea was originally penned with the intention of being a standalone episode of The X-Files, before it was expanded into a feature unconnected to the seminal sci-fi favourite.
“I was actually flying home to Kentucky, and I read a story about a woman who was on vacation, and her mom called her and said, ‘Don’t take the flight tomorrow, I have a really bad feeling about it'”, Reddick told Bloody Disgusting. “She switched flights, and the plane that she would have been on crashed”.
Understandably, Reddick was intrigued and fascinated by the coincidence, with the basic premise of Final Destination following a group of friends who disembark a plane after one of their number has a terrifying premonition, only to discover they’ve been spared when it crashes. Of course, death waits for nobody, leading to the survivors who weren’t supposed to survive being picked off one-by-one.
Co-writers James Wong and Glen Morgan worked alongside Reddick to further expand on the central conceit, aiming to “do for planes and air travel what Jaws did for sharks and swimming”. They didn’t quite mimic Spielberg’s game-changing blockbuster and have a noticeable effect on air travel, but as mentioned previously, Final Destination 2 certainly accomplished a very similar feat when it came to trucks being packed to the brim with fallen trees.
Any horror that claims to be inspired by a true story is always taken with a pinch of salt by anyone who calls themselves a non-believer, but in the case of Final Destination, coincidence was the driving force rather than reports of supernatural shenanigans.
