Month: May 2025

Final Destination 6: Destination Finaler

The Final Destination franchise is the rare example of a horror formula done right. In the first act, the hero has a premonition of a freak accident that will kill a large group of people. Armed with this knowledge, the character can avoid (but not always stop) the tragedy, saving loved ones in the process. Unfortunately, it won’t be long until Death returns to finish off those who were “supposed to die,” usually in a predictable order.

I find the concept irresistible. If we can have hundreds of movies about vampires, zombies, and superheroes, why can’t Final Destination be a genre? The films still have a lot more steam in ’em than Freddy or Jason had by their sixth installments.

Final Destination Bloodlines is a lot more creative than its generic title would suggest. The film begins in 1968 at the grand opening of Skyview Tower, a preposterously tall restaurant that resembles Seattle’s Space Needle on growth serum. There’s a single elevator and a narrow set of hard-to-find stairs (nobody knows they exist until an employee points them out) which leads me to believe fire marshals must not exist in the Final Destination universe. A young woman named Iris foresees that the glass dance floor will crack as the restaurant nears capacity, which will kick off a hilarious chain of events that has victims being roasted alive, crushed by pianos, and impaled left and right.

This is thrilling stuff. It usually is, but the humor’s been turned up a skosh. The producers wisely stop just short of jumping the shark entirely, but manage to give the audience more of what they want. Consider how “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” plays from a tinny radio as the diners come falling out of the sky on the valet attendants. I really believe the first stories our prehistoric ancestors ever told was probably “Things That Can Kill You” and the Final Destination films tap into that primal excitement in a darkly funny way.

Fast forward to modern times and we learn that the premonition has in fact become a recurring nightmare for Iris’s college-age granddaughter, Stefani, whose grades are beginning to slip because of her intrusive visions. In an attempt to banish the thoughts and get her life back on track, Stefani travels homeward to meet Grandma Iris, who convinces her their entire family is cursed; Death will come for them in order of oldest to youngest.

You’ve seen this before. You already know that everybody who escaped Death the first time will gather with varying levels of skepticism while the hero struggles to convince them of the danger they’re in. Because they’re dealing with a faceless enemy which can’t explain its motivations (the franchise’s biggest strength), there will be some wild assumptions and leaps of logic that rarely prove right for the characters. In order to get scant insight into their predicament, they’ll have to speak to someone who actually knows what’s going on.

That knowledgeable character is usually the mysterious undertaker played by Tony Todd, who this time around gets a brief origin story. I rolled my eyes at the news that this installment would flesh the character out. Thankfully, his backstory is handled about as well as it could have been. But the rest of his scene? Not so much. I’m sure a lot of fans will appreciate Todd’s real-life send-off, but the way he verbalizes the previously unspoken moral of the Final Destination films comes off so hackneyed that I kinda expected him to turn to the camera and say, “And that’s the final destination.” Wink.

That doesn’t matter. I’m nitpicking a great movie. In a post last year, I said Final Destination may be my favorite horror franchise of all time. That’s still true. I’m looking forward to future installments (so long as soulless studio execs don’t go down the dreaded “reimagining” route). If the filmmakers keep it simple and only innovate just a little in each installment, this franchise could go on forever as far as I’m concerned.

See it with a crowd.

DOOM: The Dark Ages [First Impressions]

If you had told 10-year-old me that I’d still be playing DOOM thirty-two years after the original… well, I would have believed you, but that’s only because kids are stupid. What’s amazing is the series is still relevant. Consider: the legend of Halo has wilted in the absence of Bungie; every new edition of Call of Duty looks suspiciously like the last; and the latest Far Cry earned mixed reviews at best.

DOOM 2016 was a huge hit in the era of dwindling nostalgia. This was unexpected because, in the months leading up to its release, it had more red flags than a Trump fanatic. For one, it was the first game in id’s flagship series to be made without co-founder John Carmack. Secondly, gamers were rightfully skeptical of the ironclad review embargo in place until the day of release. Rumors of poor quality ran rampant during the lead-up while many gamers (myself included) prepared for another rushed release in the vein of Duke Nukem Forever. What we got was one of the very best games of the twenty-first century.

DOOM Eternal was more of the same magic, focused on refining rather than innovating. It was a better game at any rate, with improved action and an asymmetrical multiplayer mode that’s sadly underrated. As gamers naturally wondered what a third entry would look like, id Software tempered expectations by suggesting that the new timeline was intended to be a duology rather than a trilogy, though later created a two-part DLC intended to provide closure.

Which is why it came as a surprise when the company announced The Dark Ages in 2024. In addition to surprise, that old skepticism resurfaced: developers assured players that the new game would feature “more grounded gameplay,” which reeked of the Call of Duty devs trying to pass off “boots on the ground” as a revolutionary idea. I also had trouble accepting the bio-mechanical look of the previous games would be substituted by… a medieval fantasy world? Meanwhile, pre-release videos of the gameplay seemed a little slow and clunky compared to the predecessors which had you zipping through the air during a rapid-fire chain of glory kills.

All these worries were unfounded. DOOM: The Dark Ages is probably the best single player campaign I’ve ever played. I suspect it looks slow in the promotional materials because the actual gameplay is so frenetic, it has to be slowed down for the potential consumer to read what’s happening—reviewing my own gameplay recordings is even hard to follow at times. It hadn’t helped expectations when id said this iteration of the Doom Slayer moves more like a tank; they should have elucidated that by saying “a tank manufactured by Lamborghini and weaponized by Lockheed Martin.”

It seems that most FPS game devs create powerful weapons, then nerf them in the earlier levels so that the player feels a sense of artificial progression as they’re drip-fed upgrades. The Dark Ages, on the other hand, stocks the player with the most powerful video game weapons ever devised from the get-go and still lets the player upgrade the power at a remarkably frequent place. This strategy necessitates the need for some seriously overpowered enemies, which quickly grow more powerful (and plentiful) as the game progresses. The end result in an ultra-satisfying flow of dopamine as you unlock one weapon after another with plenty of upgrades sprinkled throughout.

It literally never gets boring.

The physics have been overhauled, too. The Doom Slayer in The Dark Ages is so satisfyingly weighty, he will accidentally clip environmental objects that come crumbling down or splintering into pieces. (This, in combination with wind effects that appear around the edges of the screen at sprinting speeds, adds to the glorious sensation of being a brutish killing machine… as do the Robocop-like sound of ka-clunking footsteps.) Tossing the shield saw (yes, that’s a Captain America-style shield with a toothy chainsaw blade running around its circumference) will hurdle the discus through any number of destructible objects before it slices fodder demons in two and ultimately embeds itself in the head of a more powerful foe.

DOOM: The Dark Ages doesn’t just contain the DNA of the previous DOOM titles (and the connection seems strongest in the little details), but the 90s as a whole. There are enemies and formations which remind one of Serious Sam. The weapon designs and the heavy-metal-album visuals hearken back to Painkiller. The freedom of movement found in the wide open levels is reminiscent of the first three Halo games.

If there’s one thing I want to impart about this latest entry, it’s this: this is the most fun you can have sitting at a computer playing with yourself… er, uh, by yourself. I will expand my review as I get closer to the end because there’s a lot to talk about this one and pretty much all of it is good.