2000's Final Destination was partially inspired by a real-life disaster, making the movie about escaping death all the more ominous.
Moments before boarding a plane for his senior class trip to Paris, Alex has a premonition showing the plane explode right after takeoff, killing everyone aboard. When small instances of his vision start happening, he begins to panic. He and several others of the class eventually get off the plane and all watch as the plane explodes on takeoff. About a month later, after a memorial service is held for the students who died in the incident, those who got off the plane begin to die in baffling and bizarre accidents. When Alex realizes his classmates are dying in the order they would have in the plane crash, he sets off to find a way to stop, or at least, cheat death.
The film has a fair share of familiar faces, including Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, Candyman's Tony Todd, and Seann William Scott. It brought in over $112 million worldwide on an estimated budget of $23 million.
Writer Jefferey Reddick has talked about the inspiration of Final Destination in several interviews, stating that while he was flying back home to Kentucky, he was reading a magazine that told a true account of someone cheating death. A woman who was on vacation received a call from her mother, who told her not to take the flight back the next day because she had a bad feeling about it. To ease her mother's worry, the girl changed her flight and later found out that the plane she was originally supposed to get on had crashed.
While this was the nugget that sparked the idea for Final Destination, it's not the only real-life inspiration for the film series. Final Destination 2's highway pile-up is said to be inspired by a 125 vehicle pile-up that happened on Interstate 75 in Catoosa County, Georgia, which resulted in the death of 4 people and caused around 40 additional injuries. The Final Destination's race track scene is notably lifted from the 1955 Le Mans disaster that killed over 80 people when a crash caused car debris flying into the spectator area. Final Destination 5's bridge scene is thought to be inspired by the Tacoma Narrows Bridge that collapsed on November 7th, 1940, a mere 4 months after it was opened to the public. The only casualty of that incident was a driver's pet cocker spaniel.
The original film was successful enough to spawn four sequels, along with a novel and comic book series. Early last year, a reboot of the franchise was announced and is currently in the works by the Saw writers, Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan. The franchise's longevity is not bad for a film that was originally scripted to only be an X-Files episode. What the Final Destination movies will always be known for are its death scenes. The highly elaborate, sometimes laughable ways characters die are both engrossing and disturbing. And while there are a ton of horror movies that boast over the top and brutal deaths, Final Destination's discarnate killer manages to scare up some of the best. These deaths become all the more haunting with the realization that many were based in truth.
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