Death to Everyone

The unifying element of most horror franchises is, of course, a memorable antagonist. Victims will come and go, as lambs to the slaughter, but you cannot have a Friday the 13th without Jason Voorhees, a Nightmare on Elm Street without Freddy Krueger, a Texas Chain Saw Massacre without Leatherface… (There was, of course, a Halloween without Michael Myers—and a very good one, Halloween III: Season of the Witch—but audiences in 1982 were having none of it.) Here, then, is a key distinguishing characteristic of the films of the Final Destination franchise, the very finest American horror series to have appeared in the 21st century: these are movies without an onscreen villain that the dramatis personae/prey can fight back against. Even the films of the much-inferior Saw franchise, begun in 2004, which superficially resemble the Final Destinations in their gory ingenuity, provide “heavies” in the form of Tobin Bell’s Jigsaw Killer and his various apprentices, whereas the antagonist of Final Destination is that phantom endboss who comes for us all, none other than Death himself.