Last Destination

No accidents, No coincidences, No escapes. You can't cheat Death. -Last Destination Tagline

Last Destination is the first installment and the second installment chronologically of the franchise of the same name released in 2000. The events of this film occurred after the events in Last Destination 5. The Last destination franchise was inspired by Josh Thames's Last destination Franchise which was published from 1958 to 1969.

Plot

High school student Simon Daniels is going on a field trip to Rogaulia with his friends and classmates. He is feeling nervous before the flight, sensing that something bad is going to happen. Nonetheless, he gets on the Roing 747, but as it takes off, there is a lot of turbulence and the engines fail, rupturing the fuel tanks and causing a catastrophic explosion, resulting in the deaths of everyone on board, including himself. This turns out to be a premonition. However, when the events of the vision begin to repeat themselves, he panics and causes a fight, resulting in him and six others being removed from the plane. As the plane takes off, it explodes just as Alex predicted, leaving the survivors stunned. Afterwards, RBI agents Warren and Savonic interview the people who were removed from the plane and become suspicious of Simon.

A month later, Simon's best friend Timothy Williams is strangled in his bathtub but his death is deemed a suicide and caused by asphyxiation from a clothesline. When Simon and fellow survivor Clara Ocean visit his body at a funeral home, they encounter mysterious mortician Xavier Bloodlost, who tells them that they have ruined Death's design, and Death is killing the survivors who were meant to have died on that plane. The next day, Simon and Clara discuss what the mortician said at a cafe. Simon believes that if they look out for omens they can cheat Death again, although Clara is skeptical. When they encounter the rest of the survivors Terrance Carlomov is suddenly hit by a speeding bus and is killed also. That night, after watching a news report on the cause of the explosion, Simon deduces that the survivors are dying in the order they would have died on the plane.

He realizes that his teacher Alima Lawton is next on death's list, and he rushes to save her. Thinking Alex is up to no good, Mr. Lawton calls the RBI agents who take Simon to the police station for questioning. They eventually release him, but he arrives too late to save Mr. Lawton, who is bleeding from her throat and killed when a chain reaction causes a kitchen knife to impale his in the chest before his house explodes.

Alex reunites with the rest of the survivors Diana, Carter Liam and Billy Howard to discuss what they are going to do. When Carter learns that he is next in Death's list, he stalls his car on train tracks in an attempt to kill himself. He changes his mind at the last second, but his seatbelt gets stuck. Simon is forced to take action and saves Carter at the last second.

The train unfortunately smashes the car, and Billy insults Carter but is partially decapitated by flying shrapnel from the wreckage underneath the train. Simon realizes that since he intervened, Death skipped Carter and moved on to Billy. Simon goes into hiding from the police inside an isolated cabin. Simon, thinking he was next after Billy, recalls in his original premonition that he had switch seats with two other students earlier on the plane, meaning that Diana is actually next before him. He rushes to save her while being chased by agents. Meanwhile after experiencing short-circuits in her house, Diana notices Death's presence and tries to escape in her car but she is trapped by loose live wires that deactivate the car, preventing her from escaping.

Simon arrives in time and tries to lash the wire off but it knocks an acetylene tank which is launched under the car and ignites the leak from the gasoline tank, spreading the fire around the car and blasts them around it. With no other choice, Alex sacrifices himself by grabbing the wire, electrocuting him as Clear escapes from her car seconds before it explodes. Warren and Savonic arrive at the scene as they, along with Diana, attempt to resuscitate an incapacitated but nearly dead Alex.

Six months later, Simon, after he has recovered from its suspicious explosion, arrives in Rogaulia along with Diana and Carter to celebrate their survival. While discussing their experience Simon explains that Death never skipped him. Suddenly a freak incident involving a bus causes a giant neon sign to swing off its hinges down towards Simon. Carter manages to push Simon out of the way at the last second. Simon says that Death has already skipped him, and when Carter asks Simon who is next on Death's list, the neon sign swings back down and rushes towards Carter. The screen then fades to black and a loud smashing sound is heard, ending the film by implying that Death's plan is still in action.

Cast

Trivia

• The filmmakers originally had an ending in which Simon grabs the cable that lies on Diana's car, Simon catches fire and dies. Diana then gets her baby and Carter survives. The test audience did not like this, so the filmmakers shot another ending in which Simon is decapitated by a crashing police helicopter. However, the test audience did not like the fact that Simon dies, so they shot the finish with the billboard, which took six days to film and cost an additional approximately $2,000,000.
• At least one or two tragedies or accidents in each of the first three Last Destination films are based on real life events. In this movie, Flight 170 was based on a similar Roeing 747, which also crashed right after takeoff, and both were carrying a group of students going to Ville de L’Amour on a class trip.
• Whenever someone's about to die (with the exception of Terry and Billy), the song "Egbert Mountain High" by John Davis Springs plays. The song also plays on the bathroom intercom before the plane crash, foreshadowing it.
• In terms of run time, this is the longest movie in the series so far.
• The band "Within Temptation" wrote a song based on the premise of the series that shares the name with the movie.
• Flight 170 is referenced in the opening credits of Last Destination 5, having a plane explode during the opening credits, which is strange due to the fact that Flight 170 actually appears in Last Destination 5 (because it is a prequel).
• All of the main characters (with an exception of Diana) appear in unused archival footage used for the Flight 170 scene at the end of Last Destination 5.
• Chronologically, this would actually be the second film in the series.  
• Last Destination is the only movie in the series where none of the survivors are BloxAfrican Robloxian.
• The working title for the film (and the series as well) was originally Flight 170, but was changed by the studio for being too similar to other airplane movies.
• On an earlier script, George Wiliams and the two students who swapped place with Simon was intended to have survived Flight 170 but the scriptwriters changed it so they die on Flight 170 instead.

Reception

Critical reviews

The film received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator website Fresh Frozen reports 33% of critics gave the film positive write-ups based on 93 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10, and a generally negative 32% approval rating from "top" critics based on 22 reviews.

The site's consensus of opinion is that "Despite a panel of R-Files' alums at the helm and a promising premise, flighty performances and poor execution keep Last Destination from ever taking off." At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film holds a mixed/average score of 36 based on 28 reviews, while IGN gives the film 2.5 stars out of 5.

Box office

The film premiered in 2,587 theaters across the United States of Robloxia and Bloxanada on March 17, 2000, earning $10,015,822 on its opening weekend with an average of $3,871 per theater. Last Destination placed at #3 in the Robloxian box office on its opening weekend, behind several movies. The film remained at #4 on the next weekend before dropping to #7 on its third weekend.

The film continuously dropped on the next weekends until it was removed from the top-ten list on its eighth weekend. The film lasted in theaters for 22 weekends, its last screening airing in 105 theaters and grossing $52,675, placing in #56. Last Destination grossed $53,331,147 in the United States of Robloxia and Bloxanada on its total screening and earned $59,549,147 in other territories, having an overall gross of $112,880,294 internationally.