Last Destination 5

Death has never been closer. - Last Destination 5 Tagline

Last Destination 5 is the fifth installment and the first installment chronologically of in the Last Destination series and a prequel to Last Destination. It was released on August 12th, 2011, though it was originally stated for theatrical release on August 26th, 2011. The film was directed by Steven Quincy and written by Eric Henry.

It stars Nicholas Darren, Edna Bellwood, Mike Fitcher and Zavier Struginer. The film is regarded as one of the best of the series. It was well received by critics and fans of the film series, scoring a fresh 62% on Fresh Tomatoes.

Plot

The film begins with a group of workers who are gathering together for a company retreat. Sam Crimeton, a fellow office worker and short order cook for the Ville de L'Amour restaurant chain Le Café Miro 46, has prepared the breakfast before the bus ride. His best friend Peter Friedkin is awaiting everyone else's arrival for the trip. Mary Howard, Sam's girlfriend, arrives and she then breaks up with him due to his dreams of going to Paris to be an apprentice for his mentor.

Sam is hurt by Mary's decision. Meanwhile Peter's girlfriend Candice Hooper, an intern for the company and a gymnast, comes along with her rival Olivia Castle, a scantily clad office girl. Molly is being hit on by Isaac Palmer, a co-worker and womanizer.

Dennis Lapman, the company's boss, orders everyone to move it onto the bus. Sam then goes to the construction wing of the building to find his other friend Nathan Sears, a supervisor who has a hard time dealing with construction worker Roy Carson. Nathan and Sam regroup and board the bus to their destination.

Sam then has a premonition of the Silver Bridge collapsing, killing everyone except Molly, who did not die in the premonition. When Sam comes to, he sees he is still alive and he frantically orders Molly and the others off the bus. Though confused, Peter, Candice, Olivia, Nathan, Isaac, and Dennis soon follow suit. The bridge begins to collapse and Sam rushes all of his friends to safety. The group looks surprised and confused as to how Sam knew the accident was going to happen. Jim Block is covering the case of Sam and his friends, but he finds Sam's claims hard to believe.

During the company funeral, Xavier Bloodlost, a local coroner, is present and he warns the group that Death is after them. They all ignore his warnings and move on with their lives. Sam and Molly reconcile later that night. The next day, Candice is with Peter at her gymnastics practice, and he cheers her on. Candice does some work on the balance beam, and a screw from a malfunctioning fan falls on the beam. Candice does not notice the screw and has many close calls in which she almost steps on it, but it never injures her. Finishing her practice on the balance beam, Candice then goes to do some vault work. She is flipping while a fan set up by one of the coaches is turned on on the floor.

Candice is almost electrocuted when the faulty cord for the fan is shown passing through a small puddle of water, most likely from the faulty ventilation. However, she places a small towel on the water before stepping on it, bypassing this threat.

Another girl ascends to the beam. During her practice, she steps on the screw and falls. She stumbles around, clutching her injured foot, and knocks over a bowl which is full of powdered chalk. The powder is then blown by the fan into Candice, disorientating her. As she flips, she accidentally lets go, falling and landing on her neck. Her spine completely fractures and she folds over backwards, with some other bones popping through her skin, killing her instantly. Sam consoles a depressed Peter. The next day, the group reunites in the office, where they drink alcohol to relax.

Isaac is going through dead co-workers' desks, and he comes across a coupon for a Chinese massage parlor. He soon arrives, flirting with the workers. He insults a Buddha statue, telling him to cut down on the rice cakes. Believing he is about to receive a massage from an attractive young woman, Isaac is surprised when it is revealed an older woman will be servicing him. She avoids speaking in English for the most part. After a small massage and painful chiropractic, she performs acupuncture; leaving Isaac in a room with soundproof walls and telling him to sleep.

The tip of a burning stick of incense falls off onto a towel, initiating a fire. Trying to escape it, Isaac attempts to roll off the bed. However, the leg breaks, and he falls to the ground. The acupuncture needles penetrate his body and face, and a bottle of flammable disinfectant is knocked off a shelf from the impact and begins to spill. After excruciatingly pulling a needle out, he staggers towards the door. Alerted by the sound of his phone going off, Isaac watches in horror as the vibrating phone pushes a candle off the shelf into the flammable liquid - immediately igniting. He stumbles backwards against the wall. Believing he has escaped Death, his relief is quashed as a shelved Buddha statue falls and crushes his head; instantly killing him.

Xavier Bloodlost, who has been present for all of the deaths so far, is there and tells the remaining survivors that Death is hunting them because Sam shouldn't have had the premonition of the bridge collapse. To assuage the situation, Sam reveals that he saved Molly in his vision, so Death is not hunting her down. Peter assumes that Sam saved her at the expense of everyone else and gets mad at Sam and at the universe for saving Molly and damning Candice. Bludworth then reveals that there is another way to avoid Death. They would have to kill someone to gain their remaining days on Earth. Peter's sanity takes a plunge as he becomes obsessed with this idea and the fact that only Molly is safe. Olivia nervously goes to get eye surgery on the same day, with the doctor strapping her head into place.

Olivia, fearful, clenches a teddy bear to calm herself down. As the optician prepares for the surgery by fitting a speculum on her eye, one of the teddy bear's eyes pops off due to Olivia holding onto the bear too tightly. The doctor ignores her plea for him to stay to correct her incomplete file. A bubbling water cooler knocks over a full cup of water, splashing the cord for the machine. The machine malfunctions and starts up, with the laser intensity increasing above the recommended maximum. Olivia realizes this and calls out, to no avail. She then tries to reach for the remote to control the machine, panicked.

The remote falls onto the start button, and the laser slices Olivia's eye open. The laser goes off a few more times and it burns through her hand and scars her face as she attempts to shield herself, also pulling at her restraints. She finally escapes the machine, burnt and unable to see due to the surgery not having taken place and her throwing away her glasses. Sam, Molly and the doctor run in to find a terrified Olivia, injured and traumatised. Before she can be saved, Olivia trips on the teddy bear's eye which causes her to stumble back, crash through the window and tumble to her death. After falling multiple stories, she lands face-down onto a car's windshield. Her only unscathed eye pops out of its socket, rolling onto the road - a passing car runs it over.

Meanwhile, Nathan is working in construction, and he is arguing with Roy, a disgruntled employee. Nathan concernedly watches as a faulty crane moves closer to the pair. He urges Roy to move but accidentally pushes him backwards as the floor gives way and the hook falls, bringing Roy down with it. Although he is stopped from landing on the spikes below, the hook initially impales Roy through the chin, and then his brain. As the group reunites, Peter finds that Nathan accidentally killed Roy; taking his life expectancy and skipping him in Death's design.

Meanwhile, as Dennis grills them all over Roy's death, a stray wrench that Roy placed on a belt sander earlier is propelled into Dennis' eyes and through his skull, killing him instantly. Later that night, at Le Café Miro 81, Sam's mentor approves his apprenticeship in Paris. He also lets Sam have the restaurant for the night to spend it with Molly. Peter crashes the dinner, and he tells of how he tried to push a woman in front of a truck to steal her life. Peter admits he couldn't do it, and he then ponders Candice's death and how she didn't deserve to die, but yet Molly supposedly survived Sam's vision. Peter then tries to kill Molly.

Molly takes refuge in the kitchen and Peter knocks Sam unconscious with his gun. Agent Block arrives and hears the first gunshot as Molly hides. He is shot in the back by Peter. Molly begs Peter to leave, as he has taken Block's lifespan. However, Peter does not want to spend the rest of his newly earned life in prison. As Peter pursues Molly, Sam wakes up and fights him off. In the struggle, Peter's gun is thrown onto the burning stove, aimed at Sam, then Peter beating him for a brawl. As Peter is about to kill Molly, Sam stabs him in the back with a large skewer. Sam realizes he stole Agent Block's life from Peter, with Peter's gun finally shooting and missing Sam as confirmation.

Two weeks later, Sam and Molly are boarding a plane to Ville de L'Amour, and she asks for the window seat. They see two high school students fighting and getting kicked off the plane. This group is recognizable to the audience as Simon Daniels and his class. Sam and Mary are on Flight 170 - the film is a prequel to the first Last Destination. Sam and Marry believe that the kid is just having a panic attack. During takeoff, Sam overhears a flight attendant tell a passenger that Simon claimed to have "some kind of vision". Sam exclaims in horror as Simon"s premonition begins to come true. As the engines start to disintegrate and oxygen masks dangle from the ceiling, Mary is sucked out of the cabin and is bisected by the plane's horizontal stabilizer. Seconds later, the rest of the plane is engulfed in flames and explodes, burning Sam and everyone on board to death.

As the plane explodes, the flame-engulfed landing gear is blown away and tumbles towards the city. Nathan is at a local bar for Roy's memorial service. There, he talks to a coworker, who explains that Roy's autopsy revealed he had an enlarged blood vessel that would have burst "any day now". Nathan realizes with dread that now he could be dead or back on the list at any second. Before he has time to process anything, the landing gear from Flight 170 crashes through the bar and crushes Nathan, launching his severed hand into the camera. The film proceeds to cut to a collage of previous disasters and deaths scenes from the first four films.

Cast

Trivia

• There are several discrepancies between the versions of Flight 170 shown in Last Destination and Last Destination 5:
  • The seating plan in Last Destination shows the class to be in the middle, not near the back of the plane where Sam and Marry are, and the date on the plane ticket is in a different place, is formatted differently, and has a different year on it.
    • It is unclear why this occurred, though the most likely explanations are that it was either a retcon or a mistake on the writers' parts.
  • The reason for the crash given in Last Destination is a fuel line cutting off the engines, causing the plane to nosedive and eventually explode; in 5 however, the engine is shown catching fire.
    • It's possible that the fuel line leaked onto the engine and caught on fire.
• This is the first Last Destination movie to not be released 3 years after the previous one; being released 2 years after The Last Destination instead.
• This is the second Last Destination movie to be filmed in 3D.
• Last Destination 5 marks the long-awaited return of Xavier Bloodlost.
• Last Destination 5 has 4 different posters, most of the series.
• Last Destination 5 also returns to the roots of where the first 3 movies were filmed: in Bloxanada.
• A test-screening of the film was held in Los Angeles, California on April 6th, 2011.
• The Last Destination 5 release date has been moved from August 26th to August 12th, 2011.
• Although the first four installments have alternated between the time of day of the opening disaster, this film's opening disaster is consecutive with the previous film's time of day: at daytime. However, this is a prequel to the first film, so, chronologically, the pattern is the same.
• The trailer shows signs of there being a human killer as well as death, due to the fact that people have theories of how they can end, such as in the third movie, Ian claims that if the last person were to kill themselves, the whole chain would end, and in the second movie, if Isabella had the baby, everyone would survive. But Isabella survives the crash anyways, and Kimberly must get a new life.
• Xavier Bloodlost mentions that in order to survive and not cheat death, the survivors should take the life of another person for Death to completely or temporarily take them off the list. Since "Death, doesn't like to be cheated".
• The opening disaster appears somewhat similar to the one featured in the comic Last Destination: Sacrifice.
• The series alternates with the main characters being seniors and full-grown adults. Last Destination 1 and 3's main characters are seniors going on their senior trip, and Last Destination 2 and The Last Destination's characters are mostly fully grown adults that are not in high school. One would expect Last Destination 5's characters to be seniors as well as the first and third films, but this film broke that consistency. However, again, this is a prequel. The pattern is not broken, chronologically.
• There is a montage of death scenes from the previous films during the credits. Since this film is a prequel, you can say that this montage is foreshadowing what will happen in the series.
• This is first movie in which the main Visionary's actual death is explicitly shown on screen without any filters.
• There are many clues that the film is a prequel throughout the film.  The best example being the phones, instead of the characters using phones such as modern Blackberries, and iPhones, they have larger, clunkier, phones.  Another example is that the computers are much larger than computers today, and if you look closely at the coupon Isaac picks up, it is clearly dated 2000.
  • However, there are goofs that contradict this such as the songs playing in the background of Sam's restaurant being released by Terry Poison in 2009.
• A declined death scene was to take place at a waterpark, it is unknown how this character would have died, or who the character was.
• It is interesting to note that Sam doesn't actually save anyone but Mary. The others leave to go get Sam and Mary back on. But he doesn't actually drag them out.
• This is one of two movies in the franchise where no fight started after the warning of the visionary. The second one is Last Destination 2.
• This is the only movie which has no clear nudity except Olivia in her Bra.
• Last Destination 5 is the only Last Destination movie to be showed on TV in Ro-India because of it contains no nudity.
• Last Destination 5 is the only movie in the entire Last Destination movie franchise to have two visionaries in the same film. Sam was the first visionary at the beginning of the movie and at the end Simon Daniels from the very first film made a cameo appearance via archive footage.