What Final Destination says about Youth and Mortality

As some of you know, my popular addiction is often viewed as either a guilty pleasure and shame-of-a-horror movie: The "Final Destination" series







I don't think that there is maybe single student in our age group (19-24) who has NOT HEARD OF or SEEN AT LEAST one of these films.

Everyone, especially those going to Ball State University, one of the best schools in the MidWest for Telecommunications, has some sort of "addiction" or "enhanced fondness" for an aspect of media. It's everywhere.

Unless you choose to hide from it or view with the highest form of scrutiny and cynicism, media affects YOUR LIFE. Our choices and dislikes in media add flavor to our lives.

So, why I am talking about the "Final Destination" series?

Because I usually joke with my friends that my future boyfriend will have to like the "Final Destination" series before we even start talking.

(No, not really...)

Because I think that this horror/thriller series is greatly overlooked as simply "the dead teenager movie" like Sorority Row, The Roommate, or My Soul to Take.

However, something that one of my friends said at dinner has me thinking. You see...he called the "Final Destination" movie series

"psychological thrillers"

I said: "Hmmm...how so?"


His response: "The movies keep you guessing as to what the order of death is, how can these people take control back from death, and most eerie, how are they going to die."

The formula for "Final Destination" movies is recycled, but never the same. Each one plays on a new aspect:

1 --> Save a life, death moves on to the next one.

2 --> Create a life, death's plan becomes null and void

3 --> Examine your future death, then evade it.

4 --> (You're screwed, unless the protagonist who gets the visions saves you)

5 --> (It's not a spoiler alert, if they say it in the trailer) Kill someone, and you get their life (thus you are spared)

What fascinates me the most about "Final Destination"...yes, the eerie, stupid death sequences and the initial accident that seals their fate...but truly...TO ME...

I think these movies do a half-way-decent job of showing people all the ways that they can die...next to that show on Spike TV..."100 ways to die"...

Basically, what I get out of it, teens and 20-somethings typically live like we are invincible and we do all sorts of really stupid and dangerous stuff.

When I watch these movies, teens and 20-somethings die horribly gruesome deaths and are put in precarious positions where they must choose life or death. Usually they choose life, but their wish is almost never granted.

In other words, we want life so badly, but we endanger ourselves all the time. So, how do we live fulfilling lives, while prolonging our life?

DON'T TAKE LIFE FOR GRANTED!!

(Last note: Usually we hear about all sorts of horrible stuff happening at parties and stuff, but in these movies, the teens and 20-somethings almost always die do something pretty innocuous [like shaving, getting a hair cut, reheat Chinese food, going to the dentist, riding the elevator, and stuff like that.] Funny, right?)

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/feature/2011/08/10/safety_lessons_from_the_final_destination_films