The Final Destination

College student Nick O'Bannon takes his girlfriend Lori Milligan and their friends Hunt Wynorski and Janet Cunningham to a stock car race at McKinley Speedway for a study break. They sit in section 180. During the race Nick has a premonition. A crash sends cars and debris into the grandstand, the stands collapse, and he, his friends and dozens of spectators are killed.

Nick panics and pushes his way out of the stands with his friends. A few angry spectators follow them out: Carter Daniels, a racist tow truck driver; Samantha Lane, a mother of two boys; mechanic Andy Kewzer and his girlfriend Nadia Monroy; and George Lanter, the security guard who breaks up the argument outside. Then the crash Nick saw really happens. Carter's wife Cynthia dies inside. Outside, a tire flies out of the track and takes Nadia's head off.

After a memorial for the victims, Carter blames George for keeping him from his wife. He drives to George's house to burn a cross on the lawn. The plan goes wrong. His tow truck's chain drags him down the street, sparks set him on fire, and the truck blows up. The next day Samantha gets through a close call at a hair salon, only to be killed outside when a lawnmower throws a rock through her eye.

Nick keeps getting flashes of how each person will die. He and Lori look up the earlier disasters, the plane explosion, the highway pileup and the roller coaster, and learn that survivors saved by a vision all died soon after in freak accidents. Hunt and Janet laugh it off. George, a recovering alcoholic, believes them. He lets Nick and Lori watch the speedway security tapes to work out the order in which people would have died.

The tapes show Andy is next. The three of them get to his workplace, Grandstate Customs, to warn him, but a pressurized tank launches him into a chain-link fence and he is diced. Nick decides Hunt and Janet are next and the group splits up. George and Lori pull Janet out of a malfunctioning car wash just in time. Nick is too late for Hunt, who dives for his lucky coin at the country club pool and is torn apart by the drain's suction.

Believing that saving Janet broke the chain, Lori and Janet go to see a 3-D movie at the mall. George tries to kill himself and fails, which convinces him it is not his turn. Nick then learns of another survivor, Jonathan Groves, a man in a cowboy hat pulled from the rubble and now in the hospital. Nick remembers him dying in the vision. Nick and George rush to the hospital but cannot stop an overflowing bathtub from crashing through the ceiling onto Jonathan's bed. As they leave, a speeding ambulance hits and kills George.

Nick races to the mall. Inside the theater, Lori notices warning signs, but Janet will not leave. A fire behind the screen causes an explosion that throws debris through the screen and kills Janet. The fire spreads through the mall and Lori is pulled into the gears of an escalator. Then Nick snaps out of it. Everything since Jonathan's death was another vision. He still cannot save George from the ambulance. At the mall he fights his way to the fire, gets pinned to a post by a nail gun, and sets off the sprinklers in time. The explosion never happens and Lori and Janet walk out alive.

Two weeks later Nick, with his arm in a cast, meets Lori and Janet at a mall cafe. On the way in he warns a worker about a loose scaffold. Sitting down, he works out that the mall vision was not a warning at all. It was bait to put all three of them in this spot at this moment. A falling scaffold makes a truck swerve, and it crashes through the cafe window. An X-ray style shot shows the three of them being killed: Janet crushed under the tires, Lori's neck broken, and Nick thrown into a wall.

Story notes

• Nick O'Bannon foresees a catastrophic accident at McKinley Speedway and leads several spectators out before the disaster.
• He later receives further visions as Death comes for the survivors.

Release facts

• Released: 2009-08-28 (France got it first, on August 26, 2009)
• Rated: R (for strong violent/gruesome accidents, language and a scene of sexuality). UK: 15
• Worldwide: $186,167,139 (Box Office Mojo's current figure; older reports give $187.4 million)

Warner Bros. and New Line released it August 28, 2009 in 3-D and regular theaters, the same day as Rob Zombie's Halloween II. It was the first 3-D film shown with D-BOX motion seats in select theaters. France got it first on August 26. Producer Craig Perry showed clips at San Diego Comic-Con.

It opened at number one in North America. Box Office Mojo lists a $27,408,309 opening weekend; USA Today and Newsday reported $28.3 million from early numbers. It stayed on top for two weeks, the first film in the series to hit number one, and also topped the UK chart. It made $66,477,700 domestic. Box Office Mojo now lists $119,689,439 overseas and $186,167,139 worldwide, while Wikipedia and older reports give $120.9 million and $187.4 million. Big markets included the UK at $20.2 million, Russia/CIS at $14.0 million and Germany at $12.6 million. It was the highest-grossing film in the series until Final Destination Bloodlines passed it in May 2025.

Critics did not like it. Rotten Tomatoes has 28% from 98 reviews, average 4.1 out of 10, with a consensus calling it predictable, disposable horror fare. Metacritic gives it 30 out of 100 from 14 reviews. CinemaScore audiences gave it a C. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter said the 3-D gimmick was about as inspired as anything got. In January 2022 Stephen Rosenberg of MovieWeb ranked it the worst film in the series.

Press and marketing

• Theatrical key-art / poster campaign reference: IMP Awards — The Final Destination poster archive.

Cast

Crew

Production

After Final Destination 3, Eric Bress wrote a script for a fourth film planned for 3-D. It won over producer Craig Perry and the studio. James Wong was first set to direct but dropped out because of his schedule on Dragonball Evolution. The studio brought back David R. Ellis, who had made Final Destination 2. Ellis said he took the job because of the 3-D. Perry said he wanted the 3-D to add depth instead of having something pop out at the audience every few minutes.

Bress wrote this one alone, without his usual partner J. Mackye Gruber. He told ComingSoon he had been saving death ideas since Final Destination 2, including the escalator. His first draft had a supermarket scene where mothballs fall into ammonia, set off the fire alarm and send the produce misters into overdrive. That was cut. He wanted the film to be the last in the series.

The movie was announced as Final Destination: Death Trip 3D. In May 2009 Dread Central reported the title had been changed to The Final Destination. The release was first set for August 14, 2009, then moved to August 28.

The first three films were shot in Vancouver. Ellis talked the producers into moving to New Orleans to bring work to the city. Filming ran from March 2008 to late May 2008. Reshoots were done in April 2009 at Universal Studios Florida.

It was the first film in the series shot in HD 3-D. The production used the Fusion 3-D system from Vince Pace and James Cameron, with Sony F23 cameras, which the French press notes say were being used for 3-D for the first time. Side-by-side rigs with two Sony HDC-F950 cameras were used for the racing and underwater scenes. Before shooting, the crew tested the rigs in a parking lot at Magic Mountain and found that race car vibration threw the two cameras out of alignment, so the cameras were not bolted directly to the race cars.

A PACE Fusion mobile post-production trailer with its own 3-D projection let Ellis and cinematographer Glen MacPherson check test shots on location and fix alignment problems right away. Cast members sometimes watched too. MacPherson said the 3-D cameras went on Steadicams and cranes, underwater, down the sides of buildings on cables, near explosions, and on cars going about 100 miles an hour. A 2-D version and a 3-D version were both finished.

The opening was shot in two places. The grandstand was built on an empty parking lot behind the Industrial Canal Bridge on the edge of New Orleans. The driving was shot at Mobile International Speedway in Alabama, since there was no track near New Orleans. Perry said the built stands were about 43 meters (141 feet) tall and matched the Mobile stands so shots could be mixed. Ellis said about 95 percent of the shots were real, with very little green screen.

Production designer Jaymes Hinkle built the grandstand from blocks of foam. Larry Spurlock of his crew coated them with a resin and cement mix so they looked like concrete, then aged them. About 70 people worked on that one set for four weeks. A short strip of track was built in front, and visual effects supervisor Erik Henry stretched it to about 150 meters and filled the two levels with 14,000 digital fans. Hinkle said the 3-D forced the sets to grow bigger to leave room between camera, actors and walls.

Stunt coordinator and second unit director Jeff Dashnaw hired veteran stunt drivers, including Buddy Joe Hooker and Mic Rodgers, plus some real race drivers. Ellis, a former stuntman who had driven at Daytona on Days of Thunder, said he wished he could have been behind the wheel himself.

The fourth film was photographed for stereoscopic 3-D, so individual deaths and foreground projectiles were staged around depth as well as conventional coverage.

Eric Bress says the escalator idea had been considered during development of Final Destination 2 and remained a possibility until the fourth film.

Bress described a discarded first-draft supermarket sequence involving cleaning products, a fire alarm and malfunctioning produce misters.

Bress identifies the race seating section and bus number 180, plus a dog named Browning, as deliberate references to the first film.

The French production notes describe a PACE Fusion mobile 3-D screening unit that let Ellis and cinematographer Glen MacPherson review stereoscopic test shots on location.

Production designer Jaymes Hinkle describes foam grandstand blocks coated with resin and cement, then aged to resemble concrete; roughly 70 people worked on the set for four weeks.

Filming locations

• Mobile International Speedway, 7800 Park Boulevard, Irvington, Alabama: Race driving and crash footage for McKinley Speedway
• Empty lot behind the Industrial Canal Bridge, New Orleans, Louisiana: Built McKinley Speedway grandstand
• New Orleans Centre (closed after Hurricane Katrina, later demolished): Mall scenes, including the escalator; Benson Tower is visible through the skylights
• 4209 Chateau Boulevard, Kenner, Louisiana: Nick and Lori's apartment
• 617 Jefferson Heights Avenue, New Orleans (Jefferson), Louisiana: George's house
• 710 Dublin Street, New Orleans, Louisiana: Hair salon
• 8200 Hampson Street, New Orleans, Louisiana: Dry cleaners next to the salon
• 130 Brookhollow Esplanade, Elmwood, Louisiana: Grandstate Customs
• Cypress Lakes Country Club, 10 Villere Drive, Destrehan, Louisiana: Pool where Hunt dies
• 5270 Canal Boulevard, New Orleans, Louisiana: Car wash
• Lions Eye Building, 2020 Gravier Street, New Orleans, Louisiana: Hospital
• Universal Studios Florida, Orlando: April 2009 reshoots
• Principal photography was centered in and around New Orleans, Louisiana, with speedway material filmed in Mobile, Alabama, studio work in Harahan, Louisiana, and additional photography/reshoots in Orlando, Florida. The racetrack itself and the grandstand world were assembled from separate real-location and constructed-set elements.
• The race opening combined a grandstand built near New Orleans’s Industrial Canal Bridge with driving footage at Mobile International Speedway in Alabama.

Effects and makeup

KNB EFX Group handled makeup effects, with Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger credited and Mike McCarty supervising on set. McCarty said HD cameras pushed colors toward orange, so their first blood looked like 1970s and 1980s movie blood. They had to darken it to almost the color of clotted blood.

Craig Perry said HD 3-D showed every flaw. Composite crowd shots went flat in 3-D and inflatable dummies looked fake in HD, so everything had to be done for real. Erik Henry said 3-D made compositing harder because any matte or paint-out had to be rebuilt for the second camera.

Entity FX made the ending, including the X-ray view of the three leads being killed and the 3-D movie playing on the screen inside the theater. They used Maya, Mental Ray and Nuke, took some of the character movement from a previs by The Third Floor, animated most of it by hand, and finished in under a month.

PIC Agency made the main titles and vision footage, with Pamela B. Green as main title supervisor. The opening titles replay deaths from the first three films in X-ray form, including Kat's impalement, Tod's strangling, Ian's cherry picker and the tanning beds.

The Blu-ray featurette Body Count: The Deaths of The Final Destination covers seven of the deaths, showing wire work, prosthetics and the blood-spraying puppets built by KNB.

Effects split: practical stunt/prosthetic elements; stereoscopic digital augmentation.

Props and costumes

Claire Breaux designed the costumes. Curtis Akin and Kurt Thoresen were property masters.

The collector site YourProps lists three items said to come from the production: a Twinkle Star hairspray can, a Death by Caffeine coffee cup and a McKinley Speedway T-shirt. These are collector records, not screen-matched.

Claire Breaux designed the costumes, while Curtis Akin and Kurt Thoresen served as property masters across the principal and additional-photography units. The 3-D production required costumes, set dressing and foreground props to hold up under unusually sharp stereoscopic photography rather than relying on flat background cheats.

Production designer Jaymes Hinkle described enlarging physical sets to create more measurable depth between performers, scenery and foreground objects for the native-3D cameras. That decision directly affected the scale and placement of practical props and set dressing in the racetrack, salon, pool, theater and mall environments.

The film's opening speedway was a composite production environment: real race-car driving/crash material was captured at the Alabama track while grandstand sections were built in the New Orleans area, turning the fictional McKinley Speedway into a location/set hybrid.

Production artifacts

Art and design

• The IMP Awards primary one-sheet credits Ignition and LA for the poster design.

Scripts and documents

The killers

Deaths

Cynthia Daniels

Played by

Lara Grice

How

Killed in the grandstand collapse

Where

McKinley Speedway

By

Death

Nadia Monroy

Played by

Stephanie Honoré

How

Decapitated by a tire thrown out of the track

Where

Outside McKinley Speedway

By

Death

Carter Daniels

Played by

Justin Welborn

How

Dragged by his tow truck's chain, set on fire, then killed when the truck explodes

Where

Street in front of George's house

By

Death

Samantha Lane

Played by

Krista Allen

How

A lawnmower flings a rock through her eye

Where

Outside the hair salon

By

Death

Andy Kewzer

Played by

Andrew Fiscella

How

A pressurized tank launches him into a chain-link fence and he is diced

Where

Grandstate Customs

By

Death

Hunt Wynorski

Played by

Nick Zano

How

Pinned to the pool drain by suction and disemboweled

Where

Country club swimming pool

By

Death

Jonathan Groves

Played by

Jackson Walker

How

Crushed when an overflowing bathtub falls through the ceiling

Where

Hospital

By

Death

George Lanter

Played by

Mykelti Williamson

How

Hit by a speeding ambulance

Where

Outside the hospital

By

Death

Janet Cunningham

Played by

Haley Webb

How

Run over by a truck that crashes into the cafe

Where

Mall cafe

By

Death

Lori Milligan

Played by

Shantel VanSanten

How

Neck broken when the truck pins her

Where

Mall cafe

By

Death

Nick O'Bannon

Played by

Bobby Campo

How

Thrown into a wall when the truck crashes in

Where

Mall cafe

By

Death

The premonition

The disaster: McKinley Speedway race-car disaster

Death design

• McKinley Speedway survivor order
• vision recurrences
• 3-D gag/effect design

Brian Tyler scored the film. He took over the series after Shirley Walker, who scored the first three, died in 2006.

The Final Destination (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) came out August 25, 2009 on JVC/Sony Music Australia: 23 cues, 64:15. Tracks: The Final Destination; The Raceway; Memorial; Nailed; Nick's Google Theory; Revelations; Raceway Trespass; Stay Away from Water; Flame On; Moment of Joy; Signs and Signals; George Is Next; Car Washicide; Newspaper Clues; Premonition; The Salon; Questioning; Death of a Cowboy; Gearhead; Sushi for Everyone; The Movie Theater; You Can't Dodge Fate; The Final Destination Suite (13:29).

Filmtracks gave the score 3 out of 5. SoundNotes gave it 7.5 out of 10.

Songs in the film but not on the album: Devour by Shinedown; How the Day Sounds by Greg Laswell; Burning Bridges by Anvil; Why Can't We Be Friends? by War; Don't You Know by Ali Dee and the Deekompressors; Faraway by Dara Schindler; Dream of Me by Perfect; Make My by The Roots; The Stoop by Little Jackie; Sweet Music by Garrison Hawk; Corona and Lime by Shwayze; Make You Crazy by Brett Dennen.

Home Media

• 2010 DVD and Blu-ray from Warner Home Video/New Line, released January 5, 2010 after first being set for December 22, 2009. Both included the 2-D and anaglyph 3-D versions and two pairs of red and blue cardboard 3-D glasses, in a lenticular slipcover. The Blu-ray was a combo pack with a DVD and a digital copy for iTunes and Windows Media. Video 2.39:1 VC-1; English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1.
• Blu-ray extras: Body Count: The Deaths of The Final Destination (22 min); deleted scenes including an extended pool sequence (about 11 min); two alternate endings; Racecar Crash and Mall Explosion storyboard and animatic breakdowns (11 min); First Look: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2 min); BD-Live.
• Some Target copies came with a reissue of the Zenescope comic Final Destination: Spring Break #1.
• Home video sales came to about $15.1 million.
• 2011 Blu-ray 3D from New Line/Warner Home Video, released August 2, 2011. It has the real MVC 3-D version and the 2-D version on one BD50, 2.40:1, DTS-HD Master Audio, a lenticular slipcover and an $8 online coupon for Final Destination 5. No anaglyph glasses. Extras are limited to nine deleted and extended scenes (about 7 min).
• Later box sets: the Final Destination 5-Film Collection DVD (Warner, October 20, 2015) and the 5-Film Collection Blu-ray (Canada, June 14, 2022).

Store exclusives

• The Final Destination (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), JVC/Sony Music Australia, 2009.
• Final Destination: Spring Break #1 (Zenescope Entertainment) reissued as a Target DVD pack-in, 2010.
• 2009 theatrical giveaway run by JoBlo with Warner Bros.: two skull T-shirts, a light-up crystal keychain, an etched crystal sphere, a car emergency tool, a luggage tag and premium RealD glasses. The grand prize added the first three films on DVD.
• Theatrical one-sheets: a teaser with Lori's face breaking into a skull, and a cast poster with Hunt, Janet, Nick, Lori and George standing on the track. Both carry the Rest in Pieces tagline.
• The film's posters show up as in-game ads in Saints Row 2, Skate 2 and Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 hid the posters in maps as part of a contest.
• The Final Destination 3-D home-media package with lenticular slipcase and two pairs of red/cyan 3-D glasses, an official New Line/Warner-era collectible presentation.

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