This Traumatizing, Gory Final Destination Death Still Haunts My Dreams (2025)

Love them or hate them, one thing the Final Destination series does better than any other horror franchise is actively create new fears in people. Few of us have to worry about chainsaw-wielding maniacs or demonic possession, but freak accidents with household objects keep us on high alert after watching these movies. Such objects include tanning beds (probably a good thing), giant sheets of glass, laser eye surgery, swimming pools, and roller coasters. Death is inevitable; the more you run from it, the harder it comes. This is the general ethos of Final Destination, and the concept has been strong enough to sustain itself for five, soon to be six, movies. However, if you were to ask me what my favorite Final Destination death is, that comes in the most recent entry into the franchise, with a death that is both shocking and creative.

People keep coming back to see the expendables running from the Reaper get killed in new, creative ways. However, 2011's Final Destination 5 was way better than it had any right to be for a fifth film with an entirely new director and writer. Director Steven Quale and writer Eric Heissen did incredible work with the franchise. It has the same basic premise of death following a group of unfortunate souls who avoid a disaster. They kept the strengths of the franchise while improving on the weaknesses. The characters are well-written and brought to life by a strong cast, and the deaths are still deeply terrifying. One of which has kept me away from gymnastics ever since I saw it... not that I was any good at it in the first place.

The Uneven Bars Of Doom Is An Iconic Horror Kill

The focus and victim of the scene is Candice (Ellen Wroe), a secondary character and girlfriend to Peter (Miles Fisher), both of them on death's hit list after avoiding a bridge collapse. She's a gymnast who trains in a room full of occupational health and safety violations. People flip and cartwheel among loose screws, exposed wires, and leaking pipes. At first, there's a certainty that, as Candice dances on a beam around a fallen screw, she'll slip and fall onto the electrified water below. Not the flashiest way to die, but the scene is tense enough to keep you on edge. However, she makes it off the beam and even dries up the water. She goes to the uneven bars as the audience takes a sigh of relief, but as she spins the structure gets weaker. As another gymnast steps on the screw and slips, a pot of chalk is knocked over, Candice is blinded, loses her grip, and SPLAT! She folds in half like an omelet on the mat, completely snapping her now-exposed spine, killing her instantly.

This Kill Shows The Best Of Final Destination

It is one of the best-paced deaths in any Final Destination movie, and possibly any horror movie. The scene is only four minutes or so in total, but it's agonizingly drawn out. The camera pans around the gym, showing every building block of both the red herring on the beam and the real dangers of the uneven bars. The sound design smothers the audience with a score of Psycho-style string instruments underneath every squeak and drip of water. You feel death and danger all around; even Candice feels a little tense as much as she tries to ignore her troubling intuition. It's a horrifying sensory experience, but you still don't expect death to come so fast and so violently.

Would the gore effects happen in real life? Probably not. Does it still look both cool and awful? Yes. The whole death scene operates like a magic trick, direct and misdirect, not only shocking the audience with that final impact but fooling them while doing it. By the fifth entry, people would go into a Final Destination film generally knowing what to expect. The selling point is that they're going to watch people die in creative and Gorey ways, so it's up to the filmmakers to make each one more surprising and fresh.

Candice's death encapsulates what the most memorable kills of the franchise get right. It sets a mood that makes both the characters and the audience feel as if they're being hunted by something. You know that feeling you experience when you're stressed or freaked out, that everything around you feels malevolent, that every sound is a dangerous omen? That's how this scene makes you feel. Even when the audience's defenses are up as they watch Candice move about the gym, thinking of all the things that could go wrong, that horrible landing happening so quickly makes them jump right out of their seats... and potentially straight to the bathroom to vomit.

Final Destination 5

R

Horror

Mystery

Release Date

August 12, 2011

Director

Steven Quale

Cast

Nicholas D'Agosto , Emma Bell , Miles Fisher , Ellen Wroe , Jacqueline MacInnes Wood , P.J. Byrne

Runtime

95

Writers

Eric Heisserer , Jeffrey Reddick

Studio

New Line Cinema (Warner Bros. Pictures)FInal-destination-5

Final Destination 5 is available to rent on Amazon.

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