Case Study - The Final Destination

The Final Destination

• According to USA Today and Newsday, Final Destination 4 debuted at the top of the North American box office, beating Rob Zombie's Halloween II, by earning $28.3 million during its first weekend.
• First movie to be filmed in high definition and 3D.
• Box Office earnings - $186,167,139

Broadcast

• The film was marketed specifically towards young adults and teenagers, videogames such as Saint's Row 2 and Skate 2 featured in-game posters advertising the film.
• The HD and 3D capabilities of the film were greatly empasised in trailers, 3D is a huge part of film marketing nowadays, especially when it comes to big budget blockbusters such as The Final Destination. HD and 3D are mostly targeted at casual moviegoers, in the film world many movie aficionados denounce 3D and HD as marketing gimmicks however to the casual moviegoer who is less informed of this debate HD and 3D may well be effective ways of persuasion to watch a movie.
• The theatrical trailer on YouTube has over 1,300,000 views.

Print

• Review of The Final Destination from The Guardian "Time, once again, to set the nail-guns teetering on a high shelf, perhaps in a classroom full of six-year-olds. This, incredibly, is the fifth Final Destination movie, and we might not be finished yet. Never has the first word in a title been more inappropriate. Fans of this franchise know precisely what to expect, and the film delivers it with wit and flair. The Final Destination movies are like inspired Kentucky Fried Movie sketches, but also like deadpan satires of a particular sub-genre they invented in the first place. As ever, the idea is that a bunch of attractive young people, plus one or two hilarious oldies and uglies, somehow escape dying in a spectacular accident and then Death, furious at being cheated of his bounty, picks off the survivors, one by one, in a series of bizarre freak accidents. This being a 3D movie, there are loads of sharp objects flying directly out of the screen. A group of youthful interns are employed at a drab office, presided over by a managerial nerd, adjoining a factory shopfloor. (So to the list of American institutions indirectly influenced by Ricky Gervais we can now add the Final Destination movies.) They go off on a team-building "retreat" on a coach, but just as they drive over a suspension bridge, one of their number has a vision of everyone dying as the bridge collapses. He gets most of them off before it happens, and this collapse scene is quite spectacular. Things progress from there. This film will do nothing for those people intending to have laser surgery for short sight".
• The Final Destination poster

The Final Destination is another movie that knows its audience and markets the film very specifically. The image of the human face being shot at through glass is an accurate representation of the gruesome and graphic ways that people die in Final Destination movies, nobody ever dies of natural causes or an everyday occurence, instead peoples deaths are caused in ridiculous and impossible scenarios, like an incredibly violent variation of the game 'Mouse Trap'. The poster makes it clear that the this will be a typical Final Destination movie with over the top death scenes so fans of the movies will recognise the iconography and want to see the latest installment of a franchise that they enjoy.

E-Media

• Two trailers for the movie are on YouTube, one has 1,300,000 views, the other has nearly 3 million views.
• The film has a fan site: Final Destination Wiki - http://finaldestination.wikia.com/wiki/The_Final_Destination
• The website includes a plot summary, trivia and information on characters and the actors who played them.
• The website also has a large community aspect with links to blogs about the movie, people can also vote on Top Ten Lists such as 'Top 10 Best Death Scenes' and 'Top 10 Characters Who Shouldn't Have Died'.
• Online review sites rated the movie mostly poorly or average.  

-IMDB -5.0
- Rotten Tomatoes - 30% approval rating - "With little of the ingenuity of previous instalments The Final Destination is predictable, disposable horror fare".