Warning: Spoilers abound!
Trigger warning: gore, blood, violence
The Final Destination franchise has always put more effort into death sequences than the actual plot. All five movies — plus the upcoming addition to the franchise, Final Destination: Bloodlines — follow a standard formula: someone experiences a premonition, saves a slew of people, and cheats death. Death, out for revenge, starts picking off the survivors one by one.
This is when the franchise does what it does best. The deaths in Final Destination are wild enough that you couldn’t imagine them happening to you, but also grounded enough to leave you suspicious of your kitchen knives and ceiling fans once the credits roll. It’s the perfect mix of catharsis and anxiety.
Ahead of the latest installment in the franchise, Final Destination: Bloodlines coming out this week, we’re ranking the most inventive, shocking, and horrifying deaths in the franchise — from the least to the most over-the-top.
Death by Fence (‘Final Destination 2’)
Rory Peters (Jonathan Cherry), the resident stoner, avoids death in the Route 23 crash thanks to Kimberly Corman’s (A.J. Cook) vision. But his luck runs out when a dropped cigarette ignites a gas trail, triggering a van explosion that launches a barbed wire fence, cutting Rory into three clean pieces.
Death by Fire Escape Ladder (‘Final Destination 2’)
Evan Lewis (David Paetkau) wins the lottery and survives the Route 23 crash — but luck only goes so far. After accidentally sparking a fire in his apartment, a frantic chain of events unfolds: his hand gets stuck in the sink, flames spread, and he barely escapes through a jammed fire escape. Just when he thinks he’s safe, he slips on the spaghetti he’d tossed out earlier, falls onto glass, and is impaled through the eye by the collapsing escape ladder.
Death by Escalator (‘Final Destination 4’)
In a premonition, Lori Milligan (Shantel VanSanten) and her friends are about to watch a movie at Tagert Theaters. While riding the escalator up, Lori’s shoe gets caught in the elevator. Though she manages to free it without injury, the close call foreshadows the deadly twist waiting for her next. During the movie, a freak gas explosion tears apart the theater, causing the entire audience — Lori included — to run out in a panic. While trying to escape the ensuing fire, Lori’s foot once again gets caught in the escalator: only this time, she’s helplessly dragged into the escalator’s gears, slowly being crushed and twisted into a roll.
Death by Eye Laser (‘Final Destination 5’)
When Olivia Castle (Jacqueline Maclnnes Wood) goes in to have her eye surgery, her head is locked tightly into the machine and her right eye is held wide open with a speculum. When the doctor leaves the room for a minute, a cup of water placed precariously on a water cooler falls onto the laser machine’s outlet. This causes the machine to spark, activating the laser and increasing its intensity. The laser pierces through Olivia’s left eye, melting it off.
Surprisingly, Olivia makes it out of the machine. However, she trips (on a glass eye, no less!) and gets catapulted out of the office window. She falls four stories down and straight onto a parked car, dying instantly.
Death by Glass Pane (‘Final Destination 2’)
After narrowly escaping death by fish at a dentist’s office, Tim Carpenter (James Kirk) thinks he’s out of the woods. But as he steps outside of the office with his mother, a flock of pigeons blocks their path. When Tim tries to shoo the pigeons away, the birds fly and startle a nearby construction worker, causing him to accidentally push a lever with his elbow. The lever releases a giant pane of glass, and Tim can only watch as the pane hurtles toward him, squashing him to death.
Death by Car Engine (‘Final Destination 3’)
While Frankie Cheeks (Sam Easton) sits in his car at a drive-through, blasting music and fiddling with his camcorder, a chain reaction unfolds nearby. A runaway truck slams into the back of the car in front of him, forcing its engine fan to shoot straight through Frankie’s headrest — and his skull — killing him instantly. While the scene is quick, fans can still remember the sound of the car engine grinding against bone.
Death by Gymnastic Bench (‘Final Destination 5’)
Gymnast Candice Hooper’s (Ellen Wroe) death sequence starts with a simple complaint about the gym’s heat. When the AC is fixed, a loose screw falls onto her balance beam, but goes unnoticed. Candice does her routine on the beam, unaware that she’s narrowly missing stepping on the screw. When Candice gets off the beam to move onto the high bars, another gymnast steps on the screw, falling and knocking over a bowl of chalk. The AC fan blows the chalk into Candice’s eye, causing her to lose her balance and fall onto the hard ground with a force so devastating that her spine snaps, folding her legs right over her head.
Death by Rollercoaster (‘Final Destination 3’)
The horror in Final Destination 3 kicks off with a premonition on Devil’s Flight, a rickety rollercoaster at a local fair. As the ride begins, things quickly go wrong: a loose harness, a broken camera, and a faulty track all combine to create disaster. Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) watches helplessly as bolts loosen and safety bars fail mid-ride. One car derails, sending passengers flying. Others are thrown from the coaster or crushed as it crashes into the tracks below.
Death by Elevator Doors (‘Final Destination 2’)
Nora Carpenter (Lynda Boyd) steps into an elevator with fellow Route 23 survivor Eugene Dix (T. C. Carson) and an old man carrying a box of prosthetic limbs. Nora accidentally drops her phone, and as she bends down to pick it up, her hair gets caught on one of the prosthetic’s hooks. Unaware, she tries to exit the elevator when the doors open, only to find that the prosthetic is holding her back. Panicking, she tries to escape, only to have the elevator doors close on her neck. Although Eugene and the old man try to save her, they’re helpless when the elevator pulls Nora upwards, crushing her head and cutting it off completely.
Death by Tanning Bed (‘Final Destination 3’)
When best friends Ashlyn Halperin (Crystal Lowe) and Ashley Freund (Chelan Simmons) head to a tanning salon to get some much-needed R&R in their tanning beds, things instantly go awry when Ashley leaves her ice-cold drink directly on top of the VAC machine controlling their beds. Unaware of what’s about to happen, Ashlyn increases the temperature of their beds. As the two relax in their beds, Ashley’s drink causes the machine to malfunction, raising the heat to a deadly level. When the two girls realize what’s going on, they try to escape, only to find out that they’re locked into their tanning beds. Things get crispy fast, and the two besties are eventually burned alive.
Death by Pool Drain (‘Final Destination 4’)
While at a public swimming pool, Hunt Wynorski (Nick Zano) gets into a small fight with a boy whose water gun destroys Hunt’s phone. Hunt takes the gun and unknowingly puts it on top of the pool’s control box. The gun falls, hitting the lever that controls the pool’s drain, which causes the drain to start sucking up the water. Unaware that something’s amiss, Hunt accidentally drops his lucky coin into the pool. When he dives into the pool to look for it, he gets sucked into the drain. As the draining pressure increases, Hunt can do nothing as his organs are sucked right out of him through his butt.
Death by Log Truck (‘Final Destination 2’)
While driving along Route 23, a massive log truck suddenly loses control when the chains securing the logs break loose. The logs tumble violently onto the highway, squishing drivers unlucky enough to be behind the truck and causing cars to crash into one another. Cars flip and explode in a chaotic sequence of destruction. This catastrophic accident is first seen in a vision by Kimberly Corman, who blocks traffic to prevent others from entering the highway, temporarily saving several lives before death begins targeting the survivors one by one.
