The Final Countdown: The Best Final Destination Movie?
The Final Destination movies have taught us that Murphy’s Law works extra hours in our lives. Thanks to the franchise, we have learned to be careful of everything that could cause us a bizarre death: it can happen on the road, in an amusement park, in a swimming pool, in a sauna, and even at the eye doctor. These deaths, which could feature in a new version of “Dumb Ways to Die,” were woven into five highly likable movies between 200-2011. These aren’t the most logical movies, granted, but they do manage to be fun, loaded with gore and humor.
The first question we might ask is how many Final Destination movies are there? The answer, to this point, is five: “Final Destination” (2000), “Final Destination 2” (2003), “Final Destination 3” (2006), “The Final Destination” (2009), and “Final Destination 5” (2011). in the middle of 2024 there should be a sixth film, still untitled. The next question is what is the best and most successful film in The Final Destination Franchise?
To provide the answer to this question, we examined the five films in three parameters: the viwers’ rating (as expressed on the world’s largest film website, IMDB), the critics’ scores, as can be deduced from the ranking on the Rotten Tomatoes website and the total grossings at the box office.
Best Final Destination Movie According To Viewers
You know those series where the first movie is the best, while the sequels get more negative reviews? This is roughly the case for “Final Destination.” The first film is the one that received the highest score (6.7) and also the one with the highest number of users who rated it. After that came the second film in the series, which was also the second in the rating and the number of ratings. The fifth and last film is currently ranked third, with a score of 5.9 given to it by about 120,000 surfers. At the bottom, you will find the third film from 2006 (5.8), although it stars the conquering Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and at the bottom, “Final Destination 4” (5.1).
From these scores, we can conclude that although there is a specific variation in the scores among surfers – the differences are not that significant. Most of the films in the franchise are of an average level, more or less. There are no masterpieces to be recognized here, and on the other hand, no horrible movies either. One can understand those who argue that it is not necessary to see the entire series because it is about the same idea only in slightly different performances, but on the other hand: none of the films here, even in the opinion of the writer of these lines, is a catastrophe. They’re all fun and do the job, more or less.
What was the best Final Destination movie according to the IMDB rating? you’ll find the answer in the following table:
| Ranking | Movie | IMDB Rating | Number of Voters |
| 1 | Final Destination (2000) | 6.7 | 265,000 |
| 2 | Final Destination 2 (2003) | 6.2 | 173,000 |
| 3 | Final Destination 5 (2011) | 5.9 | 120,000 |
| 4 | Final Destination 3 (2006) | 5.8 | 147,000 |
| 5 | The Final Destination (2009) | 5.1 | 110,000 |
Best Final Destination Movie According To Critics: Surprise, Surprise
First, a spoiler that may not surprise you too much: the critics did not fly over the films in the “Final Destination” series. You won’t find overly rated movies here, and it’s easy to see why. Nevertheless, as in many other cases, the critics’ opinions differed significantly from the general public’s. The film critics liked the most, with 62% positive reviews, is the fifth film in the series. The second and third films are ranked in second and third place (48% and 45% positive reviews, respectively). Surprisingly, the critics slaughtered the first film, with only 35% positive reviews. At the bottom of the list, this time similar to the audience’s rating is the fourth film in the franchise (27% positive reviews).
It is important to note that how Rotten Tomato’s “rating” is calculated is problematic. It sets the general tone of the review – positive or negative – and does not put the positive or negative reviews on a scale. Therefore, a film that received positive reviews but “barely” could be ranked higher than a film that a certain percentage of critics think is a masterpiece, but others were less attached to it.
Here is the Final Destination franchise is order of the critic’s rating:
| Ranking | Movie | Tomatometer | Number of Critics |
| 1 | Final Destination 5 (2011) | 62% | 137 |
| 2 | Final Destination 2 (2003) | 48% | 111 |
| 3 | Final Destination 3 (2006) | 45% | 116 |
| 4 | Final Destination (2000) | 35% | 96 |
| 5 | The Final Destination (2009) | 27% | 99 |
Final Destination Movie Performance At The Box Office: Thanks To The 3D
The last step in our review was to see precisely what Final Destination movies did at the box office worldwide. This is a reasonably successful franchise, which is ranked 14th and quite respectable among horror franchises. Among other things, it earned more at the box office than the films “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “The Ring,” “The Exorcist,” and “Insidious” Currently (beginning of 2023), his worldwide income is about 665 million dollars, which is pretty impressive. If the sixth film meets about the same average of about 130 million dollars in worldwide revenue for a movie in the series, the franchise will be able to advance one or two places.
If you look closely, you can see a gap of more than twice as large between the most profitable film in the series: “Final Destination 4”, with over 186 million dollars in grossing, and the weakest film at the box office (“Final Destination 2”, which grossed approx. 90.5 million dollars “only”). The reason for this may be that this film was screened in the highest number of theaters in the United States and also because it was the first to offer viewing in 3D – in the years when this was a novelty and often increased the grossing at the box office, partly because the ticket prices for 3D movies tend to be higher. As we saw earlier, the fifth film, which was the most beloved by the critics, did well with almost 158 million dollars. The third and first films grossed quite similar amounts.
Please note that such statistics don’t consider the changes in ticket prices through the years. If the average ticket price cost in the United States was about 5.6 dollars when the first movie came out, it increased to almost 8 dollars in 2011, when the fifth film was made in a way to the theatres.
Best Final Destination Movie at the box office:
| Ranking | Movie | Worlwide Gross |
| 1 | The Final Destinaion (2009) | 186,167,139$ |
| 2 | Final Destination 5 (2011) | 157,887,643$ |
| 3 | Final Destination 3 (2006) | 117,719,158$ |
| 4 | Final Destination (2000) | 112,880,294$ |
| 5 | Final Destination 2 (2003) | 90,426,405$ |
Should You Watch All Final Destination Movies?
The truth is that according to the rather basic test we did, it is difficult to come to an unequivocal decision about the “Final Destination” films, mainly because there is no unanimity of opinion regarding the level of each of them. The surfers, the visitors, and the numerical data brought different results. It is important to note that in most cases, the differences were not too drastic and, in any case, did not lean in the direction of tremendous success or complete failure.
Our conclusion is quite clear: since each of the films stands on its own and is quite enjoyable, and against the background of the fact that there is a sixth film to come, you should make the relatively simple efforts to see all Final Destination movies (assuming that you connect to the genre and are not looking for logic, of course ). Even if you don’t see the masterpieces of 2000s horror cinema this way, at worst, you can get some ideas for weird deaths you’ll want to avoid. Caution never killed anyone.
