Pod Insights The Big Picture The ‘Final Destination’ Kill Rankings and ‘Bloodlines’ About this episode Sean is joined by Chris Ryan to discuss the flaw in death’s design by covering ‘Final Destination Bloodlines,’ the latest installment in the legendary, violent franchise (2:57). They share why they have such a great affinity for the 'Final Destination' series at large, spoil the movie by highlighting the electrifying kills that define the movie’s success (14:38), and go through every single kill in the entire franchise and rank their personal favorites (31:29).
Host: Sean Fennessey
Guest: Chris Ryan
Producer: Jack Sanders
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Transcript 13,630 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, except we did 120 songs. And now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aughts. 2000 to 2009. The Strokes, Rihanna, J Lo, Kanye, sure. And now the show is called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s. Wow. That's too long a title for me to say anything else right now. Just trust me. That's 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s, preferably on Spotify.
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1:35 Sean Fennessey? This episode is brought to you by State Farm. There's nothing better than having friends who support whatever you're into, like re-watching a director's entire catalog in the lead-up to their latest release. And like those friends, State Farm is there to help you feel supported by helping you choose the coverage you need. With so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you. So you can check coverage off the list and spend more time debating movie rankings. Go online at statefarm.com or use the easily accessible app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
2:15 Sean Fennessey? I'm Sean Fantasy and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the flaw in Death's design. CR is here and today we will be discussing the fantastic success of Final Destination Bloodlines and Rank our favorite kills in this newly revived six film series. But first, Chris, we've just come back from a journey, looking Death right in the eye, actually. How are you feeling?
2:38 Speaker 03 Honestly, I feel fantastic. I think every man in America should be forced to play 90 holes.
2:44 Sean Fennessey? In two and a half days?
2:45 Speaker 03 In two and a half days.
2:46 Sean Fennessey? We did it in Oregon, we're back.
2:48 Speaker 03 That's how we Maha.
2:50 Sean Fennessey? We are, I do feel healthy again.
2:52 Speaker 03 I know.
2:53 Sean Fennessey? I feel like I am rejuvenated, reborn in so many ways.
2:56 Speaker 03 It turns out being hunched over our laptops, furiously, like, reading takes and banging out outlines for movie podcasts is not the healthiest way to live your life.
3:07 Sean Fennessey? I watch zero films on Friday, zero films on Saturday, and zero films on Sunday.
3:12 Speaker 03 That's actually a lie, because I was, well, on Monday you watched.
3:15 Sean Fennessey? On Monday I watched films. I watched not one but two Final Destination movies to prepare for this conversation.
3:20 Speaker 03 Also, you watched Final Destination on a plane.
3:23 Sean Fennessey? I did.
3:23 Speaker 03 Which was incredible. I watched Final Destination on a roller coaster when we got back to Los Angeles.
3:29 Sean Fennessey? Straight to Magic Mountain off the plane.
3:31 Speaker 03 We should say, though, it did feel like Death, who in the earlier Final Destination films, is almost realized as like a
3:39 Sean Fennessey? Almost a character.
3:40 Speaker 03 Figur walking around.
3:41 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
3:41 Speaker 03 As we were driving to a place out on the Oregon coast to play golf out in Banden, we were sitting in the backseat of a large Chevy Suburban and two furiously speeding logging trucks went flying by us in the other direction and it almost felt like Death was with us.
3:58 Sean Fennessey? I fully agree, and you and I in the backseat were making a lot of in-jokes about Final Destination to our two other pals who have probably seen a collective zero minutes of this deranged franchise. But we were looking for every opportunity, every gorge we passed, every plane overhead, every rampant golf cart racing across the landscape. I was thinking, this could be it.
4:19 Speaker 03 And I thought, I think, you know, I have some trouble with forced carries. I'm not the longest driver of the bunch, but... Knowing FDBL was number one at the box office, I think gave me a little boost.
4:33 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, you could say, oh, it's so great. Minecraft sinners were so back, yada, yada. No, we're back. Like, this is the most back you can be when Final Destination Bloodlines, the sixth film in a basically dead horror franchise that was born of the ashes of the Limp Bizkit shitcore 2000s, is making $50 million? Oh, my God. America loves horror. They love to watch teenagers get their throats slashed and their heads cut off. What an amazing country, honestly.
5:03 Speaker 03 I know.
5:03 Sean Fennessey? It's terrible, but it's so good.
5:05 Speaker 03 Do you think that this is like our true id?
5:09 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
5:09 Speaker 03 It's like, this is the thing that we all can agree on, aside from the two guys we were driving around with all weekend. This is the thing that, like, my wife was next to me giggling with glee as people toppled out of space needles and stepped in glass and got their faces run over by lawnmowers. I think that this is actually, I would actually recommend to any fan of cinema, any fan of movies, I would say, you will not remember a single character with the exception of Ally Larder's Clear Rivers character from the early films.
5:42 Sean Fennessey? Clear Rivers.
5:43 Speaker 03 But if you go, you watch this, it's like watching, it's like watching DePaul McCook, man. It's like watching Bertolucci make The Conformist. That's the bloodline I'm talking about. It's pure cinema.
5:55 Sean Fennessey? It really is in so many ways. It's such a strange artifact of a certain time. So the fact that it has come back, you know, the producer of this movie is John Watts, who is best known for directing some very successful Spider-Man movies and the less successful Wolves. I guess he and his wife and producing partner were fans of this series.
6:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, Diana McGonigal. Yeah, so they revived this franchise.
6:17 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, they identified Zach Lipowski and Adam Stein, who got off a script from Guy Busek and Laurie Evans Taylor.
6:24 Speaker 03 And worth noting, Guy Busek also helped revive the Scream franchise with the Radio Silence guys.
6:30 Sean Fennessey? That's right. And so shout out to him because he knows what he's doing because Final Destination Bloodlines. Not only has it been a massive success, $100 million around the world in one weekend, but I think there's a case to be made it's the best movie in the franchise and we can kind of talk through that. What that actually means for this to be the best movie is kind of debatable because as you said, character names and emotional complexity is not really a part of what this is all about. This is a series of movies about near and certain kills. You know, there is just a raft of impending doom awaiting every figure that you meet in these movies. This one's no exception. It's pretty smart though. So the storyline
7:11 Sean Fennessey? is basically a college student is having these recurring nightmares, which is a little bit different from the typical visions that we see ahead of a natural disaster in the previous films, but that leads her to then sort of track down her family history and see the role that her grandmother played in a catastrophic incident some 50 years earlier.
7:31 Speaker 03 At a Space Needle-esque restaurant.
7:33 Sean Fennessey? Yes, the Skyview restaurant. Do we know what city this is taking place in?
7:36 Speaker 03 I read, I read PNW, some sort of Seattle, Portland, possibly Eugene, where we just spent our Monday afternoon.
7:43 Sean Fennessey? Could be. And after she survived this insane event in the 1960s, she's lived her entire life ducking death.
7:51 Speaker 03 Yes.
7:52 Sean Fennessey? And in doing so, her entire family has been able to avoid, you know, death's recompense, basically. And this college student becoming aware of this and encountering her grandmother after so many years, and then later her estranged mother and her cousins, and the way that they all get sucked, literally, into the vortex of pain that this movie series shows us, I thought was a smart twist on it because it gave us some like, it gave you new lore and you didn't have to go revisit any of the first five movies to really get it, but if you are a fan of the franchise, there are a lot of nods.
8:29 Speaker 03 There's a surprising amount of connective tissue in these films. Not only are characters referenced many times, but in the previous, I guess that would have been Final Destination 5, right? Not to spoil the entire franchise, but please just do the work before you listen to this podcast. Well, I believe at the end of five, the main two characters board a plane that becomes the plane crash in Final Destination one. So we find out that Final Destination five is a prequel to Final Destination.
8:58 Sean Fennessey? And that movie came out 14 years ago. And this movie feels like a prequel to that prequel in some ways.
9:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, because it starts the bloodline.
9:05 Sean Fennessey? Right.
9:05 Speaker 03 Because basically Steph, the main character's grandmother, her staying alive, I think, is what has kept death at bay.
9:13 Sean Fennessey? Correct.
9:14 Speaker 03 She lives in a cabin in the woods that she is death-proofed. And then when she and Steph meet, and she was like, okay, like, we're gonna step out and greet the world. She's greeted by death.
9:26 Sean Fennessey? The movie opens, as all of these movies do, with this
9:28 Speaker 03 The premonition.
9:29 Sean Fennessey? Extraordinary premonition. And this one in particular, you could make the case that this is up there with the plane crash in the first film in terms of the scale and the devastation. There's not as many deaths as there are in that first film, but the destruction after the flooring of a glass dance floor in an elevated restaurant cracks, shifting the entire balance of this massive edifice, leading to like dozens of deaths.
9:54 Speaker 03 When we were coming up on that opening sequence, and you saw the Skyview Restaurant for the first time, did you immediately start envisioning like how people were gonna die?
10:06 Sean Fennessey? Pretty much, yeah. I think
10:07 Speaker 03 Part of, one of the most fun things is when the setup starts and you're like, oh, I bet this is gonna happen.
10:12 Sean Fennessey? Well, all of these movies nudge you so specifically toward that feeling of danger, where you can almost always hear an exacerbated sound design where like a piece of wood is breaking, or a bolt is loosening, or there's a jarring sound of a whirring fan or a lawnmower. There's always some machinery that is about to break. And the Skyview Restaurant in particular has a series of events. It's, you know, it's often described as like a Rube Goldberg machine.
10:43 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:43 Sean Fennessey? You know, sort of like the opening segments of Pee-wee Herman's Breakfast, where, you know, you've got the mousetrap circumstance where everything unfurls.
10:53 Sean Fennessey? The, the, the level of creativity in this one is, is just as good as the very best of this franchise. I'm, I'm like kind of surprised and yet not, this also just kind of feels like James Bond or Abbott and Costello movies where I'm like, just give me one of these every four years and I'm gonna enjoy it, you know?
11:06 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
11:07 Sean Fennessey? It's kind of weird that it went away for as long as it did.
11:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, and I, I really appreciate the fact that they make so little gestures towards like making this like an interconnected universe that you have. I mean, like, it, there are obviously like, you know, I think they reference characters in Bloodlines, they reference Clear Rivers, they reference Devin Saw's character from the first one, I believe. A lot of the times people are like, it's the anniversary of the plane crash where that kid had the premonition. But for the most top part, this is like, you go in, you pay your money, you get six kill sequences. There is some chatter in between and then you leave deeply, deeply satisfied with like few exceptions in this franchise. I've seen most of these in the movie theaters, it's kind of making me feel a bit my age that I remember seeing Final Destination
11:53 Speaker 03 when it came out and then also really, really, really loving three.
12:00 Speaker 03 That's Mary Elizabeth Winstead one. Two, I really enjoyed but was pretty stupid, but like we can get into ranking the movies and ranking the kills. Is there other Bloodline stuff you want to get into, like in terms of the story?
12:11 Sean Fennessey? No, I mean, I think if you really want to see this movie and we're not among the paying public in the first weekend, you probably don't want to hear any more about the kills.
12:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:20 Sean Fennessey? But we should talk about the kills in the, in this one and talk about how they work. The, the movies are defined by the kills.
12:24 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:25 Sean Fennessey? They're not defined by character development. And so if the kills are creative and there are a handful in Bloodlines that are as like fun as anything that we've seen, then you're probably gonna dig this movie. This one has, of course, that Skyview instance that we're referring to.
12:38 Speaker 03 Yep.
12:39 Sean Fennessey? When we were in Las Vegas, Amanda and I got a chance to see the 10 minute sequence that takes place in a hospital.
12:46 Speaker 03 Yes.
12:46 Sean Fennessey? That opens with the, um, Attempt to acquire a peanut snack from a vending machine to send one of the characters into kind of anaphylactic shock to stop their heart.
12:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, one of the things you need to know about FD is that if you take a life, you give life. So there's even a very funny morbid moment in this hospital where two characters considered killing a baby to gain that character's lifespan.
13:11 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
13:12 Speaker 03 But what they really decided to do is to do a little Flatliners action where they're gonna like kill a guy, bring him back to life easily. And then they'll like, they'll basically skip the line on death. And the character who has got this idea and who is gonna do, do the running of this patient back and forth is my favorite character in Bloodlines. And I was just about to say his name, but one of the things that I can't do, Sean, is remember the names of any characters in any Final Destination movie outside of like three people.
13:44 Sean Fennessey? I'm happy to tell you his name is Eric Campbell.
13:47 Speaker 03 Okay. And his brother, his half brother is named what?
13:50 Sean Fennessey? Bobby Campbell.
13:51 Speaker 03 Right.
13:51 Sean Fennessey? And they're played by Richard Harmon and Owen Joyner respectively.
13:55 Speaker 03 And Richard Harmon plays Eric?
13:57 Sean Fennessey? Richard Harmon plays Eric.
13:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, I saw some people commenting online that he is, he is very Kyle Gallner coded.
14:02 Sean Fennessey? He is. He's very Final Destination coded. And by that, I mean-
14:06 Speaker 03 Well, Ian McKinley from Final Destination 3 is certainly in this dude's bloodline.
14:11 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, there's a kind of like-
14:13 Speaker 03 Goth hipster.
14:14 Sean Fennessey? Urban outfitters, goth, like dipshit that is just kind of recurs in these movies. There's always a guy-
14:20 Speaker 03 They're my favorite guys.
14:21 Sean Fennessey? Jet black hair, earrings, nose ring, lot of tattoos, eye black.
14:28 Sean Fennessey? And, and just like a generally bad attitude towards the world.
14:31 Speaker 03 Is either really cynical about everything, or is like, this is exactly confirming my worldview that death is like hunting us?
14:38 Sean Fennessey? Yes. I mean, and these movies are very post Scream. So like you said, with Guy Buzik having a writing credit on this, these films being revived in the aftermath of the Scream revival and in the same summer when I Know What You Did Last Summer is coming, like that roughly late 90s through mid 2000s wave of horror kind of brought horror back. I mean, horror in the early 90s was not great.
14:59 Speaker 03 When the last, I mean, I do this pretty frequently anyway, but when the last Scream came out, my wife and I went on a crazy deep dive, you know, of like all the horror we could find from the late 90s. And this definitely was a throwback of like, basically like-
15:18 Speaker 03 Broads wearing very little. Guys who are absolute dirtbag scumbags.
15:24 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
15:25 Speaker 03 Two normal people at the center of it, but they're just inexplicably surrounded by the worst fucking friends in the whole world, but they're just so enjoyable, like the group dynamic.
15:35 Sean Fennessey? These movies are really gnarly, but they're also really silly. Like the wave that you're talking about that includes like, you know, urban legends and then ultimately what I think kind of culminated in Platinum Dunes or sort of reviving all of the classics Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Last House on the Left. Those movies were really grim. They were stylish, but they were really violent and nasty. The Final Destination movies are really fun and this movie, Bloodlines, captures the fun aspect of it. And this kill that we're talking about that takes place in the hospital is just tremendously creative and strange and gross.
16:07 Speaker 03 Let's for, we've given our spoiler warning. Let's describe what happens to Eric.
16:11 Sean Fennessey? They capture the peanut snack.
16:14 Speaker 03 And it's worth noting that Eric is a big fan of body art and piercing.
16:17 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
16:18 Speaker 03 He is a, he's a tattoo artist and a piercer himself. Um, lower down on the professional ladder than maybe he would like to be, but he, we find has many body piercings, including ones we didn't know about, like the ones in his nipples and the ones in his dick.
16:32 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
16:33 Speaker 03 And when the MRI machine is turned on to what I did not know existed, which is research level, it apparently emits a fucking Magneto in Genosha level tractor beam and rips all of the rings out of this dude's body. And then when his dick ring gets yanked, he himself flies into the MRI machine.
16:56 Sean Fennessey? In part because a wheelchair is also sucked into the machine, carrying him forward.
17:01 Speaker 03 Yes, but he goes dick first into the MRI machine and gets folded up and sucked in. And then while all this is happening, Bobby finally gets his hands on his EpiPen, stabs himself, comes back to life, stands up, the nurse opens the door and what decapitates him?
17:20 Sean Fennessey? The ring from the vending machine that has been broken and shoots through the glass and is sucked towards the MRI machine into his forehead and murders him.
17:32 Sean Fennessey? Now, they showed us this scene in Las Vegas at CinemaCon. And in the immediate aftermath of that, the head of New Line said, "See you at the Oscars." It was easily the funniest thing that was uttered at that entire convention. You know, CinemaCon is just full of 50-something theater owners. Some of them, I'm sure, loved it, and some of them are absolutely horrified. But when they showed us that scene, I was like, "This isn't gonna be a top 20 movie of the year for me." Like, there's just no way. You can just tell when you have a handle on these kinds of kills, that they're very, very comfortable with what they're doing.
18:01 Speaker 03 It doesn't really overwork itself, too, because one of my favorite things to compile is reactions to deaths in Final Destination from other characters, which is often either incredibly funny or way over dramatic. So it's either like lots of tears and then a rainy funeral, or characters are like, "No!" And then instantly are like just going on with their lives. It's like, at any given point, anything that's ever happened in a Final Destination movie would be the craziest and worst thing that ever happened in my life. And I would be in therapy, I would be taking like sabbaticals from my job. These people are all like, "Oh, God, I guess I have to go back to school the next day,
18:43 Speaker 03 even though a nail gun exploded my girlfriend's skull."
18:48 Sean Fennessey? It's completely true, and it's because, in addition to being these killfests, the movies are sort of these tiny little detective stories, where the protagonist of the story needs to sort of hunt out the truth of the order of the deaths.
19:00 Speaker 03 They're doubted at first. Everybody's just like, "You're crazy. You probably had something to do with this NASCAR race going wrong." And then they ultimately, I mean, it's a really ingenious little idea, where like at the premonition, you know, so this person experiences their vision, and then they save kind of a random collection of people who listen to them or happen to step aside or get caught up in, you know, whatever. And so what you're left with is a kind of ragtag group of people who aren't actually friends or don't really believe each other. So they're always like, "I'll be doing this on my own, thank you very much," as they walk into like a plane of glass.
19:39 Sean Fennessey? It's an ingenious little design. In addition to that kill in Bloodlines, there's an extremely memorable family barbecue sequence, which is spotlight in the trailer, if people haven't seen it. It features a stray piece of glass and the way that it kind of like skips around the backyard and signaling that someone is going to get ensnared by this little shard of glass.
20:00 Speaker 03 And let's just say something here. This family has been afflicted with multiple instances of incredible mental health struggles. The grandmother is living in a death proof cabin. Steph's mother abandoned her at a young age because she wanted to take death away from her. There is like a very interesting mixture of, of, of families, but like adoptions and like all these kids, but they're all like high school, college age. And I have never seen so many like frozen margaritas and beers getting popped at a party with like 19 year olds.
20:37 Sean Fennessey? It's a really good point. There's some young kids there.
20:39 Speaker 03 He has all of his kids making blended drinks. Now, they also all may like, I think the actors may all be like 32 and I maybe it just, but it just threw me off that it was like, they just come from their grandmother's funeral. And they were in a sunny garden getting like plowed like the next beat. And, and the dad is just like, wow, we're all together.
21:02 Sean Fennessey? This is what it's all about. This is what it's all about. Family and getting fucking killed. The kill related to the, to the glass is also awesome. A lawnmower yet again wreaks havoc in this series. Not the first time a lawnmower has triggered a truly gruesome death in this franchise. And then there are a few others in the film that are, you know, very effective. The trash compactor in particular is very funny because of the way that it is predicted. If not, there, there's not a premonition per se. There's more like the understanding that in fact she may have a power that many characters exhibit in the series.
21:36 Speaker 03 She has got a clarity about death's design that is pretty unprecedented in this film. So she can tell something is going to happen with a leaf blower and a soccer ball. And a trash truck. And it's just, she gets it in the wrong sequence and with the wrong person.
21:51 Sean Fennessey? Kind of a little homage to Star Wars: A New Hope there as well. Did you notice that?
21:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's right. And Julie winds up getting her melon exploded by a trash compactor in the back of a trash truck.
22:00 Sean Fennessey? Yes. If you're into heads being crushed, this is really the franchise for you. There are a few other ones. There's a particular callback at the very end of the movie. That is extremely amusing. The other thing is when these movies end, they tend to end on the most utterly brutal death. And then a hard cut to black, followed by some anonymous rock band being like, yeah.
22:25 Speaker 03 I think you can spoil it because it's one of the things that's been emergent in the discourse around Final Destination. Is the power of the premonition in FD2.
22:35 Sean Fennessey? Mm hmm.
22:36 Speaker 03 Uh, so that is the logging truck. Before mentioned, Sean and I driving by those logging trucks and just being like, what if this is it?
22:42 Sean Fennessey? Yep, we were in FT town.
22:44 Speaker 03 Uh, I still to this day, when I'm driving on the five, like, am fixated on what is in the back of a truck. And thinking about what would happen if a refrigerator jostled loose from this pickup and went flying into my face. The logging highway truck thing has gotten so big, I think, in the minds of people who watch these movies. That now it seems like the logging truck is taking on a character of its own and is popping up in the films. And especially in Bloodlines at the end.
23:12 Sean Fennessey? It's because the logs have become a character. Like it is, it is one of the best in-jokes that is actually an essential part of telling the story. So before we get into the actual kills across the series themselves, I do want to cite a few more things that recur throughout the franchise. Because this is in some ways like Star Wars as well. There is an extended kind of cinematic mythology.
23:32 Speaker 03 A lot like Star Wars.
23:35 Sean Fennessey? It certainly gets me excited.
23:37 Speaker 03 Should we pitch Disney? Well, who does these movies? Warner Brothers.
23:41 Sean Fennessey? Well, it's Warner Brothers now, yes.
23:42 Speaker 03 Another Mike and Pam triple, you know?
23:45 Sean Fennessey? I mean, they're crushing it.
23:46 Speaker 03 They're so good.
23:46 Sean Fennessey? They're, they're actually exactly what movies needed. I don't really know what else to say. The biggest hit of the, the biggest movie of the year for kids. The biggest movie of the year for adults. And the biggest movie of the year for shit lords. Like, that's their three for three.
24:01 Speaker 03 Do you think we should pitch them on a Max, an HBO streaming series? That's like the Andor of Final Destination? Like the heady revolutionary, in-depth, novelistic take on what's happening in between the kills.
24:16 Sean Fennessey? I want like, um, the Celine Siama version, you know, where she like really explores a relationship between a mother and a daughter that culminates in them both being decapitated. That's really what I'm most interested in. There's a lot of different ways you could go with these films. I'm really glad that.
24:29 Speaker 03 Honestly, Portrait of a Lady on Fire would be a good kill.
24:33 Sean Fennessey? Very good point. There's, there are several burnings in these movies as well. So I mentioned that like, this really comes out of a very discreet time in history that I'm sure many of the listeners of this show were very young for. I remember not very fondly culturally, when flip phones hit the world.
24:50 Speaker 03 Yep.
24:52 Sean Fennessey? Rap rock.
24:53 Speaker 03 Creed was on the charts.
24:54 Sean Fennessey? Yes, was all the rage. Stained and Limp Bizkit and Powerman 5000 and lots and lots of bands like that disturbed. And this idea of like, everything being kind of shitty and happy about it.
25:11 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:12 Sean Fennessey? Kind of smugness in our own filth. Um, and the film, this franchise is a pre nine 11 franchise. It launches in 2000.
25:20 Speaker 03 It is.
25:20 Sean Fennessey? And it, you know, really launches.
25:22 Speaker 03 The War on Terror had a profound impact on Final Destination.
25:25 Sean Fennessey? But my point is, is that it launches with a plane crash.
25:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:28 Sean Fennessey? And it probably doesn't exist if the movie has to wait one year. You wouldn't build a horror franchise on the back of a plane crash in the fall of 2021.
25:38 Speaker 03 Yes.
25:38 Sean Fennessey? But in 2000, it was like, this is great. We're going to kill a bunch of teenagers in a plane crash.
25:44 Speaker 03 And it did tap into when you re-watch Final Destination 1, I remember, when did it come out? It came out in 2000?
25:52 Sean Fennessey? Yes, 2000.
25:53 Speaker 03 I remember re-watching it on DVD after, I can't believe I'm saying this, after nine 11 and just being like, man, it does hit different. And it does like, you do get a little bit more nervous about, you know, I think now my consciousness of flights has gone like all the way back around to where I'm like, as long as I just arrived somewhere. But there was like a solid couple of years there where I was like, wanted to see the mechanic and be like, did you, did you give this a good once-over?
26:19 Sean Fennessey? Sure, sure.
26:20 Speaker 03 Tighten this up? The lug nuts are all good? Uh, and it's wild that that's what, I mean, I still think I'm more scared of roller coasters than I am planes because of these films.
26:31 Sean Fennessey? Well, bridge disaster is a personal fear of mine.
26:33 Speaker 03 Is it really?
26:34 Sean Fennessey? It is, yeah.
26:34 Speaker 03 We can get into that in a second. So keep going through the hallmarks here.
26:37 Sean Fennessey? So one, almost all of these movies are centered on one, if not more, disenchanted teenagers. And they all ultimately avoid like a very grisly death. And then that leads to them coming together. Most of these kids are very attractive, but they're kind of awful. There's usually one woman, occasionally a man, but usually one woman who seems like a decent person at the center of the story. Maybe not, you know, the valedictorian of their class, but like a normal girl. And for whatever reason, all of her friends and her, you know, her girlfriend's boyfriend who died tragically, you know, wants to fuck her too. But they all kind of deserve to die. So you don't really have to worry too much about getting too invested in them because you know, when you start, these kids are doomed.
27:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:21 Sean Fennessey? They all have to relearn the premise of the film. So in the first film, Devon Sawa's character, along with Ali Larder, kind of discover the arc of death.
27:28 Speaker 03 Yes.
27:28 Sean Fennessey? You know, the fact that death exists and the death is kind of taking his or her time.
27:32 Speaker 03 That there's an order to death.
27:34 Sean Fennessey? Plowing through the order that he has set. But when you watch two and three and four and five, they all have the same realization at roughly the end of the first act and beginning of the second act.
27:44 Speaker 03 This is why local journalism matters. Honestly, like we need storytellers.
27:48 Sean Fennessey? And a lot of the time it's usually like, I've just found this story on microfiche from the Seattle New Times. It appears there was a girl in 2000 who was decapitated. This girl set off the flaw in death's design. You know, like they always are repeating. It's like a local news story.
28:03 Speaker 03 I have to admit though, I, I find that when I try to tell you about stories that I've read, you're either dubious or you're like, sounds good. Thanks for letting me know.
28:13 Sean Fennessey? But you've always sourced it from Truth Social. I'm like, I can't trust you on this.
28:16 Speaker 03 I think when I told you about the Qatari plane, you were like, okay, man.
28:19 Sean Fennessey? No, that's not true. I just said I didn't know about that.
28:21 Speaker 03 But if I was like, Sean, did you hear about this bridge collapse? I think death is embodied in like a wisp of wind that surrounds us. And that there's like a, like there's like an order to like, who's going to die next? So just be careful out there. Would you think, would want me committed? Would you think that I was telling you the truth? What?
28:43 Sean Fennessey? I would probably just go home and be like, Eileen Ciara was a little off today. I don't know, I don't know what kind of, maybe the milk was spoiled in his coffee? Not sure. What, you take oat milk?
28:52 Speaker 03 Oat milk, yeah.
28:53 Sean Fennessey? We talked about this a lot over the weekend. So that premonition that they see of the natural disaster usually leads to these five or six teenagers avoiding this disastrous event, which then leads to this kind of unfurling of death's plan where one by one, these characters are killed. But before they're killed, there's always some sort of cosmic metaphysical sign. Wind swirling, those ratcheted up noises, a radio on the fritz.
29:20 Speaker 03 And one of these kids being like, "It's not my time to die, see?"
29:26 Sean Fennessey? Right, right before a helicopter blade slices them.
29:28 Speaker 03 I tricked death!
29:31 Sean Fennessey? You'll also see a lot of accidental dripping on electrified devices.
29:35 Speaker 03 That's honestly the laziest part, is a lot of, a lot of the liquid so that the guy slips and accidentally hangs himself stuff. I'm more of a like, "Put me in a Home Depot and just let me see what happens."
29:47 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, you just, you never want to see somebody plug anything in in this movie.
29:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
29:51 Sean Fennessey? You know, if somebody plugs something into a wall outlet, that person's getting fried. And if not, that's just the setup for the fake out, which is the other thing that you see. It's, it makes these movies a little less fun to watch, I think to identify all of these things. But watching them in succession, as I did, it's very clear that there is a very specific rhythm to how they show us these deaths.
30:11 Speaker 03 Final Destination Bloodlines has a really great fake out in the barbecue scene where there is, somebody has left a rake underneath a trampoline. And multiple people are just bouncing up and down on this old, worn out trampoline. And finally, a character is just like, "Wait!" and spots the rake. But it's such a tease, because I really wanted to know what happens when you hit a rake while you're on a trampoline.
30:40 Sean Fennessey? It's a really good question.
30:41 Speaker 03 Does it just get your foot? Does it go flying out?
30:43 Sean Fennessey? I don't know. I think foot pain comes second to eye pain. You know, eye pain, the idea of like a needle going into the eye is terrifying. But then following by like a shard of glass or rake going through your foot. That's a problematic one. The fake out is always followed within a minute by a gnarly unforeseen kill.
31:02 Speaker 03 Yes.
31:02 Sean Fennessey? And usually not the character that you were expecting it to be. This usually comes as well with a counterintuitively peppy pop song soundtrack in the circumstance. I was reminded of this last night while I watched the final destination, the fourth film in the franchise. When why can't we be friends is blaring out of a tow truck? While a racist is dragged down the street after trying to put a cross on a black man's.
31:25 Speaker 03 I forgot Michael T. Williams.
31:26 Sean Fennessey? Michael T. Williams's front yard.
31:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:28 Sean Fennessey? Again, this was the fourth film in the franchise where they decided to introduce white supremacy. So this is a fucking crazy franchise. There's like, oh yeah, by the way, this, you know, B tier character is a hardcore racist.
31:40 Speaker 03 He's in the KKK, yeah.
31:43 Sean Fennessey? And then just, you know, the number one signature of the franchise is wildly elaborate gruesome death. That is the thing, death after death after death. You know, you're watching Final Destination.
31:54 Speaker 03 I have one more note, just to characterize, like to kind of just embellish on your thing about the mean spirited characters and the guys listening to Biscuit. Some true Chester the molester scumbag behavior on the part of the male characters. Guys who I feel like were early adopters of internet pornography.
32:12 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
32:13 Speaker 03 And there's most of the first three films are like guys named Frankie Cheeks trying to take digital photography upskirts of women as they get on roller coasters.
32:24 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
32:24 Speaker 03 And be like, eh, and then they get fucking killed so hard. But it's really funny to go back and revisit this level of like, of like commercial misogyny.
32:35 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
32:35 Speaker 03 Not to sound like a snowflake about FD. I'm like, I actually enjoy it. It's not like anybody gets out of these movies, so it's pretty funny.
32:42 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, it's, what is the name of the American Pie character?
32:47 Sean Fennessey? Sherman.
32:48 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
32:48 Sean Fennessey? The Shermanator.
32:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
32:49 Sean Fennessey? There's like, everyone is kind of the Shermanator on this movie. And that was an archetype. That was an archetype we were growing up and they managed to find a way to kill all these kids. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not so great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that, bull spend. Instead, why not invest in what looks good to your CFO? LinkedIn Ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. Reach the right buyers with LinkedIn Ads. You can target by company, industry, job title and more. So cut the bull spend, advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you.
33:32 Sean Fennessey? Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. That's LinkedIn.com/thebigpicture. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by the Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo. The Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo is built for travel. You can earn rewards wherever you book, your favorite hotel site, your go-to airline and more. You get five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants and other travel and one point on other purchases. Whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway from booking your stay to that first meal when you arrive, you're turning your trips into rewards with the Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo. Learn more at WellsFargo.com/autographjourney. Terms apply.
34:17 Sean Fennessey? This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail-biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime. So let's go through the kills.
34:42 Speaker 03 Okay.
34:43 Sean Fennessey? So six films total.
34:45 Speaker 03 Do you want to just do?
34:46 Sean Fennessey? Let's idea two favorite from each.
34:48 Speaker 03 Okay.
34:49 Sean Fennessey? And, and have a little personal vote. And then I think we should take those six and, and rank those top six from each film. Sound good?
34:56 Speaker 03 Yes.
34:56 Sean Fennessey? So FD1, of course, you've got the plane crash. Plane crash is extremely dramatic. It's easily the highest death toll in the history of this franchise. 287 people die on that plane in that opening sequence. It includes a high school class that Devon Sawa and Ali Lard.
35:14 Speaker 03 Doing a mercy French.
35:15 Sean Fennessey? And a few handful of kids avoid right on their way to Paris. So there's one. There's a very famous bathroom chokeout.
35:23 Speaker 03 I think this probably has to go in because of the elaborate nature of it. I think it shows you a lot of, it's got the fake out. It's got the liquid on the floor. It's got a little bit of the like, death is right behind him. He can't see.
35:37 Sean Fennessey? It kind of invents the franchise in a way. Cause the franchise is always open with these big, multi-person kills, but they're defined by the single act, the single, you know, mousetrap kill. This one's pretty good. Todd, R I P.
35:51 Speaker 03 Todd, R I P.
35:53 Sean Fennessey? Any, any other ones you want to cite?
35:54 Speaker 03 Just before we go off of Todd's death, that then concludes, Todd and his brother have now been killed in the first 30 minutes of this movie. And we do get one scene with their dad being like, goddamn you, Alex.
36:08 Speaker 03 And then he disappears, which is the same thing that happens in Bloodlines. Is that the woman whose entire family has been decimated? Like has never seen again.
36:17 Sean Fennessey? It's a good point.
36:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, the mom, Brenda.
36:18 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
36:19 Speaker 03 She's just gonna stay with her sister or something.
36:23 Speaker 03 All of her children die.
36:25 Sean Fennessey? That's a really good point. We never see her again, just cause she's not a part of the Bloodlines.
36:29 Speaker 03 We should check on Brenda. She's had like, probably the worst.
36:32 Sean Fennessey? Right, her husband and all three of her children are dead.
36:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, and she also revealed to one of those children that she had a.
36:38 Sean Fennessey? He was adopted.
36:40 Sean Fennessey? That was a great twist, dude. These movies are fucking great. Other deaths and one that I enjoy, uh, especially the train moment.
36:49 Speaker 03 For Billy?
36:49 Sean Fennessey? Billy, Sean William Scott's character takes.
36:52 Speaker 03 Billy Hitchcock.
36:53 Sean Fennessey? Takes, after a speeding train, um, nearly misses Alex. Billy is decapitated by shrapnel as the train races by. Moments before that, he says he wants to live to see the Jets win a Super Bowl.
37:07 Sean Fennessey? For the record, the first film takes place on Long Island. I've never felt more seen than Billy being killed.
37:12 Speaker 03 Is he wearing an Islanders jersey the entire movie?
37:14 Sean Fennessey? I think he is.
37:17 Sean Fennessey? Just want to note that this film was made in 2000. The Jets have not been to the Super Bowl since this movie was made. Actually, I haven't been to the Super Bowl in 60 years.
37:25 Speaker 03 Oh my god.
37:26 Sean Fennessey? I really enjoyed Billy. And then the the conclusion of the film is the introduction of this idea of like the end kill.
37:32 Speaker 03 Yes.
37:32 Sean Fennessey? You know, the heart, the fade to black kill.
37:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:34 Sean Fennessey? Which comes when Carter saves Alex's life, the Devon Sawa character, which means it skips Alex and then immediately Carter is crushed by a giant sign in Paris.
37:44 Speaker 03 Um.
37:45 Sean Fennessey? Two hundred and ninety-four deaths total.
37:48 Speaker 03 The plane takes up a lot.
37:49 Sean Fennessey? The plane takes up, yeah.
37:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:51 Sean Fennessey? There's only actually six kills in the movie, otherwise. Which sounds like a lot, but it's weirdly not a lot.
37:56 Speaker 03 This is gonna sound weird, but this movie is almost a little bit more like thrillery. Like even the plane crash is like kind of finchery, where it's like everything is insert shots of like a bolt loosening or like the vent. It's a really good job of depicting that feeling you get when you walk on and the plane is a little decrepit.
38:14 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
38:15 Speaker 03 You ever get on and you're just like, man, the carpet's not-
38:16 Sean Fennessey? Are you saying something about the flight yesterday?
38:18 Speaker 03 No, I just mean that you can tell sometimes when this is a plane from like two thousand and six, you know?
38:24 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
38:24 Speaker 03 Or ninety-eight or whatever.
38:26 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, I mean, one other thing that the film, the first film does is every character is named after a significant figure in horror history. So you've got Alex Browning, the Sawa character, after Todd Browning. You've got Valerie Luton as the teacher, after Val Luton, the famous horror film producer. You've got Billy Hitchcock, of course, a very recognizable one. You've got Terry Chaney, Lon Chaney. You've got, you know, lots and lots, Larry Murnau. You've got like all of these examples of great cinematic horror meisters being recognized in these films. And these films are weird, they're weirdly like, they're junky, but they're perfect, you know? Like, and that is also a great tradition of horror, this sort of like exploitation, low-budget movie that just kind of has something special in its DNA. Okay, so for the first film.
39:09 Speaker 03 Let's go-
39:09 Sean Fennessey? You say bathroom, you say Todd?
39:11 Speaker 03 I say Todd. Do you want to put plane crash or train shrapnel? I think plane crash has to be in there because it's so important.
39:17 Sean Fennessey? I agree.
39:18 Speaker 03 All right, so the first two, Todd and the plane crash.
39:19 Sean Fennessey? Okay, Final Destination Two.
39:21 Speaker 03 Oh, my god.
39:22 Sean Fennessey? I can't even really remember the plot of this movie very well. Obviously, it hinges on this extraordinary car crash sequence.
39:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, and because of where it takes place. So basically, this woman, who's the main girl character, is it Nora or something like that?
39:37 Sean Fennessey? That sounds right.
39:39 Speaker 03 I don't know, but she has a vision as she's about to pull into a highway to go on a road trip with her girlfriend and two of the worst guys of all time.
39:49 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
39:50 Speaker 03 Which I guess are their boyfriends.
39:51 Sean Fennessey? Kimberly.
39:52 Speaker 03 Kimberly, sorry.
39:52 Sean Fennessey? Kimberly Corman, named after Roger Corman.
39:54 Speaker 03 Now, she sees this incredible accident take place where a logging truck has an accident, loses all of its timber. That everybody gets decapitated, there are people on fire who then get hit by trucks. There's a really, like, bitchy ad woman who's like smoking Virginia Slims, she dies, all this stuff. So the premonition brings together a very interesting, diverse group of people, including the coked-out guys at Burke.
40:21 Sean Fennessey? Mm-hmm.
40:21 Speaker 03 What's his name?
40:22 Sean Fennessey? Thomas Burke.
40:23 Speaker 03 Thomas Burke?
40:25 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, it's just, it's an odd collection of people, very different from most of the other movies. It's like more of a ragtag.
40:31 Speaker 03 Because usually, it's like, oh, it's a high school class that's brought together somehow.
40:34 Sean Fennessey? Exactly, and this one features, I mean, the logging sequence is, I think, the signature sequence in the whole series. It still is incredibly effective, and I think what I'd forgotten is usually these characters have these extraordinary premonitions, and then they see some of the chaos, but not necessarily all of the chaos.
40:51 Speaker 03 Yes.
40:51 Sean Fennessey? For example, in the first film, they see the plane crash in the distance through a window after it actually transpires. In the race car crash that we'll talk about from The Final Destination.
41:02 Speaker 03 Which is four, right?
41:04 Sean Fennessey? Yes. They don't actually witness it, they only witness the carnage of people piling out of the stadium.
41:10 Speaker 03 And then one, the woman who's standing there, and then the tire comes at her.
41:13 Sean Fennessey? Tough beat.
41:14 Speaker 03 So for the logging, this is goaded Hall of Fame, I think everybody kind of agrees, it's the best premonition. It's got a great. Follow up like button kill where they think that they've escaped everything and her friends are still inexplicably sitting in the Jeep and the another truck like just completely mows them down and kills them. Funny to see Justine Machado, uh, who has gone on to bigger and better things as like a random pregnant lady in this. Not a lot, I would say with the exception of Ally Larter, not a lot of, and Sean William Scott of people going on to great things after a Final Destination movie.
41:49 Sean Fennessey? Hmm. Well, there's, there's a notable exception in three.
41:54 Speaker 03 Well, yeah.
41:54 Sean Fennessey? Uh, we'll get to her. Uh, so the logging to me is a clear cut one A. Um, additional kills, the terrace ladder, which is presaged by a dramatic escape from a burning kitchen in which several appliances go haywire.
42:13 Speaker 03 Is this is also where that guy has his hand in his, uh, food disposal drain for like a solid two minutes where you're like, this is going to be so epic when this disposal somehow goes on.
42:24 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
42:24 Speaker 03 And he loses his hand and then whatever happens.
42:26 Sean Fennessey? And it never happens.
42:26 Speaker 03 Then they just fake you out.
42:27 Sean Fennessey? It's a perfect fake out. And then ultimately he escapes his burning kitchen only to be laid on his back as his, the terrace ladder in his building slides all the way down to within, I'd say about a foot of his eye and stops.
42:42 Speaker 03 Do you know one of the craziest things about this country is that I, I do feel like anecdotally, like when I used to go visit my grandma in Florida, I feel like the switch for the food disposal was real close to the kitchen light. Like that was in play that you could accidentally flip on the food disposal.
42:59 Sean Fennessey? I have, I have, I have one of those now.
43:01 Speaker 03 How close is it to like your kitchen light though?
43:04 Sean Fennessey? Um, not close.
43:05 Speaker 03 Okay. Well, I, I think technically we used to get a little.
43:08 Sean Fennessey? Why would your kitchen light be over the sink?
43:10 Speaker 03 Okay. So you walk in door, kitchen to the left, right? You walk and you feel over there. I think they only had like one panel for the like electrics.
43:18 Sean Fennessey? Do you like to have your rooms like cordoned off? Or do you like to have an open floor plan?
43:22 Speaker 03 I like cordoned.
43:22 Sean Fennessey? You like cordoned off? You want to be like in the kitchen?
43:24 Speaker 03 I like a warren of rooms.
43:26 Sean Fennessey? A warren of rooms?
43:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, like a lot of rooms, you know? I don't like open floor plans.
43:29 Sean Fennessey? I see, so you would prefer to live in like sort of an ancient castle?
43:34 Speaker 03 I think castles have open floor plans, don't they? You walk into great dining halls and stuff.
43:39 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, they have a great hall, but then they have the like series of tower rooms. Yeah, the house from Clue.
43:44 Speaker 03 Lots of secret passageways.
43:45 Sean Fennessey? You know what I like is a drawing room? Wouldn't you like to have a drawing room? I really want to study. When I'll know that I've made it, when I have a home that has a study.
43:54 Speaker 03 Will there be a TV in the study? Or will this film room be separate?
43:58 Sean Fennessey? Let's see how this YouTube thing keeps going, you know? Like if it keeps, if we keep having success with this, then yeah. I'll definitely put a TV in my drawing room. Hot Rod Guy gets his eyes blasted out by a terrorist ladder.
44:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's awesome.
44:10 Sean Fennessey? Very violent, super fun kill. The plate glass smash. So Tim, one of the characters, escapes the dentist's office, where it looks like for sure he's gonna be somehow decapitated or have his mouth torn apart.
44:22 Speaker 03 He's gonna choke to death because like a goldfish jumps in his throat, right?
44:25 Sean Fennessey? That's right, they call him the goldfish, thank you. Only to be crushed by a plate glass window that falls from the sky.
44:31 Speaker 03 In front of his mom.
44:31 Sean Fennessey? While being transported by a crane.
44:36 Speaker 03 He dies in front of his mom and she's like, no! Then, she gets her head decapitated by an elevator door.
44:44 Sean Fennessey? Yes, in the next scene, she literally is, uh... Her hair is caught by the man with the hook hands, is that right? In a cart and she becomes trapped by the neck in an elevator and is decapitated. Super chill franchise. This is, uh, that scene is preceded by, you know, nine strangers in a room being like, "What do you mean, there's an order?" you know? Then there's a car crash. So as a trooper and a pregnant woman swerve, gang comes into the rear side into a truck full of PVC pipes.
45:13 Sean Fennessey? So Eugene gets pierced by the pipes, the ambulance pulls away, a news truck springs a gas leak, the firefighters attempt to free Kat from the truck, but when the airbag releases, she's impaled by the piping in the car seat. Rory is then subsequently cut in three by flying barbed wire that is loose somehow.
45:30 Speaker 03 It's pretty amazing because they, this one is like the figure eight of death. It's like, wow, you can't believe like they've brought so many different aspects of death into one scene.
45:39 Sean Fennessey? I totally agree. It's only two deaths, but it has triple axel energy. So I like that one quite a bit. And then the hospital oxygen explosion.
45:48 Speaker 03 Significant because this marks the end of Clear.
45:51 Sean Fennessey? Clear, yes. Clear finds Eugene in the hospital, but also discovers a leaky oxygen tank that immediately incinerates her and him. Another two deaths. Ally Larder hasn't been seen all the way up until Landman. That was the, it was FD2, nothing for 23 years.
46:07 Speaker 03 It's like Terrence Malick.
46:08 Sean Fennessey? And then Landman season one is somehow Clear River's returned.
46:12 Speaker 03 She came back to do the Thin Red Line.
46:15 Sean Fennessey? Is Clear River is the name of her character in Landman?
46:17 Speaker 03 No, it is not.
46:18 Sean Fennessey? What is it?
46:19 Speaker 03 I can't remember her first name.
46:22 Sean Fennessey? Is it Billy Bob Thornton's?
46:24 Speaker 03 You know, I gotta tell you, Landman, one of my favorite shows that I saw last year, Angela is her name.
46:29 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
46:29 Speaker 03 Again, the characters are not that memorable in terms of their names.
46:33 Sean Fennessey? How's she doing? I didn't watch Landman.
46:35 Speaker 03 She is primarily focused on after she gets divorced from her ex and goes back to Billy Bob's Tommy character. Her and her teenage daughter spend a lot of time trying to reawaken the libido of people living in a senior care center. So they like want them to feel sexually active again and take them to a male and female strip bar, like stripper bar, exotic dancing. True story.
47:05 Speaker 03 And meanwhile, like Billy Bob Thornton gets captured by the cartel.
47:11 Sean Fennessey? Wait, they split up in the show?
47:13 Speaker 03 They're broken up when the show starts.
47:14 Sean Fennessey? Oh, I see. Okay.
47:16 Speaker 03 Get back together. She moves from Dallas to move in with him, or Houston, I don't know. And then, like, over the course of the season, the way she's like, kind of keeping herself busy is by like, reaching out to the older community of this town in the Paramount Basin.
47:30 Sean Fennessey? How do you feel about the way that Taylor Sheridan writes sex scenes?
47:34 Speaker 03 Uh, I feel like it's pretty vividly realistic. I think he's really in touch with the amount of like, Viagra guys are taking.
47:44 Speaker 03 Not me personally, but I-
47:46 Sean Fennessey? How would you know that?
47:47 Speaker 03 I think that the first scene Billy Bob Thornton is like shooting himself up with testosterone.
47:52 Sean Fennessey? Oh, wow. Okay.
47:53 Speaker 03 Or something.
47:53 Sean Fennessey? That's what you do before every episode of The Watch. Right in the neck.
47:57 Speaker 03 Just like an alpha greenwald.
48:00 Sean Fennessey? Oh, do you, Andy?
48:01 Speaker 03 Yeah.
48:02 Sean Fennessey? Oh, you don't like Last of Us now? Cuck?
48:07 Sean Fennessey? Okay, last kill in FD2 is the barbecue explosion. After learning that her brother was saved from being hit by the news van, we cut away to him at the grill when he explodes in a fiery blast at the end of the film. The button kill is very funny.
48:18 Speaker 03 It's very good. I think I'm gonna go with the car crash just because it brings in so many different elements on top of one of the all-time great sequences in film history, which is the logging truck.
48:29 Sean Fennessey? Okay, so we've got two there. FD3.
48:33 Speaker 03 Okay, let's talk about her.
48:35 Sean Fennessey? Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
48:37 Speaker 03 There's been two really seminal performances by women in film in my life. There's Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter. And there's M E W in FD3.
48:49 Sean Fennessey? Yo, she is-
48:52 Speaker 03 She's so far and away the greatest actress who's ever participated in one of these films. Best actor.
48:57 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
48:58 Speaker 03 And is so good. I believe I saw a Letterboxd comment about this movie where it's like, Mary Elizabeth Winstead has chronic back pain from throwing this franchise on her shoulders.
49:11 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, she is giving a very committed performance. I think she actually has a real depth as an actor, and so this-
49:18 Speaker 03 I love Mary Elizabeth Winstead. It's just wild to go watch her deal with a character named Frankie Cheeks.
49:25 Sean Fennessey? I mean, she's just opposite also a lot of actresses who you've never seen again.
49:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
49:30 Sean Fennessey? You know, like Ryan Merriman and Chris Lemchee and Alex Jones.
49:37 Sean Fennessey? Chris Lemci.
49:38 Speaker 03 Okay.
49:39 Sean Fennessey? You know, nothing against those guys. They've had perfectly fine careers, but um, yeah, MBW is on a different level. This is the roller coaster film.
49:49 Speaker 03 And I'm gonna, I'm gonna zag here and say that while I am personally most scared of what is depicted in the premonition. So don't really ride roller coasters because of Final Destination 3. Like the worst thing that could happen on a roller coaster.
50:06 Sean Fennessey? You don't ride roller coasters?
50:08 Speaker 03 Not really.
50:09 Sean Fennessey? Haven't you and I been on a roller coaster before? Doesn't your wife love roller coasters?
50:12 Speaker 03 She does, yeah. But I, I like, I don't really.
50:16 Sean Fennessey? You came on California Screaming?
50:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, I did it. I like, I'll do it.
50:18 Sean Fennessey? You were afraid.
50:19 Speaker 03 I screamed, yeah.
50:20 Sean Fennessey? Really?
50:21 Speaker 03 Yeah.
50:21 Sean Fennessey? I'm this, I feel, I'm shocked. Were you hiding this from me when we were at California Adventure?
50:25 Speaker 03 Well, I don't know if we talked about FD3. I mean, we went to California Adventure five or six years after this film came out, so I think that, I think I may have suppressed the memory, but for a long time I have just been like, and when I was in Portland over the summer, one, this like Gravitron thing that swings people up and down in the air, got stuck up in the air. It was on the news. So it's like, these things happen. They don't tell you about it in the lame stream media.
50:56 Sean Fennessey? The roller coaster.
50:57 Speaker 03 But I'll never fucking ride like Batman, the Batman ride at Great Adventure.
51:02 Sean Fennessey? Batman.
51:03 Speaker 03 Or those Kansas rides where they're like, this thing drops 300 stories and then does a 360.
51:08 Sean Fennessey? You wouldn't do that because it's in the Midwest?
51:10 Speaker 03 No, but like if one fucking thing goes wrong and you see these guys who are like, I'm listening to like,
51:18 Speaker 03 I'm, I'm listening to like 90.
51:19 Sean Fennessey? Theo Von.
51:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, while I'm supposed to be operating this roller coaster, like I'm, I assume that the pilot who's flying my plane has had like, Plane experience, like pilot training.
51:31 Sean Fennessey? You're assuming that, eh?
51:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, but I don't know what the roller coaster guy has.
51:35 Sean Fennessey? I mean, I think the, these films do a good job of showing you that it's basically a 16 year old kid pressing a button.
51:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, so while I, I think that in terms of its scope and vision, the premonition is incredible. It's like, I almost wanted it to be bloodier and more fucked up.
51:52 Sean Fennessey? They do show a couple of clear headshots where somebody falls out of a roller coaster car and smashes their head against a steel beam.
51:59 Speaker 03 But I will say that there are kills in FD3 that are better than the premonition.
52:04 Sean Fennessey? I'll go with you on that. 10 riders reportedly died on this particular roller coaster disaster. One of the most famous kills in this franchise is the tanning bed.
52:14 Speaker 03 Yes.
52:15 Sean Fennessey? Two high school girls who managed to avoid evade the roller coaster ride because of MEW's premonition. Go to a tanning bed, they bring a beverage with them as they shouldn't. The door accidentally closes to the room because of a fallen sunscreen bottle that gets lodged in the door. And the operator of the tanning bed is nowhere to be seen and somehow the tanning beds get real hot.
52:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
52:42 Sean Fennessey? This is real, again shitcore culture where it's like, girls are topless.
52:46 Speaker 03 Naked girls getting fried to death.
52:48 Sean Fennessey? Yes, it's, it's very like 80's slasher, actually.
52:51 Speaker 03 Glass falling on them and stuff, yeah.
52:52 Sean Fennessey? Extremely violent. The girls who are kind of like in the post Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie affectation of like hyper fake tan.
53:04 Sean Fennessey? It's, it's really violent and gross. It's, it is also a fun time at the movies for me.
53:09 Speaker 03 I, I think the tanning bed has to go into the FDHOF.
53:14 Sean Fennessey? I'm with you on that. I also really like the song choice, which is Love Roller Coaster, the 70's funk song with an immediate callback to the roller coaster disaster that happened eight minutes prior. The next kill, I find to be one of the most confusing in the series.
53:28 Speaker 03 Yeah.
53:29 Sean Fennessey? So Frankie Cheeks, the aforementioned horn dog pervert, who is constantly trying to snap photos of the girls in this series.
53:38 Speaker 03 Yes.
53:38 Sean Fennessey? Is at a drive thru. Behind him at the drive thru are MEW and her best friend's boyfriend.
53:45 Speaker 03 Her best friend is dead.
53:46 Sean Fennessey? Yes, her best friend is dead and they are on the trail trying to figure out what's going on with the death.
53:51 Sean Fennessey? There's another car behind them. And then, for some reason, a truck perpendicular to M E W's car backs into the side of it?
54:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
54:00 Sean Fennessey? Is it like a whiskey truck?
54:01 Speaker 03 They're at a drive-through, yeah. I don't.
54:03 Sean Fennessey? Why is that truck parking there?
54:05 Speaker 03 I, this is where it's like, is Death driving the car kind of stuff?
54:08 Sean Fennessey? Okay.
54:08 Speaker 03 And it, it doesn't have the elaborate setup that I think some of the other kills in this film do.
54:14 Sean Fennessey? It's just a little, um, less coherent?
54:17 Speaker 03 Yeah.
54:17 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, a little less. And then another truck starts barreling down a hill, bashes into those other trucks. Somehow, M E W and her girlfriend's boyfriend escape. Frank catches a motor blade directly in the back of the head.
54:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, I hoped, I wanted that character to have a more gruesome death, or a more like elaborate one.
54:33 Sean Fennessey? The camera does hold pretty long on the molding of his, you know, decapitated skull, which is pretty amusing. I thought it was okay, but it just kind of doesn't make that much sense. The next one is the Lewis, the football player's weightlifting decapitation with the swinging swords fake out.
54:49 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
54:50 Sean Fennessey? Pretty fun.
54:50 Speaker 03 Yes.
54:51 Sean Fennessey? Not bad.
54:51 Speaker 03 Yes, but nothing compares to the Home Depot.
54:54 Sean Fennessey? Followed by the Home Depot forklift disaster. Ian McKinley, the aforementioned disturbed fan.
55:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
55:03 Sean Fennessey? Avoids the falling fence posts that are in the Polaroids that, uh, M E W consistently looks back to. But as he does that, and narrowly avoids all of the falling objects in this storeroom at a Home Depot-esque home goods store, his girlfriend Erin.
55:21 Speaker 03 Yes.
55:21 Sean Fennessey? Is accidentally backed into another organizing shelf.
55:25 Speaker 03 Uh-huh.
55:26 Sean Fennessey? That has a stray nail gun in it.
55:28 Speaker 03 She slips, falls, winds up getting nail gunned both in the back and front of her head.
55:34 Sean Fennessey? Just the back.
55:35 Speaker 03 Oh, just the back.
55:35 Sean Fennessey? I think the nails are shot through her face.
55:38 Speaker 03 But, one of the great things about it is that we find out how many nails are in a nail gun, because they all go into her head.
55:47 Speaker 03 And there's multiple cutaways to Ian being like, no. And then back to Erin as more nails go into her head.
55:55 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, that is a good cut.
55:57 Speaker 03 Why would you be in a Home Depot if you were a character in a Final Destination movie?
56:00 Sean Fennessey? Wonderful question.
56:01 Speaker 03 I would never drive. I would never fly and I would never go to a home repair store.
56:04 Sean Fennessey? Every charact- every one of these films needs an arrogant character. Ian is the arrogant character.
56:09 Speaker 03 He's like, I've cheated death.
56:10 Sean Fennessey? Yes, but of course he hasn't. Next, we go to the 300th fireworks display. Julie's friend Perry is impaled by a flag loosened by a stampeding white horse that nearly strangled her sister Julie with a runaway rope.
56:24 Speaker 03 Yes.
56:25 Sean Fennessey? This one's extremely elaborate. Also, when we were talking about the film Havoc and sliding down the harpoon.
56:31 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
56:32 Sean Fennessey? This kind of has a similar action of sliding down the flag.
56:35 Speaker 03 By FD3?
56:35 Sean Fennessey? I hope so. I think that would be nice.
56:37 Speaker 03 I bet you, I bet you Gareth Evans loves these movies.
56:39 Sean Fennessey? I would be surprised. This one's pretty fun. Then there's Ian's revenge. At the same celebration, Wendy thinks Ian will be the cause of her death at the celebration because she's wearing a McKinley shirt in one of the photos that's taken.
56:53 Speaker 03 Oh.
56:54 Sean Fennessey? So he confronts her and then he claims he's beaten death after fireworks shoot at him and they narrowly miss.
57:03 Speaker 03 All go right by him, yeah.
57:04 Sean Fennessey? And then large scaffolding falls on him and kills him.
57:06 Speaker 03 Yeah. I really enjoy watching Ian die, but creatively, it's not the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
57:12 Sean Fennessey? Agreed. Now, the final kill in this series is the subway rendezvous where some months later, Wendy, M E W's character in college.
57:20 Speaker 03 Everybody thinks that once they've gotten to the end of this movie, it's time to start traveling again.
57:28 Sean Fennessey? Are they in New York? They must be. It's certainly a New York City subway. And Wendy meets her sister Julie, played by Amanda Crew, we should say, who did appear on the show Silicon Valley. That's the only other credit I can think of for her.
57:40 Speaker 03 I'm not trying to denigrate anybody's achievements. There's plenty of like WB stars in the first couple of these movies. Like, everybody does a great job.
57:47 Sean Fennessey? Julie and Wendy are clearly meeting up for the night and they see out of the corner of their eye Kevin, her old friend's boyfriend, is on the same train. And the three of them meet up and immediately as they encounter one another, Wendy immediately has a premonition again about a brutal subway collision, which ends with her being smashed by a subway car, an oncoming subway car after she's been thrown from the one that she's riding.
58:14 Sean Fennessey? And then it happens anyway. And they all die. Uh, and apparently 10 people died, 31 people dead.
58:21 Speaker 03 Um, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna say, uh, Tanning Bed and, uh, Home Depot are my two from FD3.
58:29 Sean Fennessey? I'll rock with you on that.
58:29 Speaker 03 Okay.
58:30 Sean Fennessey? Let's go to the final destination. We already mentioned the Raceway Car Crash Disaster. Several beheadings, dismemberments, burn victims, and car crash assassinations. Literally cars flying into the crowd and killing people.
58:41 Speaker 03 Yes.
58:42 Sean Fennessey? This is a very gnarly one. This is widely considered the worst film in the franchise.
58:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
58:45 Sean Fennessey? It's literally only 72 minutes or something like that with, uh, you know, 82 minutes with credits.
58:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
58:52 Sean Fennessey? The production value is lower. The CGI, there's significantly more in terms of the kills. But there's some clever kills. Um, I mentioned the racist tow truck driver.
59:02 Speaker 03 That was pretty good, actually.
59:02 Sean Fennessey? Dragged alive while burning.
59:05 Speaker 03 Um, I want to shout out Hunt Winorski, um, who is probably my favorite character in this film. And who gets his internal organs sucked out through a pool drain as he's swimming at the bottom of a pool.
59:19 Sean Fennessey? Uh, yes, Nick Zano, I believe, plays Hunter Winorski. Shout out to Nick. Um, there's also the lawnmower rock ricochet.
59:27 Speaker 03 Uh huh.
59:27 Sean Fennessey? Where Samantha, played by the legendary Krista Allen, um, has just gotten a haircut and is exiting the haircut after a series of sliding chairs.
59:37 Speaker 03 Is this where she's getting her pedicure as well?
59:39 Sean Fennessey? Uh, I think just her hair.
59:40 Speaker 03 Oh, okay.
59:41 Sean Fennessey? And.
59:42 Speaker 03 Oh, right. And it's always like cutting right by her eye and stuff.
59:44 Sean Fennessey? The scissors are really close to her head. The chair is moving around a lot. We think she's gonna get stabbed with something. And in fact, the door opens to the hair salon and a, uh, man with a lawnmower rides over a rock and the rock shoots forward and blasts through her eye.
59:58 Speaker 03 Just before that, she says to her two sons, "I've got my eye on you."
1:00:03 Sean Fennessey? It's great stuff.
1:00:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:00:04 Sean Fennessey? Uh, there's also the mechanic who is impaled by a flying helium tank at his shop as they attempt to warn him of his impending death.
1:00:12 Speaker 03 Yep.
1:00:13 Sean Fennessey? Um.
1:00:13 Speaker 03 Another place I wouldn't be working, uh, a garage.
1:00:17 Sean Fennessey? Would not, no, certainly not. Um, Jonathan is, who is the kindly guy sitting in front of them, wearing a cowboy hat, is sent to the hospital. And whilst in the hospital, it looks like he's going to recover when in fact, an elderly man who's getting into a water tank this, in the floor above him in the hospital, overflows and floods the ceiling and then the bathtub falls from the, the floor above him and crushes him.
1:00:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:00:44 Sean Fennessey? It's a really bad beat.
1:00:45 Speaker 03 It's, I, I like that one. That's a sneaky contender.
1:00:48 Sean Fennessey? I, I agree. I'm a big fan of it as well. Um, and then there's just chaos at the end of this movie.
1:00:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:00:53 Sean Fennessey? Where like a series of people are hit by ambulances. And then there's like a mall sequence where people are getting hit by trucks inside of buildings. And the, part of the reason why this movie is like, not very good is because it just kind of like completely loses its air in the last 10 minutes.
1:01:07 Speaker 03 It, it kind of, it gets, it trips over itself.
1:01:10 Sean Fennessey? It really does.
1:01:10 Speaker 03 So I will probably say for me, I really like the certain kills in the premonition for NASCAR. And then one nice thing is that even after they get out of the race, and they're like, my premonition came true, still a NASCAR tire comes flying out of the stadium and kills a guy's girlfriend.
1:01:31 Sean Fennessey? I would say that one and Hunter Winorski, or are my two that suck through the pool drain.
1:01:38 Speaker 03 The guy getting his guts sucked through a pool drain is amazing.
1:01:40 Sean Fennessey? We're really doing the work here. I feel like this is what it's all about.
1:01:43 Speaker 03 FD5, I feel like we're back. 2011, one of the most confusing, not the premonition, but the literal setup for this movie starts in an office park.
1:01:55 Sean Fennessey? And it's like a retreat.
1:01:56 Speaker 03 No, it's so elaborate. It's a guy who has an internship for like a nameless, faceless, purposeless corporation. But he wants to get hired on full time, but also wants to be a chef and might go to Paris to work at like a culinary institute.
1:02:12 Sean Fennessey? Right.
1:02:13 Speaker 03 He's there and they're about to go on a retreat and his ex-girlfriend is there. His friend who has gotten him this internship is there. Their boss is there, who will later die in a fantastic way. David Keckner is there. And also, who else shows up? There's like a guy who's like a sort of operations manager who has some labor strife. Like, there's so much workplace information that's conveyed way before we even get to the bridge. Most of the time, it's like, we're getting on this plane and it crashes. We got on this roller coaster and it crashed. This is like a whole setup of a different film that then we get into a premonition.
1:02:54 Sean Fennessey? In the premonition, all of the people you just identified die in a brutal North Bay Bridge collapse. I don't know if I have, I don't have a fear of bridges, but I do have a fear of dying in a bridge collapse.
1:03:08 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:03:09 Sean Fennessey? You know what I mean? Like, I don't think the bridge is going to collapse.
1:03:11 Speaker 03 Did you have, does that happen for you because of what Bain did to New York?
1:03:16 Sean Fennessey? I think it was Pittsburgh. Heinz Ward was there, remember?
1:03:19 Speaker 03 Pittsburgh doesn't have that many bridges, does it?
1:03:22 Sean Fennessey? What is, what is Gotham supposed to be?
1:03:24 Speaker 03 Gotham, I think, is shot in Pittsburgh, but is in it like spiritually New York.
1:03:29 Sean Fennessey? Okay. I'll take your word for it.
1:03:32 Speaker 03 You don't want to talk about Bain and what he did to your psyche about bridges?
1:03:37 Speaker 03 What about, how did Bain affect your viewpoint on?
1:03:39 Sean Fennessey? Lot of loyalty for a hired gun!
1:03:45 Speaker 03 Oh, God.
1:03:48 Sean Fennessey? The Bay Bridge is going, is going in.
1:03:49 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:03:50 Sean Fennessey? The Hall of Fame. The, the rest of these?
1:03:52 Speaker 03 No, you're wrong.
1:03:53 Sean Fennessey? That is good.
1:03:54 Speaker 03 FD3, FD5 is actually secretly good.
1:03:56 Sean Fennessey? Well, tell me your favorite. What is the best kill?
1:03:57 Speaker 03 The balance beam is amazing.
1:03:59 Sean Fennessey? Gymnastics kill is great, but that's the first one after.
1:04:01 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:04:03 Sean Fennessey? So Candace dies.
1:04:04 Speaker 03 Yes. And the whole time you think she's gonna step on a thumbtack on her balance beam?
1:04:09 Sean Fennessey? Yes.
1:04:09 Speaker 03 But instead, she dies doing LeBron James chalk hands?
1:04:15 Sean Fennessey? You think that they were Bronny fans?
1:04:17 Speaker 03 Eleven? So this is before the decision, right? Or it's right at the decision?
1:04:21 Sean Fennessey? Uh, no, yes, it's at the decision, yeah. You think this was like a shot at him?
1:04:26 Speaker 03 I'd have to go back and compare the tape to find out when the decision happened versus when this film was released.
1:04:30 Sean Fennessey? 2010.
1:04:32 Speaker 03 Oh, okay, so this is definitely reacting to LeBron leaving Cleveland.
1:04:38 Speaker 03 And then I would just say that the falling Buddha after the acupuncture is really good.
1:04:43 Sean Fennessey? It's okay.
1:04:44 Speaker 03 The acupuncture is great.
1:04:45 Sean Fennessey? That part, yes, yes. A lot of like, don't put that needle in my soul.
1:04:49 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:04:53 Sean Fennessey? I mean, there is another plane crash callback, right? Flight 180 falls from the sky and kills several of the key figures that were introduced to in the beginning of this film, leading to this series of dramatic deaths. I think like north of 20 people are killed in the finale of the movie. Over 100 people die in this movie. You would go gymnastics.
1:05:14 Speaker 03 And bridge. Gymnastics and bridge. I feel like they are much like a Motown album. They put their hits up front.
1:05:22 Sean Fennessey? For the most part, I agree with you. Just to put a fine point on it for Bloodlines.
1:05:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, 14 years later.
1:05:30 Sean Fennessey? Is it?
1:05:32 Sean Fennessey? Now, is it possible that it's not the Skyview Restaurant massacre?
1:05:35 Speaker 03 Actually, I found myself distracted by the CGI in this.
1:05:39 Sean Fennessey? Interesting.
1:05:40 Speaker 03 So I think it for me-
1:05:40 Sean Fennessey? You think family barbecue and the MRI machine?
1:05:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly that.
1:05:45 Sean Fennessey? I think I'm with you.
1:05:46 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:05:46 Sean Fennessey? MRI machine is world-class.
1:05:48 Speaker 03 It's one of the top five, for sure, for me.
1:05:51 Sean Fennessey? Um, okay. So we've got MRI machine and we've got the family barbecue for Bloodlines. Now, six films, we've chosen 12 contenders. Give me your five faves.
1:06:03 Speaker 03 Off the top, just, I'm blast shield down. Luke, Saber, I say Logging.
1:06:10 Sean Fennessey? That's one.
1:06:12 Speaker 03 MRI Machine.
1:06:13 Sean Fennessey? Yep.
1:06:14 Speaker 03 Balance Beam.
1:06:15 Sean Fennessey? Wow. Huge look for Final Destination 5. FD5 heads out there. I feel like Tanning Bed's gotta be up there.
1:06:22 Speaker 03 I know. I don't want it to seem like I'm, you know, a caveman, but...
1:06:27 Sean Fennessey? Because the girls are topless? Nothing wrong with that. It's natural.
1:06:31 Speaker 03 And then you pick one.
1:06:35 Sean Fennessey? I think Hunt Winorski getting his
1:06:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:06:37 Sean Fennessey? inside sucked out. And then I like particularly when they show you the water meter and then blood shoots through the top of it. It's a great moment. That's honestly, that's filmmaking.
1:06:47 Speaker 03 How do you think that this podcast is going to be received? And do you think we did a good job?
1:06:51 Sean Fennessey? Well, I know we did a good job.
1:06:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:06:54 Sean Fennessey? By, by whom?
1:06:56 Speaker 03 By Jack.
1:06:56 Sean Fennessey? By, by. Jack, have you seen any of these films?
1:07:00 Speaker 04 Watched Bloodlines last night.
1:07:02 Sean Fennessey? How'd you feel about it?
1:07:03 Speaker 04 I thought it was very good.
1:07:04 Speaker 03 Had you seen any of the others?
1:07:05 Speaker 04 Uh, not in full, but I vividly remember being 14 and just scrubbing through every Kill compilation on YouTube, which is probably why I'm normal.
1:07:12 Sean Fennessey? That's the other thing is that you don't actually have to watch the entire film if you don't want to. I want to.
1:07:17 Speaker 03 You know what we forgot to mention is Tony Todd.
1:07:19 Sean Fennessey? Oh my God, of course.
1:07:21 Speaker 03 Which is the other connective tissue throughout this entire franchise.
1:07:24 Sean Fennessey? Yes, how could we have forgotten?
1:07:25 Speaker 03 He actually gives a very moving final performance in this movie.
1:07:29 Sean Fennessey? Excellent performance, an absolute horror icon.
1:07:31 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:07:32 Sean Fennessey? And he's represented in amusing ways throughout the series. For example, he's the voice of the devil.
1:07:36 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:07:37 Sean Fennessey? In the third film, um, but he figures prominently in the first film and he figures prominently in this film. They do sort of stumble upon him in an odd way in Bloodlines.
1:07:46 Speaker 03 Yes, he's working in the hospital.
1:07:48 Sean Fennessey? Yes, in the, in the morgue.
1:07:50 Speaker 03 A corner in, in the morgue there, but it's his last performance. He was a great character actor, wonderful.
1:07:56 Sean Fennessey? And he died six months ago.
1:07:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:07:58 Sean Fennessey? Um, and this was, I do believe this was his last performance and you know, appeared in several great horror movies. Obviously best known for Candyman and Candyman 2, but um, he is quite good in this movie. Thank you for remembering to give him a shout out.
1:08:09 Speaker 03 You can't, but like to Jack's point, you're, it's very easy to just go through the Kill compilations. Part of the B-movie mystery science theater fun of this whole thing though, is walk, watching these characters try to make some intellectual sense of what's going on and try to like come up with a plan, whether it's kill a baby or flatline myself.
1:08:36 Sean Fennessey? Yeah. Did you feel that this new one took it to a greater extreme?
1:08:39 Speaker 03 Well, I did love the twist in this one is that Steph drowns. And it is mentioned several times for no apparent purpose until it's revealed at the end that her younger brother is a junior lifeguard. Now, as a junior, as a former lifeguard myself, I'll tell you that CPR is one of the first things you learn. It's one of the ways you get certified to be a lifeguard. You actually do get certified to be a lifeguard. I don't know if you're certified to run roller coasters. And he's able to revive Steph with CPR.
1:09:11 Sean Fennessey? Which allows him to skip her.
1:09:13 Speaker 03 They assume. Then in an amazing moment, the younger brother is taking a girl to the prom. And the girl's dad comes out and is like, Steph, I heard you had a tough beat with drowning. And they're like, yeah, but he brought me back to life. And he's like, well, not really. If your heart was still going and you just lost consciousness, you were always alive. And then his daughter walks out wearing the same outfit as the grandmother wore to the Skyview Restaurant, thus bringing it all together.
1:09:45 Sean Fennessey? And then there is a brief callback to Three where a train
1:09:49 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
1:09:50 Sean Fennessey? does not completely close its track, leading to a derailment.
1:09:55 Speaker 03 Right.
1:09:55 Sean Fennessey? And the derailment sends all of the freight flying through like a local neighborhood.
1:10:03 Speaker 03 Probably killed 800 people.
1:10:05 Sean Fennessey? Yeah, could have killed very many, destroyed homes. Like an absolutely gnarly train derailment disaster, really putting the brutalist to shame in that respect. But what if the logs hit Steph? It was like, da, da, da, da. That is how I feel at the end of the movie. And then these logs that are being carried on this freight train.
1:10:26 Sean Fennessey? Fly through, directly at us in the screen and kill our two main characters who we thought had survived, ending the film in perfect Final Destination fashion.
1:10:36 Sean Fennessey? These movies are so special.
1:10:37 Speaker 03 Should we bring, uh, do we just have to like insta revive Brutalist? Should we just start talking about that again?
1:10:43 Sean Fennessey? No, I, I'm so on the side of right on that one. I'm not even worried about it. We're, we're good. It's gonna last forever.
1:10:48 Speaker 03 Okay.
1:10:49 Sean Fennessey? We're good.
1:10:49 Speaker 03 Cool.
1:10:49 Sean Fennessey? We, you, I mean, what do you need to say?
1:10:52 Speaker 03 I just think it was like, we talked about it a bunch of like, when it came out and everything, but like, I like, I like mixing it into other films, like in our discussion, like what could we, how is Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning, like the Brutalist?
1:11:04 Sean Fennessey? Oh, I think we could do that. Like, should we get the score for that film over Happy Gilmore 2 as well? I think that would work. I think it would create that swell of feeling.
1:11:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:11:14 Sean Fennessey? Uh, any closing thoughts?
1:11:16 Speaker 03 No, I, I hope we get another one of these in a couple of years.
1:11:20 Sean Fennessey? I don't even know what takeaway we should make from it being such a huge hit. This isn't, this is actually quite unusual. There's been some discussion, like what, how, how many franchises did the best movie arrive in the sixth one? That's obviously quite unusual, but Mission Impossible Fallout did just happen. Personally, the first film is my favorite and Fallout is my second, but a lot of people like Fallout best. You think of any other franchises that get this good, this late?
1:11:43 Speaker 03 No, I mean, Bond was popular upon its inception.
1:11:45 Sean Fennessey? Yeah.
1:11:46 Speaker 03 Um, I guess, I guess I can't really.
1:11:50 Sean Fennessey? It's very unusual for them to level up in this way, but they did. We're very happy about it. Sierra, thank you.
1:11:55 Speaker 03 Thank you for having me, man.
1:11:56 Sean Fennessey? Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders. We'll be back later this week to talk about the film that Sierra just referenced, Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning. I need you to trust us one more time.
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