ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN FANGORIA, MARCH 2000
By Steve Newton
The nice thing about doing a set visit for an ensemble horror films is that you’re never short of actors to chat with. On the day that Fangoria visits the Burnaby, British Columbia set of Final Destination (formerly Flight 180) no less than seven cast members are around to discuss their contributions to the $23-million New Line project.
But before the assembly line of interviews kicks off, a quick gander at what has been built on the set unveils a few clues about the frights that will be delivered when the film hits screens March 17.
Inside one large building, production designer John Willett (Halloween: H20, Lake Placid) has overseen the construction of a lifesize mockup of a 747 on massive hydraulic gimbals. The floor of the plane can be shifted on the gimbals to create a pitching movement of up to 45 degrees, conveying in a most realistic fashion the horror of airborne engine failure.
In another building, Willett’s crew has constructed an authentic airport departure lounge, complete with coffee bar and duty-free displays. On the walls of the lounge are huge depictions of apparently unrelated scenes (a bathtub, a blazing fire, a trolly car), which provide clues to some of the disasters that befall the unlucky characters in the film.
In one of the chairs co-producer/co-writer Glen Morgan–who collaborated with Final Destination director James Wong on some of the best X-Files and Millennium episodes–take a breather from the movie’s busy schedule to offer a rundown of its plot.
“These kids from a small town in south New York are going on a high school trip to France,” he explains, “and Alex–Devon Sawa–has a vision while he’s on board where he sees the takeoff and the plane explodes. He freaks out, and in the chaos six students and one teacher are taken off the plane, and while they’re out here kind of fighting about it the plane blows up in the background.
“The idea is that they were supposed to die and Death is angry about it, and is going after each one. Alex sort of figures out Death’s design, and who’s gonna go next.”
Morgan says that New Line originally wanted the film’s leads to be name TV actors, like the stars of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. But eventually the powers that be changed their minds and agreed to go with Sawa and Ali Larter, best known to genre fans for their work on the respective features Idle Hands and House on Haunted Hill. They lead a young cast this is short on experience but willing to learn.
“A lot of ’em haven’t done a lot of CGI,” says Morgan, noting that Final Destination incorporates about 80 digital shots. “Devon probably did when he did Casper. But they were here last night, and we had to shoot one shot with a greenscreen, and bring down the black so that we can get reflections of the lights, and they were sitting around like, ‘What the hell’s going on?’ And Kristen [Morgan’s wife Kristen Cloke, who plays teacher Ms. Lewton] brought over Ariel Shaw, who is doing the effects, to give a lecture as to what they were looking at. So it’s fun to watch them learn; they’re a good group of kids.”
Taking Morgan’s compliment to heart, your trusty correspondent figures it’s safe to wade out into the youthful fray and start getting the scoop from the actors themselves. The first stop is Larter’s trailer, where the attractive blonde sits on the floor and fills us in on her character, Clear.
“She’s a girl who has had a lot of loss in her life,” explains Larter. “She lost her father at a young age, and her mother left her, but she has kind of dealt with that and moved forward, and found happiness within herself. She’s going with her French class to Paris, and when she’s on the plane she sees this boy freak out and feels this insane connection to him.
“For some reason, her instincts are to get off the plane, so she follows him, and she can’t believe that she just missed her trip to Paris, but moments later the plane explodes. She had trusted her instinct and tricked fate in some way, or somehow this man saved her. Something that she felt from him was right, and it’s impossible to deny now.
“So they go on this journey,” she continues, “and she believes in him, but she is just kinda scared. The story comes back to fate, and questioning when you die, why people die. How there is a higher power that kills people.”
The day before Fango showed up, Larter and her fellow actors paid their first visit to the airliner set from which they escape Death’s clutches. And now she doesn’t feel like flying will ever be quite the same.
“The plane goes 60 degrees front-to-back and 45 side-to-side,” she says, “and just being in there with that many people, and the claustrophic atmosphere…You know, I don’t usually think that terrible things can happen to me, but after reading this script and doing the film, it has made me more aware of things. You kind of get a shiver when you’re on the plane and you think about how this stuff could actually happen.”
Larter, who also starred in the recent teen hit Varsity Blues, expects that her own newly instilled fear will rub off on audiences when Final Destination careens into theaters.
“I think this film is gonna be scary,” she says, “but it’s not just our normal teen film; I don’t think there’s anything out there like this. It’s extremely cleverly written. And I hope that people walk away from it living each day to the fullest, appreciating what they have at this moment in time, because we never really know when we’re gonna go.”
By contrast, Kerr Smith plays Carter Horton, a classmate who–unlike Larter’s Clear–emphatically dismisses Alex’s theories on the workings of fate. When Fango knocks on his trailer door, Smith is girding himself for Final Destination‘s challenges by studying the realistic plane crash scenes from the 1993 cannibalism drama Alive. His character is quite a switch from the role he’s best known for, that of troubled homosexual teen Jack on Dawson’s Creek.
“For some reason or other, Carter’s just a jerk to everybody,” says Smith. “He’s real cocky, a loudmouth, pushing people around. He’s got the beautiful girlfriend and the homemade sports car–a souped-up Chevy Nova. The reason he’s such a jerk is because he’s scared. When Death is chasing you around, I guess it’s a crazy feeling.'”
Smith agrees with Larter that Final Destination has the potential to scare the airplane tickets right off of people.
“People who see this film will never see an airplane the sane way,” he says. “When I stepped on that plane set for the first time, it was just an eerie, eerie feeling.”
Carter’s girlfriend in the movie, Terry, is played by Amanda (Drop Dead Gorgeous) Detmer. “I was really excited to work with an ensemble cast,” she says, “because for most of the movie it’s all about us–these kids and their relationships. And I also liked the idea of cheating death, that there’s a story behind it.”
Detmer says that the shoot has been fun, but also admits that it has been tedious work at times.
“It’s a slow process,” she relates, “because it’s really involved and Jim [Wong] is very specific and intricate when it comes to buildng this story, and creating the belief that something like this could really happen.”
Being a huge horror fan has helped Detmer in dealing with Final Destination‘s more workmanlike aspects.
“I love horror films, “she raves. “I like really scary, scary, scary movies. I read scary books too. It’s not so much the blood and gore–that can really freak me out–but the suspense and the thrill part. And this movie is the kind of thing where you aren’t gonna know what’s gonna happen next.”
After getting Detmer’s positive take on the film, it’s time to meet the male lead, Sawa. Unlike the others, he opts to chat outside his trailer, leaning on a ladder in the alleyway behind the studio. He claims that he was attracted to the film as soon as he read the screenplay.
“The twist in the script kept me thinking the whole time,” he says, “So I was very into that. And I actually read it on an airplane, which was kinda scary. I guess it’ll get some people thinking. Supposedly they’re not making airline versions of the film to show on flights.”
Perhaps partially due to the timing of its release–shortly after the Columbine, Colorado high-school massacre–Sawa’s gory Idle Hands took a serious drubbing from critics. But the Vancouver-based actor insists he was not fazed by the movie’s unfavorable reception.
“I did my job,” he says, just as Smith strolls by and–perhaps trying to inject some offhand antagonism into his fictional nemesis–blurts out, “Devon’s actually a woman!” A flustered Sawa responds with: “But only Kerr knows that because he’s uh… found out. He’s my boyfriend!”
When Sawa steps back into his trailer to kill some time with a couple of pals, Fango heads back to the departure-lounge set, where Sean William Scott gives the lowdown on his character, Billy Hitchcock.
“He’s like a funky sort of dork,” says Scott, who co-starred in the hit sex comedy American Pie. “He’s friends with Alex, Devon’s character, and Tod, played by Chad E. Donella. He’s not like a close friend, he’s kind of the guy who wants to be friends and tries to plug himself into the group. But as far as his relationship with the rest of the people, he’s just the class clown.”
Like his youthful co-stars, Scott has high hopes for Final Destination.
“It’s very realistic,” he says. “Jim Wong and Glen Morgan bring such a great style and realism to their work that it’s just exciting The way it was written, the vision that they have, and the storyline itself–the fact that it deals with fate and everyday occurences–is pretty scary.”
At this point, Scott is called away by Wong to prepare for his reaction shot to the explosive plane crash. As the camera rolls, a large panel of fake glass is shattered and Scott leaps away from the crystalline shower. Wong seems satisfied, and as they bring in the sweepers to clear up the mess, Fango goes in search of yet another Final Destination star.
We find one in Donella, who is outside at the end of the dinner lineup. He plays Tod Waggner, Alex’s best friend and the first of the gang destined to die. He also fires up Alex’s suspicions that there’s a pattern to the whole thing. After bumming one of my Matinee Extra Milds, Donella explains that he was attracted to the “arc” that was written into the film.
“It starts as something very different than it ends up,” he says. But when asked if his role has contributed to any fears of flying, Donella doesn’t expound. “I just got over over a phobia,” he says with a nervous chuckle, “and I don’t really wanna think too much about that until after this show, to tell you the truth.”
A fan of over-the -top horror films like The Evil Dead, Donella–who was also featured in regular X-Files director David Nutter’s Disturbing Behavior and the recent Files episode “Hungry”–has confidence in Wong’s helming of Final Destination.
“He’s a really, really sharp cat,” says Donella, “and he knows what he needs. He’s got a real vision for this thing, which is nice. And I’ve heard that Jim and Glen are geniuses in the editing room as well.”
While Donella’s in the midst of tossing compliments around, the wisecracking Smith strolls by once more, this time leaning over and declaring, “Chad is also a woman.” Unlike Sawa, Donella doesn’t have any comebacks ready. He just takes a puff and grins, then moves up as the line gets a few feet closer to the catering truck.
After your reporter helps himself to turkey schnitzel and broccoli–hey, it’s hungry work chatting to all these folks–it’s time to interview Cloke.
“I’m the English teacher along for the ride,” she says of Ms. Lewton, whose name–a reference to famed director Val–is one of many in the movie that homages classic horror makers (another is Wiene, an FBI agent played by Daniel Roebuck). She’s also the character who has the most challenging demise.
“My death sequence is probably the longest and most gruesome of all,” says the Emmy-nominated actress, who has had starring roles on Morgan and Wong’s series Space: Above and Beyond and Millennium.
While her character may suffer the goriest fate in the film, and Cloke does admit a fondness for Alfred Hitchcock, she’s not a big horror buff per se. She can see why people appreciate scary flicks, though, and figures Final Destination will win its share of admirers.
“It’ll be scary in a smart way,” she says. “It’ll make you look at getting on a plane, or the way you experience life or death, differently.”
A cell phone beeps and Cloke is called away to wardrobe, so it’s time to corner the man of the hour, Wong, and get the scoop straight from the director’s chair. He fills us in on the film’s origins.
“The idea itself–of a bunch of students going on a flight, some people getting off–came from Jeff Reddick, who wrote this treatment by himself. And from that, Glen and I went off in a direction that we thought would be fun. We didn’t want to do a slasher movie, where there is this kind of embodied figure going around killing people. And there was a movie out at the time where the devil is switching places [Fallen], going into different people, so we didn’t want to do that either.
“So the way we thought about it was that death, like life, is literally all around you–and it’s a matter of taking one step in the wrong direction that leads you to death. We thought that the greatest paranoia we can give the viewing public is to make them think, ‘If I do this, will it lead to my ultimate demise?!’ We thought that was the scariest and creepiest way to look at this movie.”
After his treatment, Reddick wrote a first draft script, and Morgan and Wong’s second draft got the green light from New Line.
“This was actually one of the smoothest and easiest script-to-film processes we’ve ever gone through,” says Wong. “We went through one rewrite and one second draft, which changed none of the motivations, but some of the setpieces. Things were condensed to tighten up the ending and make it a little more exciting, but beyond that it remains pretty much the same.”
So after taking The X-Files to great heights, particularly with his Emmy-nominated episode “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man”, what is the most challenging part of the Final Destination shoot for Wong?
“There’s a lot of action in this movie,” he explains, “and the challenge is to get it all right within the time perameters, especially shooting up here in Vancouver. There are a lot of nights in this movie, and at this time there are literally seven hours of night, so we don’t have much time to shoot all the stuff we have to. So physically, that’s the challenge.
“And the other biggest challenge is to get the characters right. This is a love story of sorts too, about these two kids who, if it weren’t for this kind of weird circumstance, would never get together. So that relationship has to come through in a true way.”
Final Destination may have its romantic elements, but if the folks at Vancouver-based FX company Flesh & Fantasy have their way, the film’s gory sequences will outdo the tender moments.
“It’s got some really hardcore gore effects,” says makeup artist and Flesh & Fantasy boss Ryan Nicholson. “It’s the old stalk-and-slash movie except the stalker this time is Death, and you don’t see him in any shape or form; he just kills these teenagers in gruesome ways. It runs the whole gamut of the ways people are killed, and it’s really, really gory stuff. I hope they don’t cut it because we’ve put a lot of time and they’ve put a lot of money into these effects.”
And as for the choicest splatter moments: “A guy gets his head chopped off above the teeth,” reveals Nicholson, “so it’s not the normal decapitation. And there’s a good strangulation–actually that guy there,” he says, pointing to a full-body dummy of the Tod character, dangling in a corner of his Burnaby office. “There’s a good hanging sequence where we did various stages of vessels bursting. His head actually decomposes in 72 frames, so we’ve done five heads in different stages of decomposition, and they’ll have maggots all over them.
“Then there’s Ms. Lewton, who takes a shard in the neck and a knife in the chest, who dies and dies and dies then she’s still not dead yet. I’m trying to make it the bloodiest scene ever shot on film–that hopefully can stay in a movie.
“There’s also a girl who’s just obliterated by a bus,” Nicholson boasts cheerfully. “We had explosives packed in the dummy and when it blew up it was like something out of Street Trash. It was just great.”
After hearing from Final Destination‘s producers, director, stars, and FX man, there’s one more person who needs to get his two bits included, and that’s the guy who started it all, Reddick. Reached at his currently place of employ, New Line’s New York offices, the man who wrote the 12-page treatment–and sold it for a whopping $100,000–is happy to fill us in on his inspiration for the film.
“Well, it’s funny,” he says of the journey to Final Destination. “I was trying to get an agent, and the couple of agents I talked to said, ‘Why don’t you write a TV spec script?’ So I was gonna write something for The X-Files–which is amusing now that it has come full circle. I had all these different horror ideas, and this was one them. I don’t know why I thought of this one; I actually thought of it on a plane one time, because I used to get nervous flying and I thought it might be kinda cool if somebody had a premonition about a plane crash and got off.
“So the project was originally an X-Files spec script, but before I even got it over there I had a couple of friends read it, and they said, ‘This is a really good idea, you may want to try to stretch it out into a feature.'”
Reddick feels that the movie will occupy a unique place in the current horror scene.
“The market has been glutted with teenage slasher movies and all the self-referential stuff,” he says, “and I believe that Final Destination is gonna beckon in the next wave of genre films. It’s just really smart–it’s not a bunch of dumb kids being chased in the woods by somebody. I think of it as what A Nightmare on Elm Street was to the Friday the 13th batch of movies back in the ’80s. It’s gonna raise the bar as far as what the next crop of teen horror movies is gonna be.”
Now that his treatment and script for Final Destination have given his career a serious kickstart, Reddick has some hints for prospective genre scribes.
“The one thing I would tell any budding horror writer–or any kind of writer, but especially horror–is you have to stick with it, and you really have to love it. You know, I’ve been writing horror for years, when people were saying, ‘Oh, it’s a dead genre,’ and it came back again.
“And I don’t think horror ever dies, I just think we get so many bad movies out there. I mean, how many Hauntings does it take to kill the genre–or at least put it under for a while?”
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