Every Final Destination Death, Ranked From Gory and Gross to Totally Hilarious

No sugar coating it: This one sucks. George (Mykelti Williamson) gets decked by an ambulance, killing him instantly. It’s just a cheap copy of the first movie, but worse.

Nick (Bobby Campo), Janet (Haley Webb), and Lori (Shantel VanSanten) meet their doom in amusing fashion: a truck smashes through the cafe they’re sitting in and runs them over. What makes this awful is a diabolically stupid shift to hideous sub-par video game graphics, which show their skeletons shattering. Unforgivable.

Arguably the least creative death in the franchise, Agent Block (Courtney B. Vance) gets shot in the back by Peter (Miles Fisher). It’s extra disappointing because it’s not even the specter of death that causes this one.

Same goes for this kill. It’s a clever murder weapon at least, and we do see how dangerous the giant meat skewer looks in an earlier scene. But Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) stabbing Peter with them is a letdown.

There’s something amusing about being impaled with a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, but this kill feels insignificant and comes out of nowhere.

Estranged mother Darlene (Rya Kihstedt) may get a heroic redemption, but her demise is pretty innocuous: A security camera falls on her, ending her life. Bloodlines has so many great kills, but Darlene’s death is not one of them.

Though he believes himself to be unkillable, fate feels otherwise towards Ian (Kris Lemche) as he gets swiftly crushed to death. In a kill that feels simultaneously underwhelming and derivative of one of the very best in the franchise, he gets crushed by a cherry picker.

An overflowing bathtub crashes through the ceiling, crushing Cowboy (Jackson Walker). It’s boring, but it also feels more like a nurse’s negligence being responsible for death than death itself – that bathtub was overflowing when he left the room!

A wrench goes flying and impales Dennis (David Koechner), killing him instantly. It’s not particularly consequential to the film, nor is it very interesting.

Terry Chaney (Amanda Detmer) gets hit by a bus out of nowhere, killing her instantly. It’s very low-key compared to the franchise’s more outlandish deaths, but it’s been imitated so many times that it’s hard to deny its impact.

Warehouse worker Roy (Brent Stait) falls through a walkway and gets impaled by a giant hook. It’s gross, and the visual is arresting, but Roy isn’t a character we’ve come to care about, or even know much at all.

A disappointing finale for Final Destination 3 takes place on a derailing subway, where Kevin (Ryan Merriman) and Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) meet their demise. It feels cheap and unimaginatively executed. It’s set up as a vision, only to realize they can’t actually escape, which is a fun twist.

A massive killfest at a car at a racetrack should be nothing short of epic. But The Final Destination has some abhorrent 3D effects that looked terrible then and even worse now. That tanks the scene’s potential, and regardless, what’s here doesn’t feel exciting or disgusting. And it’s another fakeout.

Iris (Gabrielle Rose) has spent her life carefully avoiding death. Bloodlines has fun playing with potential ways it could be undone, but her actual death is a bit underwhelming. A weather vane falls from her roof, exploding off a fire extinguisher and torpedoing through her mouth, killing her instantly.

It’s shocking to have Clear (Ali Larter), the only character left over from Final Destination, go out so suddenly. But she and Eugene (T. C. Carson) are wiped out in a single hospital explosion. It’s underwhelming, but it effectively shows that death doesn’t give a damn how you die, as long as you do.

This scene has so much fun playing with the audience, as Samantha (Krista Allen) gets almost killed by just about everything in the salon. Then, on her way out, she gets a stone blasted through her skull from (of all things) a lawnmower collision across the street. A missed opportunity–it’s not hard to imagine a much more exhilarating kill within the walls of the salon itself.

Hunt (Nick Zano) is a total dickhead, which makes his brutal death by swimming pool intake jet (one probably at least somewhat lifted from a famous Chuck Palahniuk short story called “Guts”) feel somewhat slightly deserved. This should have been way more horrifying, but we’re only left to imagine how horrible things get. But the drain at the bottom of the pool always terrified me growing up, so this one got under my skin.

The Mechanic’s Girlfriend (Stephanie Honore)—yes, that’s what she’s credited as—gets her head blown off by an errant tire flying out of the racetrack crash scene. This one’s not a fakeout. It’s icky, quick, and surprising.

Another charming credit, “The Racist” (Justin Welborn), meets his end via his tow truck. He gets dragged by his truck down the street, set on fire, and when the truck explodes, his head goes flying. It wouldn’t be that memorable, but it’s set to War’s “Why Can’t We Be Friends?,” a most welcome inclusion.

There are roughly 153 fakeouts in this deeply entertaining backyard barbecue scene, but poor Uncle Howard (Alex Zahara) is undone by an especially grotesque chain reaction including stepping on a large glass shard, which winds up with a lawnmower turning on and grinding his head to dust as his family watches on, utterly terrified–a nasty, devilish touch.