FINAL DESTINATION 5 (BLU-RAY/DVD COMBO + ULTRAVIOLET DIGITAL COPY) (2011)

The format should by now be familiar to fans of this series: a young man has a supernatural premonition of a disaster about to happen and manages to rescue a group of fellow youngsters from horrifying deaths.

In this latest and - by the look of things – final installment, a young man played by Nicholas D'Agosto rescues a group of co-workers on their way to a weekend team building exercise from certain doom when the bridge their bus is on collapses.

Of course Death – capital letter ‘D’ – is not be cheated, and slowly but surely kills off all the co-workers in inventive and elaborate gruesome “accidents.”

The fun has always been in what OTT accidents the screenwriters can come up with to dispatch the photogenic teens and this Final Destination doesn’t disappoint even though some of the deaths seem to violate the very law of physics. Is it really that easy to fall through an office window for instance?

Final Destination 5 tries to bring something new to the mix: you can cheat Death by killing someone else as an “offering” of sorts. Bringing a homicidal killer into the mix doesn’t however entirely work out, but the movie has some genuine surprise twists up its sleeve, which bring things full circle again.

THE DISCS: Fans who invested in expensive 3-D TVs will be disappointed to learn that this Blu-ray includes no 3-D version of this movie (it was originally shown in 3-D movie theatres). In addition to the Blu-ray disc the DVD is also included.

Playing the DVD on your laptop at the airport lounge is probably the closest users will get to true portability though.

Vouchers for digital copies are also included, but all kinds of disclaimers apply: the digital copies are only valid until a certain date, you can only “download” them from certain geographic locations (technically the so-called “ultraviolet” copy is streamed and not stored on your device), you must download a proprietary player and can’t view it on your regular player and so forth. It’s probably not even worth your bother.

Media companies are struggling with this “new” digital age of broadband Internet and the truth of the situation is that many Internet users will in the end prefer downloading pirated material not only because it’s for free, but because the pirates probably offer greater ease of use and place fewer restrictions on their “products”!

The special features include two special effects split-screen features and alternate death scenes.

WORTH IT? Franchise fans would want to check it out. But it is getting a bit long in the tooth and Final Destination 5 is probably the best way to let this franchise, er, die.

RECOMMENDATION: If you want your gore in 3-D you’d be disappointed. The 2-D HD looks pretty neat though.