Golly! Movies like Final Destination sure make me not ever wanna ride a roller coaster again! Or fly on a plane! Or stand next to railroad tracks! Or use a tanning bed! Or do anything at all but panic! And watch more movies like it, of course!
1. Scream
Another self-aware slasher about doomed teens attempting to flee from forces beyond their comprehension? Sign me up! Scream is one of the greatest horror films of the ’90s and, honestly, ever! The plot is simple: a masked killer is on the loose in a sleepy little town, and his young adult victims seem to be the ones who break horror movie rules. Don’t go off alone. Don’t have sex. You know, the Golden Rules. How will the survivors escape their grisly fates at the hands of a preternatural killer? Take a peep through your laced fingers and find out!
2. Cabin in the Woods
While Final Destination revolves around a doomed cadre of survivors, Cabin in the Woods revolves around a doomed world! The film starts out like a standard issue horror flick: a group of college hotties go into the woods for a vacation full of sex and debauchery, and end up running afoul of monsters! But the reality is far more sinister; they’re actually part of a ritualistic sacrifice orchestrated by an underground research facility in order to appease ancient gods capable of destroying the Earth!
3. Happy Death Day
It’s Groundhog Day! But worse! This poor woman keeps getting murdered by a baby-masked killer on her birthday, but after every time she dies, she wakes up in her bed that very same morning! Desperate to survive a death that seems all but inevitable, she comes up with various plots and plans to thwart the machinations of her murderer! To middling effectiveness! If Final Destination taught us one thing, it’s this: You can’t cheat Death … most of the time.
4. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
Like the tongue-in-cheek horror of Final Destination? Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a French kiss with the inside of your own mouth! The action centers around two lovable country bumpkins who, through a series of misunderstandings, appear to a group of vacationing college kids as murderous killers. It’s not Tucker and Dale’s fault that these teens keep on dying in silly ways! Sure, one of them was convinced that the hillbillies were chasing them swinging a chainsaw, but they were actually just running away from a bees’ nest themselves! What a hilariously fatal misunderstanding!
5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Unlike Tucker and Dale, these country bumpkins are actually out for blood. While nothing supernatural seems to be occurring on the surface, this group of hippies roadtripping across rural Texas were warned by fate. While reading their horoscopes in the van, one of the group tells them that Saturn is in an evil place in the sky, and that dark forces will soon befall them. Those dark forces take the form of a cannibalistic family who hunger for their young flesh! The entire movie seems strangely destined to happen, added to the Final Destination-esque horror.
6. Saw
Final Destination is essentially a franchise about creative, bordering on ridiculous, kills—basically the Saw franchise’s bread and butter. Before Saw became a murder porn slog of uncreative spinoffs, it was a tight and terrifying thriller! Two men awake to find themselves chained up in a dilapidated bathroom with no explanation as to how they got there. A puppet-faced killer named Jigsaw tells them via a tape player that they must survive a series of murder contraptions known playfully as “games” in order to see their families again. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t end well.
7. I Know What You Did Last Summer
You know what they say about karma. I Know What You Did Last Summer proves the point. Like Final Destination, I Know What You Did Last Summer centers around a group of young people who are karmically fated to die. Unlike the Final Destination crew, whose only crime was attempting to avoid death, these teens are hunted by fate for their involvement in a car crash that killed a man. Now, a ghostly hook-handed killer is attempting to balance the scales … with their blood.
8. It Follows
Eugh. Talk about a nasty curse. It Follows is about a young woman who acquires a supernatural sort of STD. After having sex with a man, he tells her that she will be hunted by a mysterious entity that can take any human shape, and will slowly follow her until it kills her. The only way she can be rid of the monster is to have sex with someone else, passing the curse on to them. Teens driven to the brink of madness by the creeping shadow of inevitable death? Sounds pretty Final Destination to me.
9. Drag Me to Hell
This bank employee pissed off the wrong witch. After denying a loan to an elderly woman in need, the old lady reveals herself to be a powerful sorceress and places a curse on the employee. In three days’ time, the helpless woman will be dragged to hell by demons, and there is nothing she can do to stop it. Naturally, the bank employee isn’t too keen on sitting around and letting fate run its infernal course, and tries everything in her power to break the curse—including sacrificing a poor, sweet kitten. On second thought, drag her to hell, for all our sakes.
10. The Final Girls
The daughter of a deceased 1980s cult scream queen is caught in a vicious cycle. After escaping a movie theater fire, she and her friends awake in the woods on the set of Camp Bloodbath, the slasher that brought her mother to B-movie fame. Except it isn’t a set … it’s real! Characters from Camp Bloodbath are living, breathing people, including the film’s machete wielding antagonist! The teens have to flee from the killer, but end up waking in the same spot in the woods every 92 minutes (the runtime of the movie). The only way to survive? The movie’s shoddy plot holds the answers. Inescapable death loops? Final Destination-coded for sure.
