Who would have thought that a modest teenage horror film, a slasher without a masked killer or distinctive weapon, born in the heat of the success of ‘Scream’ and ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ (the poster is copied), would end up becoming one of the most profitable and longest-running horror sagas in horror cinema.
But that’s how it was: ‘Final Destination’ (the 7th installment is scheduled to premiere in 2027) continues to play with death 25 years later.
The impact of the latest film, ‘Final Destination: Blood Ties’ (currently in the top 15 at the global box office), seems to have served as inspiration for Katy Perry’s new video clip (although, judging by the number of times the singer has avoided her “final destination” this year, it could well be autobiographical). ‘Bandaids’, whose lyrics are inspired by his separation from Orlando Bloom, narrates a series of catastrophic misfortunes in the style of the saga: mixing suspense, gore and black humor.
The video works as an illustration of the worst nightmare of an occupational risk prevention technician: a concatenation of silly accidents, the kind that make you want to shout “take care!”, starring the Californian singer with her usual comical tone.
None of them are particularly original. They are more of a tribute (or a copy, depending on how you look at it) than an invention. We have seen all the “accidents” at some point in fiction (the train accident or the quicksand accident, millions of times). And some directly in the ‘Final Destination’ saga itself: the one with the crusher and the one with the logs appear in the 2nd, and the one with the escalators is reminiscent of a scene from the 4th.
The final sequence does have a little more substance. The shot of the actress lighting a piti is reminiscent of the closing of the wonderful ‘Wedding Night’ (2019), a film with which ‘Bandaids’ shares the same sense of humor (‘Happy Death Day’ would also be along those lines). The fact that, in the background, the regular ‘Woman’s World’ plays, whose video clip included a scene at a gas station, adds another layer of meaning: the explosion as a visual metaphor for “dynamiting the past”?
