It is the first installment in the Final Destination film series and stars Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, and Tony Todd.

High school student Alex Browning boards Volée Airlines Flight 180, a Boeing 747, with his classmates for their senior trip to Paris from John F. Kennedy Airport.

Thirty-nine days later, after attending a memorial service for the victims, an unusual chain reaction causes Tod to be accidentally hanged in his shower that night.

The home's mortician, William Bludworth, reveals that the survivors who escaped from the impending circumstance have disrupted Death's plan, who is now claiming the lives of those who were meant to die from the accident.

Alex and Clear are discussing their next move when the rest of the survivors arrive outside the café, where Terry is run over and killed by a speeding bus.

After watching a news report on the cause of the explosion, Alex concludes that Death is reclaiming the survivors according to the sequence of their intended demise on the plane.

Carter, who is next, is enraged over Terry's loss and drives erratically through the streets before stopping his car in front of an oncoming train, attempting to die on his own terms.

Alex, believing himself to be next, spends the next day hiding out in a fortified cabin, but soon recalls having changed seats with two classmates in his premonition and realizes that Clear is actually next.

Alex finds Clear trapped inside her car and surrounded by loose electrical cables that ignite a gasoline leak around her.

Several film characters are named after famous horror film directors, actors, and producers: Billy Hitchcock is named after Alfred Hitchcock, the Browning family and Tod Waggner are named after Tod Browning, Larry Murnau is a reference to Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, Blake Dreyer to Carl Theodor Dreyer, Valerie Lewton to Val Lewton, Agent Schreck to Max Schreck, Terry Chaney to Lon Chaney, Christa Marsh recalls Fredric March, Agent Weine of Robert Wiene, and George Waggner is directly named after Universal Horror film producer George Waggner.

"I was actually flying home to Kentucky and I read a story about a woman who was on vacation and her mom called her and said, 'Don't take the flight tomorrow, I have a really bad feeling about it.'

[7] New Line Cinema bought Reddick's treatment and hired him to write the original draft of the script, which featured Death as an unseen force.

[8][7] Expanding on his decision to write and direct the film, Wong stated: One thing we were all in agreement on from the start is that we didn't want to do a slasher movie.

[9][10][8]Producers Craig Perry and Warren Zide from Zide/Perry Productions helped with the film's budget because both were similarly fascinated about the idea of an invisible force executing its victims.

[7] Alex Browning, the last role cast, went to Canadian actor Devon Sawa, who previously starred in the 1999 film Idle Hands.

[9][10][8] Seann William Scott, famous for portraying Steve Stifler in the 1999 film American Pie, was hired as class clown Billy Hitchcock.

[10] Additional cast members included Daniel Roebuck and Roger Guenveur Smith as FBI agents Weine and Schreck; Brendan Fehr, Christine Chatelain, and Lisa Marie Caruk as students George Waggner, Blake Dreyer, and Christa Marsh; Barbara Tyson and Robert Wisden as Barbara and Ken Browning, Alex's parents; and Forbes Angus as teacher Larry Murnau.

Sawa restrained his appearance in The Guilty during production, and even commented that "[he] had to share a trailer with Bill Pullman because it was bigger and would make him look more famous".

To serve the subtleties of the script and to help personify death, production designer John Willet developed the concept of "skewing" the sets.

"We spent two months building this central set piece that weighs about 45,000 pounds and holds 89 people," special effects supervisor Terry Sonderhoff explained.

[15] According to visual effects supervisor Ariel Velasco Shaw, the miniature had to be launched about 40 feet up into the air to make it look like a real Boeing 747 exploded into a fireball.

[10][28][29] The featurette shows video footage of the test screening audience and specific comments regarding why the deleted scenes were either cut or reshot.

[10][28][29] The second documentary, titled Premonitions, explores real-life intuitive investigator Pam Coronado, who has helped police solve many murders and missing person cases with her psychic abilities.

The site's critics' consensus states, "Despite a panel of X-Files alums at the helm and a promising premise, flighty performances and poor execution keep Final Destination from ever taking off.

[32] On June 14, 2010, Nick Hyman of Metacritic included Final Destination in the website's editorial 15 Movies the Critics Got Wrong, noting that "the elaborate suspense/action set pieces from the first two films are more impressive than most".

[34] On the negative side, Stephen Holden of The New York Times said that "even by the crude standards of teenage horror, Final Destination is dramatically flat".

[39] Luke Thompson of the Dallas Observer found it "a waste of a decent premise";[40] Ernest Hardy of LA Weekly said that the film "fails because it takes itself both too seriously and not seriously enough".

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times enjoyed the film and gave it three out of four stars, stating that "Final Destination will no doubt be a hit and inspire the obligatory sequels.

[45] Joe Leydon of Variety praised the film, saying "[it] generates a respectable amount of suspense and takes a few unexpected turns while covering familiar territory",[46] while Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times said it was "a terrific theatrical feature debut for television veterans Glen Morgan and James Wong".

David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews remarked "Sawa's personable turn as the hero is matched by a uniformly effective supporting cast rife with familiar faces (i.e. Seann William Scott, Brendan Fehr, Tony Todd, etc)"[51] while Leydon stated that "Sawa is credible as the second-sighted Alex—unlike many other actors cast as teen protagonists, he actually looks like he might still be attending high school—but the supporting players are an uneven bunch".