A Complete Ranking of Every Final Destination Death

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The Final Destination (aka Final Destination 4) – The AmbulanceNo 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.

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The Final Destination – The TruckNick (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.

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Final Destination 5 – The GunArguably 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.

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Final Destination 5 – The Kitchen SkewerSame 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.

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Final Destination 3 – The FlagpoleThere’s something amusing about being impaled with a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, but this kill feels insignificant and comes out of nowhere.

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Final Destination 3 – The Cherry PickerThough 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.

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The Final Destination – The BathtubAn 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!

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Final Destination 5 – The WrenchA wrench goes flying and impales Dennis (David Koechner), killing him instantly. It’s not particularly consequential to the film, nor is it very interesting.

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Final Destination – The BusTerry 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.

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Final Destination 5 – The Hook 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.

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Final Destination 3 – The SubwayA 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.

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The Final Destination – The RacetrackA 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.

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Final Destination 2 – The ExplosionIt’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.

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The Final Destination – The RockThis 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.

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The Final Destination – The PoolHunt (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.

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The Final Destination – The TireThe 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.

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The Final Destination – The Tow TruckAnother 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.

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Final Destination 5 – The Buddha StatueIsaac (P.J. Byrne) is the kind of character whose demise you root for, but his death is needlessly drawn out. A massage parlor makes for a fun setup, however. His multiple narrow escapes being thwarted by a buddha statue crushing his head to a pulp is pretty damn funny.

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Final Destination – The BillboardJust when you think the last survivors are safe, Carter (Kerr Smith) dies in the film’s final second, getting smashed by a giant billboard in Paris. It’s a killer punchline to Final Destination, and one that lingers throughout the entire franchise: You can’t cheat death.

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Final Destination 2 – The AirbagKat (Keegan Connor Tracy) is doomed. She survives the unthinkable, narrowly avoiding a pipe through her head. The EMTs use the Jaws of Life to save her, but they inadvertently set off the car’s airbag, sending her head through the pipe.

Barry Levitt is a freelance entertainment writer and his work can be found in Time, Vulture, The Daily Beast, Empire Magazine, Rolling Stone, InsideHook, LGBTQNation, i-D, and more. He covers animation, horror, queer cinema, and everything in between. You can find him on Twitter @blevitt93.