The Original Concept For FINAL DESTINATION Was Much Darker and Disturbing

I thought the first Final Destination film was great! It was such a fun and unique horror film concept, but the original vision for it was much darker, more disturbing, and depressing than what we ended up getting.

During a recent interview with Consequence of Sound creator Jeffrey Reddick, he revealed that his original concept for the story featured the characters who survived a near-death encounter being driven mad and being pushed to committing suicide. Yep, that would have seriously been messed up. Reddick explained:

"I think the smartest and biggest change from my original script James [Wong] and Glen [Morgan] made was they came up with the Rube Goldberg death trap scenario. In my original version, since death had messed up the first time, it couldn’t just kill the people. It basically exploited their biggest fears and drove them to suicide."

The filmmaker went on to say that the deaths that were featured in the final film were similar to those that were originally written, but they were under different circumstances:

"In my draft, Alex’s best friend Tod rigged up a noose in his garage. He was a preacher’s son and stole stuff from his dad. He was calling his father on his car phone to say he was sorry. When the dad came home and opened the garage, he hung himself."

"Carter jumps in front of a subway train and kills himself. There are remnants of the deaths in the film. In the script, he was still a jerk, but he felt really guilty after his girlfriend died. You saw this other side of him when he was grieving."

Reddick went on to talk about some of the supernatural elements that he included in the original script, saying:

"I had written a sister who stayed on the plane and a sister who got off the plane, which was changed to two brothers [Tod and his brother]. The sister who died in the plane crash was the straight A student. The other was the one always getting into trouble. Her sister started haunting her, and so she started dressing like her sister and acting like her sister. When she couldn’t be her sister, she set herself on fire.

"There was another character who had attempted suicide before the plane crash. She started getting haunted by all the people who had died before her. She ended up killing herself."

The vibe of Final Destination would have totally been different. While that concept is intriguing, I ultimately liked the way they ended up handling it. While it was messed up and gruesome, it was more fun and playful.