While hardly a spiritual upgrade of the slasher film; this high-concept teen body-count thriller drops hints of The Sixth Sense into the smart-aleck sensibility of Scream. Helmed by X-Files veteran James Wong; who cowrote the screenplay with longtime creative partner Glen Morgan; Final Destination is an often entertaining thriller marked by an unsettling sense of unease and scenes of eerie imagery. It suffers; however; from a schizophrenic tone and a frankly ludicrous premise. A high school Cassandra; Alex Browning (Devon Sawa of Idle Hands); wakes from a preflight nightmare and panics when he's convinced the plane is doomed. His ruckus bumps seven passengers from the Paris-bound plane; which immediately explodes into a fireball on takeoff; but fate hasn't finished with these lucky few and; one by one; death claims them. Wong brings such a funereal tone to these early scenes of survivor's guilt and inevitable doom that the already far-fetched film threatens to veer into unplanned absurdity. Thankfully; the tale loosens up with a playful morgue humor: one of the victims winds up the splattered punch line to a grim joke and elaborate Rube Goldbergesque chains of cause and effect become inspired spectacles of destruction. Final Destination is a pretty silly thriller when it takes itself seriously; and the filmmakers play fast and loose with their own rules of fate; but once they stick their tongues firmly in cheek; the film takes off with a screwy interpretation of the domino effect of doom. --Sean Axmaker