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‘Final

S
Destination 5’ Jacqueline
多 多 1/2 (R) MacInnes
Wood is a
BY FRANK LOVECE rock chick
WARNER BROS. PHOTO

Special to Newsday who really

gets rocked

T
he Grim Reaper remains the
Giddy Reaper in this fifth
installment of the whimsical-
ly formulaic horror series, in
which people who have escaped
death in accidents soon meet their
demises in elaborate, Rube Gold-
berg-like machinations.
Still finding ways to be inven-
tive after four films since 2000,
“Final Destination 5” opens, like
the others, with a graphic premo-
nition of disaster. Hapless paper
salesman Sam (Nicholas
D’Agosto) saves himself and
seven co-workers on a bus to a
company retreat when he envi-
sions a bridge collapse that kills
them all. In the movie’s greatest
set piece, a spectacularly lethal
ballet of snapping cables, up-
heaved asphalt, scalding tar and
flying metal rods is as perfectly,
mesmerizingly synchronized as a
Swiss watch.
Soon every whistling tea kettle
and offhand comment seems
poised to trigger some domino-
in “Final
Destination
5.”
PLOT Young professionals cheat shouldn’t be within a hundred
death in a bridge collapse — but yards of each other.
not for long. The trick, which the filmmak-
ers do well, is to give us character
CAST Nicholas D’Agosto, archetypes with enough personali-
Emma Bell, Miles Fisher, ty not to bore us but not so much
Courtney B. Vance that their gruesome deaths affect
us. So we have Sam’s self-sacrific-
LENGTH 1:32 ing girlfriend (Emma Bell), his
friend and immediate supervisor
PLAYING AT Area theaters (Miles Fisher), haughty rock chick
(Jacqueline MacInnes Wood),
BOTTOM LINE Surprisingly, no stiff boss (David Koechner) and
franchise fatigue, thanks to office jerk (P.J. Byrne).
spectacular effects and still- After that, it’s all in the execu-
inventive death machinations. tion, so to speak. In a treat for
those who saw the first film, we
see some plane tickets dated 2000
effect death. Pivotal screws and on a very particular flight —
bolts shake loose all too efficient- suggesting Death’s been doing
ly from overhead equipment, this longer than we thought. And
vibrating cellphones get placed with this brisk, effective film, with
too close to lit candles on shelves, very good 3-D, he’ll likely be
and water and electrical outlets doing it again.

‘Attack the Block’ PLOT When voracious killer

space aliens attacks a council
housing estate in London, a band
多 多 1/2 (R) of young locals fights them off.
SCREEN GEMS PHOTO

BY JOHN ANDERSON CAST Jodie Whittaker, Nick

Special to Newsday Frost, John Boyega, Leeon Jones

LENGTH 1:28

T
he horror-fantasy-sci-fi
genre is crawling with
directors who know the John Boyega, left, Jodie PLAYING AT Area theaters

www.exploreLI.com
horror-fantasy-sci-fi genre, Joe Whittaker and Luke Treadaway
Cornish being one of them. His BOTTOM LINE Feature debut by
audacious debut feature, “Attack It doesn’t help that the main director Joe Cornish shows flair
the Block” — in which lower- characters are thugs, which makes for action, horror, less of a knack
class youths from a London the timing of this independent for endearing characters.
housing project do battle with U.K. film notable; thinking about
man-eating aliens — combines the recent street violence in
the wry nastiness of “Gremlins” London will be unavoidable, an action thriller and as such is

NEWSDAY, FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 2011

and “The Thing” with such siege
dramas as “Assault on Precinct
13” and “Escape from New
York.”
All this makes for a tautly
wound take on the old B-movie as
nationalistic metaphor. The down-
side? That the more the viewer
knows about the genre, the better
he or she will like the film, be-
cause character isn’t Cornish’s
strong suit, and nobody here is
particularly warm and cuddly.
given that our heroine, Sam (Jodie
Whittaker), starts off by being
robbed by the same hoodlums
with whom she’ll soon be helping
fight intergalactic terrorists. Chief
among the hoods is Moses (John
Boyega), who does a terrific job of
making his character convincing-
ly dislikable. And who has a very
personal approach to defending
home (and, presumably, country)
from slimy space fiends.
“Attack the Block” is essentially
effective. The humor, while con-
siderable, is organic, rather than
the result of Cornish going out of
his way to make stupid gags. The
kids sharply deliver Cornish’s
snappy dialogue, and there’s an
air of mystery about the movie
and its creatures. This may have
been due to its low-budget nature,
but when it comes to horrifying
abominations from the cosmos,
less can oftentimes be more. Here
it certainly is.