Escalating accidents? Life's really stranger than fiction

Freak deaths across the UK have gone up 42 per cent over the past two decades - making the next instalment of Final Destination more troubling than ever, writes Kyle MacNeill

- Kyle MacNeill

A golden rule of horror is that there must be a fiend or a foe. A gross mutant; a bloodthirsty vampire; a demented ghost; a psycho killer. It needs to be something we can actually see (through the slits of our fingers) and fear for days, or years, to come. Something to infiltrate our dreams like those poor residents of Elm Street. Something really, truly terrifying. It’s these somethings that tend to sell tickets – relative to how much cornea-popping, popcorn-chucking trauma they cause.

Then 25 years ago this month, Final Destination broke the rule. The iconic Noughties horror franchise doesn’t feature a single tangible monster, either supernatural or human. There’s only Death. Each of the five films follows a group of teens, one of whom has a premonition of an imminent freak accident that comes true. The survivors soon realise that they have defied destiny and no matter what they do, they will meet their demise in the most bizarrely brutal ways possible: car crashes, rollercoaster malfunctions, plane explosions and the kind of workplace accidents that would get Injury Lawyers 4U™ spamming your voicemail. Crucially, though, we never see Death. It’s just there... it’s everywhere.

And Final Destination, a quarter of a century on, is freakier than ever. Look away, those with a nervous disposition: according to a Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents report from November 2024, freak deaths are 42 per cent higher than two decades ago, becoming the second biggest killer for underforties.