FKDZ

Challengers, I put off watching this due to a bit of hype around it, and set a pretty high bar for it I can't lie. But with the best chance I gave, I can't really say I had a enjoyable time watching this. It's lacking emotional power to really hook the viewer, it felt like we were the bystanders in this. And it lacked a great amount of engagement.

Now that it isn't shot and directed well would be a lie, because it looks the part, and the actors also work well with what they got. What worked less, was the editing, the timeline.. I don't get why we get such massive jumps in time whilst visually the characters barely change, it becomes annoying and provides very little, just one little reference that is powerful to the finale. But really that should've been done differently. The constant switching felt like it was forced to make the story more dynamic. But the solution could've and should've been found with the characters in just a single timeline. Split up the finale match sure, but don't jump around like that.

Characters and backstory... hmmm.. trying really hard to think if any of the characters have a likeable aspect to them, well first and foremost, backstory is absent. And then, most of the interactions are just about them, their frustrations, their masked lust. And that's that. Do we really care? Not me. I just see a love triangle between 3 frustrated people. But they're not tragic or interesting, there's no reasoning to their complexity. Where's that hook?

The music was pretty good, but tonally mono, I think the lack of a good selection of music did not help the already underdeveloped emotional aspect, that could've at least helped some scenes.

I don't think I'll remember much at all of this movie at the end of the day.

Final Destination 2, a okay sequel, they could've done it much worse but it picks up decently well but does take us through some of the same tropes that don't make it very engaging story wise. Production and set and creativity do make it the more interesting one versus the first one. Where the first movie had more ''intentional'' elements, this movie tries a little more to keep it a little more subtle. And this is the movie that provides not one but two scenes of which many people to this day will try to avoid their hardest to get into.

And it's influence can't be understated. What can be, is that the rest of the movie is... passable at best. The acting is just flat, it's awful, that goes for the dialog and directing of the characters too, they get zero time to process and events. And the actual impact such events should have are reacted to in the most underwhelming methods. It's a gasp.. and move on.

And that's really where this movie loses me more than the first. Where in the first movie we got at least a little character, here, except for the main girl we get nothing to hook on to with the other characters, and thus their deaths is just more funny than impactful or tragic. They're set up like cannon fodder, and that makes the time spent watching them just feel like wasted.

Besides that everything else is just fine. Nothing special. I do miss some of James Wong's directing that had SOME creativity and smart shots, but here there's not even any of that.

Final Destination, a quintessential era defining blockbuster that deserves it iconic status. But besides that, looking at it objectively, it's just gets by being okay enough in all of it's other departments besides the concept.

No doubt the concept is great. And at it's core the thing that drives the movie. Combined with the creative solutions it provides it does ample enough to provide the tension and action needed to at least keep you engaged.

The characters are just alright but fairly flat and typical of this era in behavior. It's a very contained and constrained little world they're in. Acting was.. okay at best, with a few standouts just being bad.

If going for a traditional slasher this does do things differently, it moves slower, and is a bit less engaging in the sense of keeping up the pace. Easy to follow.

Fine, good to have seen once.