Death, strange sense of humour.

Ok, I admit it I'm going to kick this thing off properly with something that seems to be the very pinnacle of what I don't like about horror films, but hear me out.

First off all the Final Destination series barely counts as horror for me. It's much closer to some kind of dark hearted comedy. With each installment built on the premise that some people escape death via a precognitive vision but are then offed one by one by the spirit of death itself what we get is basically a series of slap stick set pieces as filtered through something of a Grimm Fairytales lens.

The brainchild of X-Files luminaries Glen Morgan and James Wong the original film sees a bunch of high school kids thrown off a play minutes before it explodes in mid air. The first real indication of some sly smarts at play comes when we as the audience seen the plane explode in back of shot whilst the characters argue about being on it in the foreground with a beautiful second or so of delay before the window shatters.

A month later and people start dying in strange accidents, strangely convoluted and over intricate accidents. And there lies the joy, once it becomes obviously evitable that the majority of the cast are doomed it's a case sitting back and trying to guess exactly how there are to meet their ends.

Each major sequence cunningly offers up a number of potential hazards that could do the deed before normally managing to combine them all into some kind of mouse trap like dominoes effect of death.

Following installments basically change the cast but keep the formula with little effort to build any unnecessary mythos around the events. Now I normally don't like films that are all about horrible deaths and awful pain, but the Final Destination series takes these tools and plays it for laughs and more importantly does ask uys to revel in the suffering of others. Once they come the deaths are quick and then it's off and on to the next one, no prolonged scenes of torture to be found. (Though I admit the first salvo of the third feel does freak me out)

Pretty much the cinema equivalent of the Ghost Train at the fair or the rollercoaster the films pitch the audience this way and that but we all know what is coming. A bit like Tom and Jerry cartoons rendered real. These film know exactly what they are and run with it, upping the ante to daftly deadly highs. Most will find they are remotely horrified but do end up with grins on their faces as they chortle in disbelief.

Reveal in the comedic violent excess with Empire's list of the ten best deaths from the series, though it will spoil the wicked surprise if you haven't seen them