Jeffrey Reddick: Will Don’t Look Back be the next Final Destination?

Jeffrey Reddick is the mastermind behind the Final Destination series. Now, he’s making his directorial debut with Don’t Look Back.

While the horror community tends to favor directors and the folks in masks (or prosthetic makeup) when singling out icons to praise, we shouldn’t forget the writers who brainstorm the ideas that lead to successful franchises. Jeffrey Reddick co-wrote the original Final Destination (with Glen Morgan and James Wong) and will forever be associated with that series and its increasingly elaborate methods of offing cast members.

While it’s hard to believe it’s been two decades since Final Destination made its theatrical bow, it’s even harder to believe that Reddick is only now making his directorial debut with Don’t Look Back.

Deadline offers a glimpse of the plot:

"“Kourtney Bell stars as Caitlin Kramer, a woman overcoming a tragic past who is among several people who sees a man being fatally assaulted. When the witnesses start dying mysteriously, she must unearth if they’re being targeted by a killer or something far more insidious.“"

The Final Destination series took the mechanics of a slasher film but embodied those mechanics within the notion of “death” as a metaphysical foe. It wasn’t Freddy or Jason, but an airplane going up in flames…which is far more frightening. Putting a face to the monster sometimes diminishes its effect, whereas the conundrum of death itself makes horror films more interesting, and certainly less predictable.

So it’s not too surprising that the synopsis reads like Reddick returning to the comfort zone that made his name. It also sounds like a bit of Agatha Christie blending in with the implied supernatural angle.

Tony Piantedosi, whose Gravitas Ventures acquired the rights to the film, added: “[Reddick] has created a terrifying framework for his characters to meet a gruesome end, and in doing so issues a timely warning against standing idly by while others suffer.”

Perhaps Don’t Look Back will impart some wisdom and bestow some empathy on this most backward of years. We will all find out when the film makes its theatrical and VOD debut on October 16.

Do you have a favorite Final Destination film? Are you looking forward to Don’t Look Back? Let us know in the comments.