The producers of the Final Destination franchise have announced the long-awaited seventh instalment, and critics are already describing it as an "OH&S training video that went to hell."
In Final Destination 7: Death Goes Down Under, the plot centres around a routine maintenance error on Melbourne’s Southern Star Observation Wheel, which triggers a catastrophic sequence of events resembling a hellish Gold-Rube Goldberg machine made entirely out of negligence and cheap cable ties.
The plot kicks off with a group of tourists boarding the Southern Star on a hot December Christmas Eve. One of them has a premonition: the wheel will break loose, roll through Melbourne, and kill thousands in increasingly ludicrous and creatively implausible ways. Naturally, nobody listens. Moments later, a maintenance worker tightens the wrong bolt, and the entire wheel detaches from its frame like a godless Beyblade.
As it begins to roll through Docklands, it picks up speed, flattening a food truck festival and sending soy wax candles, haloumi sliders, and acoustic duos flying in every direction. It careens through Marvel Stadium mid-Coldplay concert, instantly vaporising the entire band and tens of thousands of fans in what’s been described as “the first Coldplay set anyone enjoyed.”
From there, the chaos escalates into a full-scale Rube Goldberg massacre. The impact of the wheel dislodges a Yarra Trams power line, which shorts out the entire Melbourne Metro Tunnel project. A tunnel-boring machine bursts through the surface like a mechanical kraken and swallows an artisanal cat café in Fitzroy whole. This somehow causes a nearby gas main to rupture, igniting a fireball that launches an abandoned Lime e-scooter into a Guzman y Gomez in Carlton. The scooter explodes, and a flaming burrito sails across the skyline, landing on a Nando’s chicken mascot filming a TikTok dance.
The flaming mascot bolts down Swanston Street and collides with the AFL Grand Final parade. One of the terrified horses kicks a football sky-high into a drone carrying a crate of Guy Sebastian’s hair product to the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. The drone explodes, raining flaming pomade onto the stage, just as Santa Claus and The Wiggles begin their considerable number at Carols by Candlelight. Moments later, the Southern Star arrives - still rolling, somehow - and crushes the entire cast of Australia’s childhood like a demonic piñata. All that remains is a single, unscathed red skivvy, fluttering in the wind.
Meanwhile, the shockwave rattles a Myer escalator in the CBD, sending dozens of panicked shoppers flying into a perfume counter, where they asphyxiate on a rogue cloud of Lynx Africa.
Still not done, the Southern Star ricochets off Mount Dandenong, hurtles through the clouds, and crash-lands on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, where it destroys a Bunnings sausage sizzle, upends the onions, and starts a 24-hour grease fire visible from space.
Producers say the film is a cautionary tale about fate, destiny, and the long-term consequences of outsourcing engineering to a bloke named Damo. "It’s about choices,” said director Todd Bludgeon. “And the terrifying fragility of public infrastructure built on a budget.”
Final Destination 7 is slated for release in July 2027.
Early reviews are already calling the film “viscerally unhinged” and “shockingly accurate.” Emergency services have issued a warning to potential viewers: anyone with a fear of large objects, government projects, or fun should avoid the film altogether.
