Ten years after the tragic death of her father in a skydiving accident, loner Sarah (Kayla Adams) returns to her hometown and tries to make some new friends by teaming up with the local skydiving group – although you’d be forgiven for thinking, considering what happened to her father, that she’d want to keep well away from the very thought of parachutes and keep her feet on the ground for the rest of her life. She manages to work her way into the group and is eventually persuaded to participate in ‘The Hex’, a near-impossible group formation jump. Their first attempt doesn’t go well but the second is successful…at least until Payson (Matthew Holcombe), one of their number, disappears literally into thin air. Over the following days, it’s clear that something very strange is going on when the other members of the group start to die in strange circumstances and Sarah has to discover the truth of ‘The Hex’ before it comes for her…
Good to see that the spirit of the Final Destination series lives on in Chris Johnson’s ambitious Hex as fate will not be denied its true course. The survivors of the Hex jump suffer terrifying visions of a disaster that never happened but clearly should have and the dramatic beats are ones we’re familiar with from not only the FD series but also a number of other horror films predicated on the implacable nature of destiny. Hex is inevitably hampered by its low budget – the gore factor is pretty low and one character perishes in a blaze of hugely-unconvincing CGI fire – and a story that becomes a little meandering in its final act where it fails to deliver a satisfying conclusion or a proper resolution or even an explanation for the origin of the Hex curse. But despite its shortcomings – it’s not remotely scary despite the potential of its intriguing concept and it’s hard to imagine that the group would merrily go up for another jump the day after one of their number has vanished before their very eyes – Hex is enlivened by some earnest acting and some genuinely impressively stomach-churning aerial photography.
