Horror movies make the mundane mortifying, and the same goes for horror soundtracks.
How many times have you heard a child’s twinkling music box help build tension in a scary bedroom scene? A song typically known to soothe instead warns of impending death. Its syrupy tones and lightheartedness are undermined and rebranded. Think about how Halloween II or Halloween H20 use The Chordettes’ “Mr. Sandman”.
That dissonance between the good-feeling of the song and the bad-feeling of the scary movie creates the perfect anxiety for the viewer, but it can also help tell the story. This is the case with Final Destination’s use of John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High”. The teen-horror film from 2000 involves a high school student who has visions of his and his classmates’ imminent death, and as he and a few others escape a Death-like presence early in the movie, they must evade the vengeful Death – who is circling around to kill again – by anticipating its plan.
Besides the placement of the song in various scenes, there is a connection being made between the film’s opening plane crash sequence and the fact that Denver himself died in a plane crash. The movie’s protagonist, Alex, even says as much when he hears the song played in the airport bathroom prior to his boarding. Alex’s anxiety about getting on the plane and his taking note of the Denver song plays like he has a natural fear of flying, and the song and dialogue about it elicit a slight chuckle. But Alex is of course right to worry as the plane later explodes after take off. Though Alex, a teacher, and a few other students exit just prior.
But after a few weeks pass, Death has circled back to take the escapees as they have cheated Death’s plan, and Alex’s friend Tod is killed in an elaborate series of traps laid out by Death in his bathroom. Before he goes, Tod flips on the radio and “Rocky Mountain High” plays for a moment before he gives the radio a pointed look and immediately turns it off. Has Tod recognized the song as the same one played in the airport bathroom? If so, his look tells us he’s disturbed by the coincidence of the song playing in both his bathroom and the airport’s.
Alex’s teacher, Ms. Lewton, is next in Death’s design and her character is having the least success recovering from the trauma of the crash. She has decided to move from the town she’s grown up in because it now reminds her only of the people lost on the plane. She finds a John Denver record and puts it on to calm her nerves, calling it, “Mom’s favourite.” Another series of remarkable coincidences unravel and soon she is falling in every one of Death’s traps, clinging to life with a computer screen shard in her neck. She bumps into her record player and the song skips back to the beginning to continue playing while Death seals her fate.
Denver says the lyrics of the song were inspired by a time he and his friends witnessed a meteor shower in Colorado, and the awe they he in the face of nature. The song was certainly chosen for his untimely death, but upon further reading, some lyrics begin to take on new meaning in the context of the film.
For instance, in reference to Alex, “He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again,” or about the plane, “I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky,” or about Alex’s deceased friend Tod, “He lost a friend but kept his memory,” or about Alex’s so-called visions of Death, “His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand / the serenity of a clear blue mountain lake…” (One of Alex’s friends who survived and had similar psychic experiences is named, somewhat regrettably, Clear Rivers.)
Did screenwriters James Wong and Glen Morgan choose the song because of Denver’s death in a plane crash, and then additionally incorporate some of the song’s imagery into the script?
Morgan said of the use of “Rocky Mountain High” in Final Destination: “Once we had a basic story, I started cataloguing the strange coincidences in my own life. I was in the Vancouver airport waiting for a flight when John Denver came over the loudspeaker. I remember thinking to myself, ‘Hey, he just died in a plane crash. That’s a little weird.’ We wrote a version of that experience into the script.”
In another tongue-in-cheek use of pop music, one of the crash survivors listens in his car to Nine Inch Nails’ “Into the Void” (1999), a song which features the words “final destination” in the lyrics.
Talking to myself all the way to the station
Pictures in my head of the final destination
…Tried to save myself but my self keeps slipping away
John Denver’s songs have been featured many times on screen, including five times in 2017 in films like Alien: Covenant and Logan Lucky. Covenant’s use of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” is another instance of a soothing song used as foreshadowing when the recording is used to lure travellers to certain death.
In the Final Destination’s last scene, the three surviving students finally take a plane to France and revel in their escape from Death. But Alex begins to again doubt that Death’s design is finished with them, and he hears a busker playing “Rocky Mountain High”, in French of course. Even the cafe they’re drinking in is called “Le Cafe Miro 81”, which, if read backwards from the end spells out “18 o” or 180, as in their original flight number 180. It’s the cafe’s large electric sign that breaks and falls on Alex’s friend Carter in the final shot of the movie, and it’s just the “O” and “81” part of the sign that breaks off from the display and kills him.
Alex hears the busker playing the Denver song, and it’s what prompts him to stand up and run away. But if he hadn’t noticed the song playing, would the series of events that led to Carter’s death still have unfolded?
In any case, when you think Death might be around every corner, everything’s a sign. And now for some, “Rocky Mountain High” spells dread.
by @JoePack
Tune Spotting 
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