Film Review - The Final Destination 3-D

You can’t cheat death. That rather obvious observation is as close as you’ll find to a lesson in this fourth (and final?) entry in the enduring Final Destination franchise. But if you’ve sat through the series’ first three installments — in which bland, transposable American teens are eviscerated in extravagant fashion after seemingly sidestepping fate — you probably won’t be attending this disingenuously titled sequel in ask of challenging subtext...

The original Final Destination was a moderately clever, post-modern slasher flick cooked up by a pair of X-Files alumni and the writer of, erm, 2008’s ill-advised resurrection of Day of the Dead. Death itself was the villain, and its implacable, hopeless inevitability saw to it that anyone ‘lucky’ enough to evade its clammy grasp (say, by benefit of an ominous premonition in which their own fiery, mid-flight demise was detailed in frightening clarity moments before boarding an airliner) soon found their name at the head of some merciless cosmic hit-list. Next, their head was soon likely to be found several feet from its decimated body — after an unlikely succession of coincidences had dealt them a send-off so spectacularly orchestrated as to put Wile E. Coyote and his better-mousetrap ACME contraptions to shame, that is.

Three films later, and it’s same-old, slain-old, with The Final Destination’s sole ‘new’ ingredient being the option to receive your serving of slaughter in reasonably-executed 3-D. This time around, a quartet of production-line teenagers escape a disastrous scrap at a race-car rally, and, along with a racist redneck, a buxom MILF, a cowboy and “the security guard, George,” are one by one taken to meet their maker, kicking and screaming (and burning, and bleeding, and drowning...).

Despite gouging pikes, falling ceiling fans and a wayward nailgun to stretch the stereoscopics, the gore-slinging is so flatly handled by Snakes on a Plane director David R. Ellis that only the opening car-tastrophe and a crushing encounter on an escalator get anywhere near the level of excitement/exploitation required to qualify this as even the guiltiest of pleasures. When characters are so boring you can’t even be bothered to root for their ridiculously outrageous annihilation, a cynical cash-in like this becomes nothing more than an endurance test, even at The Final Destination’s slight 82 minutes. Like its doomed characters, you’ll be left to wonder: “Am I going to make it through to the end?”

DIRECTOR: David R. Ellis

SCREENWRITER: Eric Bress

CAST: Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano, Haley Webb, Mykelti Williamson, Krista Allen

RATING: MA15+

RUN TIME: 82 minutes