Popcorn Lobotomy

Well let me just say we're lucky Sammy didn't review this one. He would have completely caned it, and if there was a negative 5 stars (which there can be, because this is our site and we can do whatever we want), he would have certainly awarded it.

Luckily for The Final Destination, I can appreciate a film that's supposed to be "so bad it's good", and have been an avid horror fan from childhood. As such, I have an almost unlimited tolerance for the uniqueness and ingenuity of the Final Destination premise.

This one is 3-D, which is lucky, because it really doesn't bring much else new to the table.


The Director

Coming off the back of his experimental Snakes on a Plane -- during which he played with studio money by producing a "so bad it's good" action thriller and marketing it as such -- David R. Ellis must have been a little nervous.

That particular film was a bit of a mess, and, ironically, dissappointed because it wasn't quite bad enough! This one is along similar lines, and perhaps is a little more successful in its tongue-in-cheek tone, but it still walks that fine line between glossy blockbuster and trashy b-grade.

Ellis's background is in stunt choreography, which explains why he's so good at setting up physical gags. He understands movie physics well enough to know what will convince an audience and what will come across as fake-ass.

However, he's certainly no auteur yet, and I can't help wondering what a Final Destination movie might be like with someone with a bit more style and the courage to take the subject matter seriously at the helm.


The Deaths

For the uninitiated, the Final Destination movies centre on the premise that Death has a grand plan, and that once he has selected you for death, he will achieve his goal without exception. However, what happens when someone cheats Death, by, say, receiving a premonition about how it is about to happen? Well, Death refuses to give up, and finds increasingly vicious and creative means to get you dead.

So the fun of the series is really in the creative combination of coincidences that results in the deaths of the major characters. There is always some theorizing about how one may cheat death again, but it is invariably in vain.

This movie certainly delivers on the creative deaths. They are more elaborate, and there are more of them than in the first three films. Characters are routinely decapitated, cut in half, de-limbed and crushed in very elaborate ways, which is really the most important aspect of the film.

The movie was designed for 3-D, so there are more sharp spikes, flying debris and splashing liquids than ever before. I only saw the 2-D version, so most of the gimmicky gags were lost on me.

What were not lost on me were the innovative Rube Goldberg machines that lead to the inevitable deaths of the characters. The broom falls on the jar of lacquer, which pours onto the floor, which makes the boy slip, which makes him fall onto the see-saw, which has a bit of metal on the other end, which flies through the air and stabs the character in the eye. You know, that sort of thing, but multiply my example by 10. They really are very clever, and a pleasure to watch.

Unfortunately the 3-D requirement seems to have degraded the quality of some of the effects, and the compositing was easily detectable in several scenes. This ruins some of the surprises, because the effects shots look so different, you know something is about to happen.


The Story

This one again starts with a premonition, but, this time around, it's a Nascar race accident that's about to pick off pretty much everyone in the entire crowd. A group of people hear the guy freak out about his premonition and leave the race track in the nick of time to get to safety before the whole track blows to shit.

Just in case seeing the entire grizzly vision of the carnage wasn't enough for the viewers, a wheel flies over the fence and decapitates one of the survivors as a natural segue into the main titles.

The rest of the movie involves the characters being targeted and picked off one by one. The deaths are way more drawn out and elaborate than before, and this time the main character continues to get vague premonitions during the course of the film. There is even a premonition within a premonition toward the end.

He never really figures them out, though, and everyone dies anyway.

But amidst all the delightful and lovingly rendered carnage, there is something missing. It seems the film-makers have focussed so much on jamming in horrific death sequences that there was little room for story, originality or pacing. There are plenty of twists and turns, but they are all tired now that we're four movies in, and they seem to come randomly. Perhaps this is a deliberate attempt to surprise the audience, but it just confused and befuddled (yes, I was befuddled, what of it?) this viewer.

The ending is especially bad. It's established tradition to have a sudden surprise death at the end of a Final Destination film, but, to be honest, I was hoping for something different. It's supposed to be the final movie in the series, so I was kinda hoping, not for death to reveal himself with a cape and scythe or anything cheesy, but for something a little more thoughtful given the premise.

Some closure of some kind would have been nice.


The Verdict

I know, I know, this is THE Final Destination. But as always, if this one does well enough at the box office, would anyone be surprised if we were treated to The REAL Final Destination in a year or two... in 4-D!

Let's hope not though, because 4-D doesn't exist, and Final Destination has pretty much explored it's concept to the full.

2 stars, for carnage and Rube-Goldberg-ness.