Final Destination 4

If you're a fan of the franchise, you'd know the drill by now, and can probably mentally run through all the cliché moments you'll be expected to see being played out on screen once again. Start with a spectacular death-defying escape from certain demise, and because Death cannot accept those who cheated on him, hence begins that hunter-prey game where the Death's invisible hand starts to design some elaborate life-ending sequence for its victims, sometimes with some wickedly black humour thrown in.

Seriously though, Death has turned hip in the series, allowing a select group of survivors led by a prophetic messenger, if anything just to challenge himself to pick them off one by one through the simple rule of elimination in order of the premonition, dangling the carrot that whosoever can break any of his death traps, will be worthy of a second chance in life, not. One thing's for sure, an audience is not going to just walk in and expect great acting or high drama. All we want, simply and crudely put, is to see how brutal or comical death can result from sometimes the most ridiculous of set ups.

To top its predecessors, this installment had its introductory big scene set in stock car racing, which is the perfect avenue for 101 things to go wrong, and when they do, have thousands of potential victims to pick off from. While the very first movie had a spectacular, and some say too realistic for good taste in having witness from within a plane break up and explode upon take-off, this one had an adrenaline pumping race that got enhanced thanks to the latest gimmick in town, 3D.

And while some films are presented in 3D format without exploiting its 3D elements to the maximum, The Final Destination milked every single sequence that it could. From the get go you have objects darting around and flying toward you, be it huge tyres or mashed body insides, everything got hurled toward you from the screen, which I have to admit made me duck a couple of times, having deliberately chosen to sit up front so that the screen totally enveloped my field of vision. But there were still some sequences that looked quite cheaply done though, akin to the quality of those made for television movies due to a smaller budget devoted to effects. But for what it's worth as a 3D film, this is one of the better contemporary live action ones out there now.

One does not expect Oscar winning material in its storyline or acting, though the eye-candy cast made sitting through this film palatable, even if they're acting range comes with vast rooms for improvement. The film's relatively short, clocking under 90 minutes, and had enough cheat sheet deja-vu moments (which included the opening credits priming you on what to excpect) to repeat itself for the sole purpose of bloating the runtime. It also ran out of steam in its final act, leading to a very convenient and rushed conclusion which was just probably director David R. Ellis' way of saying "I do not know how to end this".

Will there be another Final Destination? Sure, if the writers can dream up of another shocker of an opening sequence to set the stage for more deathly carnage to happen. It's no brainer, and if box office results this opening weekend prove to be stellar, then we should expect this franchise to develop some legs to keep going on. And on. But if that happens, this will be viewed in 3D, or naught.

The Final Destination series is another guilty cinematic pleasure, similar to the Saw series, the Hostel films and before that, the Friday 13 and "Nightmare" movies.

It has been two years since "The Final Destination" hit movie screens and it now plays fairly often on premium channels such as HBO or Encore. This movie and the series in general differs from other horror movies such as the Scream series in that the predator "Death" is unseen. All of the FD movies follow the same general premise: a group of teens escapes from death in a catastrophe only to have "death" follow them (you can't escape your destiny, right?).

Each successive movie offers new and spectacular ways for good-looking young people to die. TFD starts out at a NASCAR type race, which is a social comment: the underlying reason many people go to such races is for the possibility of a violent and spectacular crash. Yet a soulful young man has a premonition that there will be mayhem and guides his three friends and a small pack of hangers-on to safety.

The spectacular crash happens and "Death's" methodical predation of the survivors begins. To discuss the various ways people die would court spoilers but the writers of TFD put some wonderful humorous touches in what is a very taut and lean script (one of the complaints about the movie is that it is too short). A young mother has her two boys put tampons in their ears to protect their hearing from the loud stock car engines, for example. In another scene, a racist stalks the black security guard from the car race and during the mayhem that ensues, the War song "Why can't we be friends?" plays on the radio.

Some reviewers lament the lack of character development in TFD, but they're missing the point. Most of the characters are either caricatures (the racist, the angry redneck, the cowboy) or eye candy (the four core teenagers who try to thwart death). The most interesting main character is Hunt, the roguish, sexy blond young alpha male. A sequence at a pool involving Hunt is one of the most clever and ironic in the entire movie. Without giving too much away, let's say that Hunt's problems start when he tries to retrieve a treasured "lucky" coin.

TFD also contains a clever "movie within a movie" scene. The script also contains symbolism for coins, water, and America's love affair with the car. Admittedly these are nuances that the average moviegoer is likely to miss. At the same time, the movie has flaws, such as a contrived scene in a hospital and an annoying homeless character who pops up in a couple of scenes. Overall, the production team has succeeded in giving FD fans and new viewers a thrill ride of gory, guilty pleasure.

Can somebody please tell me how a movie released in 2009 could look worse than one made in 2000? It seems like they turned a supernatural thriller into a cheap B-horror, and being a fan of the franchise, it rubbed me the wrong way.

I wouldn't have bothered about the campiness had the writing or the performances done their duties! I agree that the creators have put some creativity in the kills, but Final Destination as a series, contrary to popular beliefs, is not all about the kills; you need to come up with a modest story with at least functional personalities; this one had neither.

Terrible CGI, bland narration, uninspiring characters; this was bad on so many grounds!

For me, a rating of 5 out of 10 means I didn't like the movie, but I didn't hate it either.

"The Final Destination" is a 3D horror thriller gimmick. Even though I saw this in 2D, there were many elements that were very obviously designed to be in 3D to take full advantage of the medium.

However, the film itself just isn't good.

The acting is terrible. The story is formulaic. There's nothing really interesting as far as the plot. No discussion of death. No new interesting concepts. Lots of fluff in the form of false kills. And the entire film from the opening credits to the closing credits is about the methods in which these people die.

What this movie is really about is killing young, attractive individuals in a manner which will compliment the 3D. Nothing else. It's just killing people using a Rube Goldberg device or a flying object in 3D.

Some of the special effects are good, and a few of the deaths are interesting, however, the film doesn't really do anything for me. It's just kind of there. I don't really hate it, but I don't really like it either. I also don't really care for 3D in general. I think it's a stupid way of getting you to pay a little extra, like IMAX (which is a bigger screen and some extra speakers. Yaay).

Overall, if you like the 3D gimmick; you're just looking for a movie to take a few friends to and have a little fun; and you don't really care about plot, characters, or story, you might have some fun. To anyone else, I wouldn't really recommend it. It's just a studio gimmick and can be easily ignored.

5/10 - Nothing special.

Arriving on local theaters without the benefit of 3-D, the novelty of "The Final Destination" goes doubly kaput, as it not only lacks inspired deaths and sympathetic characters, but also because the flatness of David R. Ellis' body bag-fodder isn't mitigated by whatever shallow entertainment an additional dimension might have brought.

Eric Bress' script wastes no time in shaping its interchangeable characters as, apparently, Death has to immediately dive into placing its cardboard victims in intricate fatalities that have been the series' central gimmick. Nick (Bobby Campo) experiences a premonition of a disaster in a race track and manages to get a few people out, who would have otherwise died. As per the franchise's tradition, Death won't be cheated and it starts to do anything -- like toppling cans and letting waters drip -- to create a ripple of events that would eliminate the survivors.

Despite showing how lame entertainment can be entertainingly lame with "Snakes on a Plane," Ellis -- who also directed "Final Destination 2" -- doesn't strive for an ounce of creativity, resulting to a terribly disposable fare that fails to hit its its mark despite aiming so low. And as embodied by the narrative shortcuts this gorefest constantly employs, the Rube Goldberg set pieces start to feel less impressive than mechanical, which makes one believe that Death has worked itself too much over the last three installments.