Final Destination 4

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.

I had the displeasure of seeing this movie yesterday and believe me when I say that my expectations were really low...but I did't think it would be that bad! David Ellis has done some decent films, Cellular was very well executed in my opinion, but what happened here I will never know.

Everyone knows that the Final Destination franchise which started as a exercise in suspense and terror descended into parody starting with the sequels. There is no suspense and I hate to say it, every time someone died and gore appeared on the screen, I started laughing. None of it was realistic, not even when blood was coming out of someone's mouth did it look real.

The way people die in films like this are made to be creative, because the kind of audience going to see these films wants to see people die in inventive and gory ways...too bad its just silly. Lets hope this really is the "Final Destination" for this worn out franchise.

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.

You can just imagine the suits sitting around their big round table discussing how to churn out another financially beneficial Final Destination movie and get away with it. Big suit number one puts forward that they obviously need more inventive mouse trap like deaths. Big suit number two has the genius notion that 3D is again taking off so why not utilise that option too. And that's pretty much all that it took, with the end result being a movie that is very self aware of its roots, but still plays out as the runt of the Final Destination litter.

Just as the director of the first one, James Wong, was brought back to direct part 3, the makers here bring back the director of part 2, David R. Ellis, to direct part 4! Which ultimately proves to be nothing more than some sort of nepotism like factor because The Final Destination is basically just over 82 minutes of poor acting, bad writing and a series of kills weaved together by the odd 5 minutes of barely relevant characterisations (the exposition as painful as the gory deaths!).

The kills entertain as they pretty much always have throughout the franchise, with the opening disaster sequences (here set at a speedway stadium) continuing one of the series' great traditions. While the opening and closing X-Ray/Skeletal credit sequences are superb and a credit to those involved. Yet it all feels so tired, where in spite of the willingness to upgrade the technology, it's still lazy and has nothing to really justify its very being other than that to make easy money.

The makers of part 5 would have to come up with something special to not turn this franchise from being one that was once bright and inventive, into that of a money train joke. 4/10

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.