The Final Destination (*½)

Directed by: David R. Ellis
Starring: Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano, Haley Webb, Mykelti Williamson, Krista Allen
Seen: October 12th 2009

*½ Out of ****

By now everyone knows, or should know, the basic premise of a Final Destination movie. The series has been around since 2000, and sadly, that was also the last time it was a fresh concept. A group of people, our main character group, survive some tragedy because of a vision of sorts experienced by the lead character, but then find that death has a design on their lives, and won’t allow them to stay alive much longer. The original Final Destination (2000) was fresh and inspiring (sort of), whereas the following three films were just a rehash of an idea best left as a single story (I have to admit, I skipped the 3rd instalment, as the 2nd was such a huge disappointment after the very cool first).

Nick (Campo), the clairvoyant this time, experiences a massive accident at a NASCAR-track, lots of people die really brutally (chopped in half by a car bonnet, crushed by an engine, head impaled on a wooden stake, etc.). He realises what he saw was a premonition, and he pulls his friends, and in the process a few strangers, out of harms’ way; but not for long, as they start dying in the most contrived ways (the first three Final Destination movies probably were not any less contrived…) possible. Every location is filled with enough grinding gears and sharp metal (and other materials) objects and combustible materials to level Manhattan more effectively than Godzilla ever could, and the film hinges too much on an extraneous series of unfortunate events (sorry to pull that great film into this) to advance the plot, which is simply people dying in some sequence that Nick and his girlfriend Lori (VanSanten) struggle to figure out.

A big problem I had with this film, as well as with the 2nd movie, was that while the 1st movie was violent, it wasn’t (at least to my recollection, this is 9 years ago) as gory as the subsequent ones. And I mean innards on display for everyone to see. Now I’m not too squeamish, but a film like this loses a lot of its effect by showing the viewer too much. Let the audience fill in the picture themselves, don’t show them the liver and stomach and small intestines that was just sucked out of the victim by a swimming pool pump. Stop at the point where you see the character’s back slowly imploding, and go on to the next scene, the guts exploding from a machine blunts it…

The acting is, as can be expected from a film of this calibre, laughable. The characters really only blurt out their lines in order to move the plot to the following piece of violent visual effect. This story cannot be taken seriously, even within the confines of the reality posited in this movie. The characters never develop past mere bodies for dismembering, and this makes a very short film (a meagre 81 minutes) feel like a labour to sit through. Yes, a short film can feel like an eternity, and the pacing of The Final Destination is a pristine example of how not to do it.

The Final Destination has one thing counting for it, 3D, and even that isn’t done well, since I was constantly squinting, seeing as how things just continuously seemed slightly out of focus. Maybe that’s it; the series has gone out of focus, choosing rather to only show us strings of brutal “accidental” deaths, rather than making them part of a more engaging story as a strong background to tell of the characters’ fight for survival. The Final Destination cured my idea of this series, again. The first one was good, stay well away from the rest…