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Starring: Bobby Campo, Mykelti Williamson, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano, Haley Webb, Krista Allen
Director: David R. Ellis
Genre: HorrorWarning for the squeamish: you may want to get off at an earlier stop. But if you get off on gore, by all means stay on the bus.
Release Date: 3-Sep-2009
URL: http://www.finaldestinationmovie.com/
Language: English
Distributor: 20th Century Fox/Warner Bros
| Synopsis: |
Death is at it again – going after those "fortunate" enough to cheat it. In this case, it's a group of teens and others who survive a horrible accident at the race-track only to get pulped in various gory, squishy ways.
My Comment/Review(s):Starring: Bobby Campo, Mykelti Williamson, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano, Haley Webb, Krista Allen
And by "sting", we mean "con".
Now, haven't you wondered, through the last three FD flicks, what the heck is it that keeps sending out these premonitions? And leading the nice-looking young people who feature in these tales to get pulped, squished, fried, grilled and shishkebab-ed in such creative ways?
Let's think about it. Death gets cheated of his/her/its rightful harvest by some precognitive chap.
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Then, Death goes all out to violently retrieve those doomed souls that rightfully belong to him/her/it.
And in the FD universe, Death is so powerful as to affect such manipulation of things and events necessary to claim those scalps.
Now, then … how in the blue blazes did Death allow him/her/itself to get cheated like that in the first place?
Maybe my thought processes were just dulled by all those inventive but disturbing death scenes from the previous movies, or galvanized into action by the much more gruesome and yucky ones in this new outing, but the thought did strike me.
What if this was all just some sadistic con game on Death's part? What if Death wasn't cheated, but if Death … simply cheated?
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And all for the sake of putting these poor souls through the motions of trying to break some absurd chain, like those "send this e-mail to 24 people in your address book within 24 hours or lose your left testicle to a rabid squirrel" chain-letter things.
Pardon me for belabouring this point, but I've run out of things to say about the Final Destination movies, and I really did have all those thoughts running through my head during the movie.
At least, when I wasn't recoiling from the intense yuckiness of the death scenes. (SPOILER ALERT: At least the movie's ending, colossally stupid though it may be, bears out this theory.)
This time, the "Death cheating" moment occurs when Nick O'Bannon (Campo, who makes it through the film with two expressions – puzzled and not so puzzled) has a premonition of carnage at the race track.
His warning flash saves some lives, and the whole culling-the-survivors process of the earlier movies then starts up again.
It also leads to some hilarious moments. One involves the fate of a drunken redneck. Another one involves the drainage hole of a swimming pool and the butt of a guy who's a total arse. A flying gas cylinder turns a chain-link fence into a French-fry-maker (only with a human torso instead of a potato).
The most nail-biting setup, involving a hot soccer mom (Allen) getting her hair done, is actually quite neatly handled and in keeping with the spirit of the earlier FD movies. The only trouble is, it's been spoiled for anyone who has already watched the trailer.
The Final Destination, directed by Snakes on a Plane helmer David R. Ellis, could have done with a bit more creepiness and less in-your-face gore.
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It could also have used the services of a more wickedly humorous script and better actors, though Mykelti "Bubba" Williamson can be singled out for making the best of these slim pickings.
With its cardboard cut-out characters and paper-thin plot, without even the cleverly inventive setups of the previous movies, TFD will have to rely solely on its gore factor to get by.
A good thing, then, that the ride doesn't last too long. The movie clocks in at a lean one and a quarter hours, which kind of signals that the end is nigh for the series.
After all, there's not much more this premise can be milked for – especially now that we're wise to this whole premonition con-game. Then again, dumb and wooden movie characters are always in plentiful supply.
Surfing: http://www.finaldestinationmovie.com/
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