Latest Destination a Boring 3D Trip
While enjoying a day at the racetrack, Nick O’Bannon (Bobby Campo) has an ominous premonition of bloody disaster, he and his friends Lori Milligan (Shantel VanSanten), Hunt Wynorski (Nick Zano) and Janet Cunningham (Haley Webb) just four pieces of the carnage he’s sure is about to commence. Freaking out, the quartet, along with a few other onlookers including the kindhearted security guard George Lanter (Mykelti Williamson), end up outside the stadium horrified to discover Nick’s warnings were indeed true, all of them thankful to be alive because of him.
Bobby Campo and Shantel VanSanten try to escape Death in New Line Cinemas' The Final Destination
Of course, Death isn’t done with this gaggle of survivors, and one by one (and in the order they were meant to originally die) he comes calling unleashing complex Rube Goldberg scenarios to dispatch them. Now Nick and his friends are racing against time to figure out how to thwart Death’s design, his fickly finger pointing right at them almost daring the youngsters to stop him.
I think I have said the exact same thing now about all the movies in the Final Destination franchise: Inventive kills, zero intelligence and inept storytelling. I’d like to say that the series’ first 3D adventure breaks the chain but, sad to say, The Final Destination is unfortunately just more of the same, and other than some inventive usage of the ocular technology this might just be the worst episode yet.
That’s actually a little bit surprising. Director David R. Ellis also helmed the second chapter and has proven himself to be a competent filmmaker with reasonably entertaining genre pictures like Cellular and even Snakes on a Plane. While I personally didn’t care for Final Destination 2 all that much, admittedly it had the very best kills of the entire franchise. More than that, it offered up a crackerjack opening that is deliciously horrifying, so spectacular I’m not ashamed to admit every time the film is on cable I’ll watch those first ten minutes again with no problem whatsoever.
There are a couple of times that Ellis and company resurrect some of that playfully disgusting magic. There’s a fairly decent bit inside a pool that’s not too bad, while a trip to the mall and a ride on an escalator is so seriously gruesome my skin couldn’t help but try to crawl right out of the theater. There is also some wink-wink-nudge-nudge cheekiness going on in that’s slightly refreshing, the filmmakers obviously realizing just how silly all of this is and doing their best to make sure the audience gets in on the joke.
But overall there’s not much happening with this fourth adventure to make it worth the ride. There’s so much CGI the whole thing ends up looking more like an R-rated sub par Pixar cartoon than it does a motion picture, while the use of the 3D becomes annoying and artificial as things begin to progress. The opening, while better than the rollercoaster one in Final Destination 3, is a gigantic blood-splattered mess, and other than the wickedly nasty use of an engine block nothing about it near the unsettling gore-filled beauty of Ellis’ previous road rage lumberjack freeway pileup he orchestrated back in 2003.
I could go on but, really, what’s the point? Railing about how the actors are one-dimensionally faceless is a waste of time, while commenting that the deaths themselves are now so idiotically complicated and filled with red herrings isn’t remotely worthy of the effort of doing so. The whole thing is ludicrous nonsense, expecting anything close to cohesion from one installment to the next is like stating that reasonably priced health care for all Americans is a good idea and expecting the Republicans to agree.
For me, this has always been a series of films that, other than a couple of inventive kills and one insanely choreographed opening sequence, has always been more or a less a waste of time. The Final Destination is no exception, and if this movie is Death’s idea of good trip it is clear his favorite tool of carnage is nothing more complex than outright boredom.
Film Rating: ê1/2 (out of 4)
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