Hey folks, Harry here with the latest review from Massawyrm... which I find myself disagreeing with. Basically, what he says is right. If by some delusional bit of insanity, you honestly bought into the "Mythology" of the FINA DESTINATION series up to this point... and considered them as "serious" entries into horror... yeah, I imagine you might hate this film as much as the kankerhouer. But, the fact is... For me, the FINAL DESTINATION series has been nothing BUT a joke. The first one was painfully lame in my opinion. The second one was hilariously fun. This one isn't nearly as hilarious, but the deaths are so over the top, and the characters so blatantly cartoonishly stereotypical, that I just couldn't help, but to laugh quite consistently throughout the film. Now, I could have interpretated that as being a bad thing, but given Morgan and Wong's history of playful satiric self-aware wit, I get their joke and I sign up for it. The film was exactly what I was expecting and a lot of fun. Is it great? No, but I had fun with it. If nothing else... tanning salon deaths are reason alone to see this film. These are characters written to die, and you are not disappointed. They WILL die!
Hola All. Massawyrm here. Re-fucking-tarded. If asked to describe Final Destination 3 in three small words, those would be the words I’d choose. Re-fucking-tarded. Leave it to James Wong to come in and just plain kill the series dead. And much like his films, you can’t say you didn’t see it coming. And it’s a weird series, one that seems to defy the very nature of the Hollywood horror machine. Until now.
You see, first there was Final Destination, a pretty decent little horror film with one, great, spectacular kill. When that girl steps into the street and the bus just splatters her all over her friends, Jesus, I guarantee there isn’t a single one of you out there that didn’t jump when you first saw it. But the film wasn’t perfect. After that bus kill comes another kill just like it, and anyone that dissects movies was able to see there was a definite formula – an obvious pattern - and a simple one at that: All signs point to someone getting killed and everyone fears for that person’s life except one who yells and screams and says it’s all bullshit. He who doth protest too much always ends up splattered by the end of the scene. And it plays that way to the very end. But if that weren’t enough of a flaw, they spent entirely too much time anthropomorphizing death – dragging the film down a bit by creating a boogieman with no real personality. It was a cool idea with somewhat ham-fisted execution. But Final Destination gave us one hell of a DVD – one which completely chronicled the test screening process, giving many their very first look into how test screenings can completely alter a film for better or worse. And what was so odd about the case of Final Destination is that rather than the stories we here at AICN have been moaning about for years, the Test Screening process actually worked. Audiences loathed James Wong’s original ending (one blatantly stolen shot for shot from A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child – complete with Olin Mills hazy focus lighting.) Instead audiences pushed for more of a jump ending, something that would actually become the series calling card.
So then came Final Destination 2, and many of us moaned. The first one was entertaining, but there was no way to keep that up for another 90 minutes. Sequels to mediocre movies are never very good and many of us gritted our teeth and waited for the suck. And it never came. Instead, the writers did exactly what you’re supposed to do with a horror sequel – they expanded the mythology. You see “The boogieman is gonna getcha!” is old, tired and just plain trite. We’ve seen it. And the only way to make it remotely interesting is by developing the boogieman and giving him a real, tongue in cheek, personality. But we’ve seen that too. To make something really scary, truly intriguing and something really worth watching, you have to expand the mythology, build upon what you had before and refine it – give us a bit more and make the idea’s scary, not just the death. Death in films doesn’t scare us anymore – we’re desensitized to it. But the idea of a horror element, the idea of impending death – well, that’s always scary. And that’s exactly what the writers of FD2 did. They crafted an honest to god mythology that not only worked as a follow up, but explained the somewhat ludicrous plot holes in the first film. All of a sudden, with the addition of FD2, the original became a much better film. And just to improve it ever so slightly, they toned down death, making it a force of nature that was inescapable rather than just another boogieman.
But FD2 had no formula – there was no way to break down who was going to die next. It was merciless. Sometimes the guy you thought would die actually would. Other times he wouldn’t. Then sometimes, just sometimes, he wouldn’t then immediately would. You had no clue, and it kept you on the edge of your seat. And while the plane exploding in the first film was pretty fucking great and a powerful opening to the series, FD2 ramped it up with a bloody, frightening and utterly impressive multi-vehicle accident that anyone who saw it can easily remember several of the gory details of. All in all, it was a pretty damned entertaining film, but a perfect example of just how you make a horror sequel in this day and age.
And so having done something right in a horror series, no doubt New Line stuck with that idea and moved to develop the series even further, right? Wong. James Wong. They went back to the guy that made all of the mistakes the first time around and along with his long time writing partner Glen Morgan, set out to destroy what had become a nifty little franchise. Coming out as if to say “Fuck you for daring to make a better film than mine! My ideas were genius! GENIUS!” James Wong creates one of the most predictable, miserable pieces of horror trite in quite some time. Final Destination 3 isn’t really a movie. Imagine if you will a couple of high school students sitting down to write a high school play based upon Final Destination, set at their high school, and you get a pretty good idea of how this looks and feels. It is almost entirely two characters bickering back and forth, trying to figure out who’s going to die next. It doesn’t matter where they are, or what’s happened in the story – it’s always the same fucking scene. Which leads to them confronting the next in line. The target. And that scene always plays out the same. “Dude, you’re going to die! Death is going to get you!” “That’s crazy talk!” “No, seriously. You’re totally going to die!” “Bullshit.” (Cue shots of the Rube Goldberg machine starting the carefully written accident) “No, I’m telling you. You. Are. Going. To. Die.” “Bitch, you’re crazy. People die, it happens.” (Continue really obvious Rube Goldberg death machine) “No, you have to listen to me.” “No, I have to continue doing this mundane thing that will in no way kill me.” “Lookout!” Kill character who claimed they weren’t going to die. “Oh god! He’s dead! That’s horrible!” AAAAAAAND SCENE.
Now repeat that about half a dozen times and you have the entire 90 minutes of Final Destination 3. Every scene begins and ends the same way. Our heroes arrive. We get an extremely obvious set up to the kill. They argue. The trap is sprung and we watch them die. Making it even less of a surprise is Wong’s new addition, something that completely circumvents the established mythology – digital photos that show just how death plans to kill everyone. If only our heroes can decipher the clues before it’s too late! Ooooh! ScAAAAArrrryyyy. Yeah, never seen that one before Wong. Way to be inventive. Final Destination 3 proves to be an exercise in “Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, BAM! Scared ya, didn’t we? No? Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, BAM! Gotcha that time huh? No? Wait for it…” And if that wasn’t cliché enough, Wong proceeds to rip off Jeepers Creepers (and actually several other films before it) by having the radio spontaneously pop on to the same song, over and over, letting us know a death is coming.
Ah! But this one involves a roller coaster! The openings pretty strong though, right? Nope. Continuing the trend of being the weakest in the series, the opening sequence is really kind of weak – most of the deaths occurring off screen or happening too fast to see what really happens to them. There are two slightly gory parts to the opening, but nothing matching either of the first two openings. Nothing you’ll be talking about later, if that’s what you want.
And, oh god, the characters. Did I mention the characters? Remember what I said about the high school play? There you go. Bitchy vapid hot girls? Check. Sleazy guy who’s only motivation is to see the tits of bitchy vapid hot girls? Check. Seriously, he even says as much. How about the thuggish, asshole jock? Check. Way too smart for their own good gothy rebel without a cause kids? Double check. Younger sister that doesn’t need her older sister around? Oh yeah. How about characterless leads with no motivation except to stay alive? Yup. Got them too. But I gotta give credit to the actors – they really seem to be trying. Aside from the bitchy vapid girls (obviously chosen because they were willing to show their breasts on screen) the actors aren’t bad. Sure, their dialog is. But they seem to be trying.
Do any of the survivors from the second film show up with their cautionary tale of exposition like in the second? Nope. In fact, this movie tries really hard to pretend the second film doesn’t even exist. They make one reference, but only one that alludes to flight 180 – something that actually makes no sense whatsoever as this film actually has nothing to do with the previous films. At all. This time everything they need to know about death coming for them can be easily found with a Google search on the internet. I'm not kidding. It’s more of a bad remake of the first film then a sequel. As if Wong never intended there to be a mythology. Just more death. So he throws out everything the second film ever did for the first and takes us on a long, boring drive through Cliché’sville. The fucking internet.
But I know there are some of you gorehounds out there that don’t give a flying fuck in a rainstorm about the story, the mythology or the characters. You wanna know about the kills. Ah, the kills, this film's one saving grace. If there’s anything I can credit this movie for, it is a few of the kills. Not all of them, some just plain stink. But a few of them are actually worth watching this for – if that’s what you’re looking for. One guy gets crushed in half nicely and a death involving a nail gun is nice in a gorehound sort of way – but I must say the tanning bed death is one of the better, more agonizing deaths I’ve seen recently. It’s genuinely gross and painful to watch.
But you know how driving home from every Final Destination movie you get that feeling of impending doom, like you’re about to be taken out something entirely mundane? Well, I had that experience this time. Only this time, it was while sitting in the theatre.
Sure, if you enjoy crap horror and don’t care how bad it is, as long as people die (and yes, I know there are several of you out there) you’re probably gonna have fun with this. But for anyone else, this is a movie you’ll want to avoid.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em. I know I will.
Massawyrm
Fuck ME If You Like This Movie!
