WHAT’S IT ABOUT
While enjoying a day at the track, Nick O’Bannon (Bobby Campo) has a horrific premonition of his friends and him all dying in a freak accident involving many racecars. Mere seconds before the vision comes true, he manages to convince them to leave. Although they cheat death then, the survivors each begin to meet a grisly end, and Nick tries to figure a way to escape a similar fate.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
When “The Final Destination” (yes, they made sure to put in the “The” for the title) came out in 2009, it was promoted as the final one of the series. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. It also marked the first time that people had jumped aboard the 3D train, which was so popular at the time. While the movie features some wacko death scenes that jump right out at you, the movie itself appears to be running out of fuel. The movie starts at a NASCAR-style track where Nick O’Bannon (Bobby Campo) witnesses a nightmare vision of a massive wreck that showers auto parts and debris into the stands, injuring scores of fans in gruesome fashion. Nick freaks out, evacuating his girlfriend Lori (Shantel VanSanten) and his friends Janet and Hunt from there. Several other characters join them, only for the accident to hit them exactly as Nick had visualized it. I must admit, the first disaster was pretty great. Crashed cars everywhere, explosions galore, people getting speared by flying debris – it’s explosive and frenetic. The 3D effects were clearly meant to make you leap (which I did a few times), with objects flying at the camera left and right. It’s not as effective as the highway crash in “Final Destination 2” in terms of pure shock value, but it does serve its purpose well enough. By this point in the franchise, everyone’s used to the formula: a person receives a vision, rescues a great many people, and Death subsequently saves them one at a time in innovative ways. “The Final Destination” doesn’t try to subvert this formula at all. It whittles it down to its absolute minimum, as though directors had a checklist that they were working from at the time. Nick begins to have fragmented visions that give hints at who’s going to be next and how they’ll die, but these visions aren’t as fascinating or well-integrated as the photographs in the third installment. The entire “figuring out Death’s design” is rushed, as if the film is eager to arrive at the next death scene. Come on – the actual reason to watch these movies is for the creative kill scenes, and “The Final Destination” is definitely dedicated to delivering those. The problem is that a vast majority of them feel like they were deliberately made to be filmed in 3D rather than actually being suspenseful or shocking. There is a single scene in a car wash that’s intense and one with a pool drain that’s gross and terrifying (and allegedly based on a real-life accident, which makes it even more disturbing). The most impressive death scene includes a hairdresser, an escalator, and some spilled booze – it’s stacked, improvised, and manages to get the reader’s adrenaline flowing before it even gets going. But then there are these moments that only exist in 3D, like a guy being hit by an ambulance with his eyeball flying towards the camera or a 3D tire rolling directly at you. Those moments would have made you shriek in horror if you saw the movie on the big screen with the glasses, but watching them on your couch in 2D, they just look cheesy and over-the-top. One of the biggest faults of “The Final Destination” is its characters, or more specifically, lack thereof. Nick is probably the most generic protagonist of the entire series. He has no defining personality characteristics beyond “guy who gets visions.” His girlfriend, Lori, isn’t doing much better, existing primarily to be worried and ask questions to further the plot. The supporting characters are basic stereotypes: there’s the womanizing rich guy, the racist mechanic, and the security guard with a drinking problem. None of them get enough development for us to care when they die. The movie treats them like bowling pins just waiting to be knocked down in creative ways. Previous “Final Destination” movies at least tried to give their characters some depth or interesting quirks. Here, all the characters feel interchangeable. There isn’t even a return character from the previous films to provide continuity, so this one feels slightly isolated from the rest of the franchise. Given that this is the first (and, as of now, only) “Final Destination” filmed in 3D, the look here is definitely distinct from the others. It’s all very highly lit in order to accommodate the 3D technology, which unfortunately robs the film of the dark atmosphere that helped build up tension in the previous films. The death scenes all rely too heavily on CGI, ranging from good to appallingly bad. There’s one where a man’s head gets crushed by a falling bathtub, and it looks like something out of a video game cutscene rather than a horror film. The practical effects of the previous movies were so much improved and disturbing. Otherwise, the actual disaster scenes – especially the opening race track scene and the mall explosion towards the climax – are decently handled with good stunt work and special effects. When the film concentrates on a broader scope of chaos and not individual fatalities, it kinda works.I won’t spoil much, but “The Final Destination” attempts to conclude the series on a big note.Broadway-style” in a cinema (so meta) with an attempt to bring some of the first disaster’s elements back to cap off the series with a full-circle feeling and put an end to the series. But the ending is abrupt and frustrating as if they didn’t quite know how to tie everything up. Naturally, it wasn’t an actual ending since they went ahead and made “Final Destination 5” a couple years later (which, ironically, was a far more satisfying “final chapter”). “The Final Destination” is by far the weakest entry in the series so far. It’s like a cash grab to surf the 3D wave rather than attempting to introduce something new and valuable to the series. The formula that made the first two movies so much fun is still there but implemented with less imagination and respect. The killings, while occasionally stunning, are more worried about being 3D than they will in one’s mind when leaving the cinema. The acting is forgettable, the plot is thin, and there is a general feeling that everybody was coasting. That being said, it’s not a complete trainwreck. The opening race track is effective, and there are some really suspenseful sequences scattered about. If you’re a fan of the series, you’ll probably find enough to keep you busy for its brief 82-minute runtime. “The Final Destination” is not bad enough to write off entirely, but hardly as good as it should have been. The series did not deserve that for what was to be its farewell.
OUR RATING – A GIMMICKY 5
MEDIA
- Genre – Horror
- Street date
- Digital – January 5, 2010
- Blu-Ray/DVD – January 22, 2010
- Video – 1080p
- Screen size 2.39:1
- Sound – English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, English: Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Subtitles – English SDH, Spanish
Extras
- ” Deleted Scenes (HD, 7:16) – First we have a total of nine deleted and extended scenes mostly focusing on gruesome deaths.
- Digital Copy (2-D Only) – The second disc houses a digital copy of the film compatible with Windows Media Player and iTunes.