It’s hard to say what’s most disturbing about “Final Destination 3.” Certainly there’s the film’s daring lack of originality. It follows the basic blueprint of its predecessors with near slavish devotion.
But there’s also the movie’s shameless celebration of violence toward teenagers. True, teens have long been the chief targets in slasher movies, but there isn’t even a slasher in the “Final Destination” films. These movies are simple, straightforward exercises in killing young people.
But it’s not merely a matter of dying. We’re talking exploding heads, frying flesh, all manner of squishing, slicing and spearing resulting in buckets of brains and blood flying every which way.
The scariest part is, obviously, that audiences have made this mindless, dramatically one-note series successful. With no villain, no true hero, no real hope and only the slimmest story lines, these are essentially feature-length snuff films.
As feature-length snuff films go, “FD 3” isn’t terribly well-made (“FD 2” actually had some interesting action sequences).
Director James Wong (he was the writer-director on the first film but not the second) begins with the obvious and, aside from a cute critique of tanning salons, goes nowhere unexpected.
The premise of the “FD” films is a group of people start to undertake a journey; one person has a vision that it will end in death, some of the would-be participants back out, and then the rest do, indeed, die. Death, having been frustrated, then comes for the survivors.
This time around, the journey is a roller coaster ride at a high school graduation celebration. Control freak Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) foresees the roller coaster car going off the track and killing all involved, so she bails along with a group of others.
The car does indeed go off the track, killing all involved.
They get off comparatively easy as Death (symbolized by a light breeze that blows by to signal impending doom) hunts down those who got off the ride. Being the methodical type, Death takes its victims according to their seating chart, and the hopeful theory is that if any one rider can survive Death’s attempt then the next rider gets a free pass.
So we get dead, naked party girls, dead punks, dead jerks and dead jocks. Meanwhile, Wendy and sudden friend Kevin (Ryan Merriman) try to figure out who else got off the roller coaster and how to avoid becoming the final victims.
The gore factor here is particularly high, perhaps the highest in any recent film (this makes the “Saw” movies look lightweight), while the dramatic tension factor is virtually nil, since you know what’s going to happen, you just don’t know how.
In essence, you spend most of this movie waiting to grimace and saying, “Ewww.” Which may be exactly what audiences want. No surprises, no real characters, no plot, no ingenuity, just lots of grimacing and blood and screaming.
If this film makes money, and it probably will, there may never be a final “Final Destination.” And that is the most disturbing thing about this movie.
* | “Final Destination 3”
R for strong horror, violence, gore, language
and some nudity | 1 hour, 32 minutes
| HORROR | Directed by James
Wong; written by Glen Morgan and
James Wong; photography by Robert
McLachlan; starring Mary Elizabeth
Winstead, Ryan Merriman, Alexz
Johnson, Sam Easton, Kris Lemche,
Gina Holden | Opens today at area
theaters
