Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on February 10, 2006, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
With its third installment, the Final Destination series has most decidedly become a new-millennial, vaguely existential variation on the ’80s Friday the 13th sequels. Any significant plotting has fallen by the wayside; what remains is little more than a string of young people meeting horrible fates, and only the faces and specific methods of murder have changed.
Of course, the particulars of this franchise require a much bigger budget than is necessary to film a hockey-masked murderer slaying teens with handheld weapons. Just like its predecessors, Final Destination 3 begins with a Big Fatality Setpiece, with a rollercoaster accident succeeding the original’s plane explosion and FD2’s epic multicar crash. Just like in those two, a group of kids get off at the last minute before the ride begins, setting themselves up to be sequential victims when Death, cheesed off that they’ve escaped its grasp, comes after them. And just like in the first Destination, returning director James Wong builds a nice sense of jittery tension in the moments leading up to the coaster disaster, using detail shots to exploit all the fears one might have about boarding the ride. When those terrors pay off in twisted metal, airborne splattered bodies and impressive visual FX, it’s enough to make one think twice about boarding such an attraction again.
It’s also the last time Final Destination 3 is legitimately or remotely scary. Wong and his producer/co-scripter Glen Morgan seem to treat the subsequent demises as black comedy; certainly a preview audience did, greeting each succeeding grisly setpiece with whoops of laughter and even applause in a couple of cases. The loudest response came during and after the most hideous one, in which two naked girls are cooked to death in tanning beds gone awry. Now, I don’t want to sound like one of those scolds who blames movies for the desensitization of their viewers, but watching that scene and hearing that reaction, I couldn’t help thinking, “What’s so funny about two screaming, helpless girls being burned alive anyway?”
Well, part of it might have something to do with the fact that Wong and Morgan have inflicted this most grotesque fate upon the two most egregiously dimwitted characters in the movie, and top it off with a visual punchline guaranteed to induce chuckles. It’s also a symptom of the overall approach that prevents FD3 from achieving the scares of the first movie. That film played Death’s catchup scenarios with something approaching realism; here, the cause-and-effect setpieces are so elaborate and convoluted that even Rube Goldberg would probably take notes just to keep up. None of this is remotely believable even in the film’s supernatural context, and with the fear factor gone, Final Destination 3 could qualify as the most violent slapstick comedy ever made.
To make matters even less involving, there ain’t nothin’ going on in between the splatter episodes. FD2, which was equally bloodthirsty and over-the-top, at least had its characters recognize what was up and try to figure a way out of their situation, however contrived the solutions might have been. Here, leads Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Kevin (Ryan Merriman) spend the downtime between demises trying to warn the other survivors of their impending dooms, which carries zero suspense because we know that if these hapless folks don’t meet horrible ends, there isn’t a movie. And the filmmakers don’t give them anything to do with what’s left of their lives except hang out in gyms, hardware stores and other environments just full of implements that Death can use to hasten them toward their graves. Given FD3’s extreme unsubtlety, it’s curious that Wong and Morgan continue the first film’s trend of naming characters after past masters of quiet horror, like Freund, Wise and Dreyer (though it’s unclear where a guy called Frankie Cheeks fits into the pantheon).
With its say-your-lines-clearly-and-don’t-trip-over-the-furniture acting and appropriately moody but undistinguished visual style, there really isn’t much more to say about Final Destination 3. It delivers on its basic promise—you pays your money, you gets to see attractive youth get gruesomely exterminated—without betraying any inspiration besides a desire to financially exploit a profitable brand name. Whether or not the movie does well enough to warrant yet another sequel remains to be seen, but if it does, it’ll be interesting to see if the filmmakers follow the lead of the Jason series and call it Final Destination: The Final Chapter.
