Movie Review – The Final Destination
I might have tolerated the glee in which the makers of The Final Destination take in comically slaughtering people, if only the movie wasn’t so amateurishly acted, lazily written, and almost completely lacking scares. Unlike its three predecessors, this new entry fails to complement the series’ reputable over-the-top violence with logic, suspense, and convincing performances.
The main titles begin immediately after a woman’s head (and most of her upper torso) is lopped off by a flying, flaming tire amidst an explosive disaster at a racecar track. We soon see that there’s an exaggeratedly jokey, mean-spiritedness about death in the film. Like any mediocre 80s slasher movie, the story is no longer about hoping for the survival of the main characters, but eagerly anticipating their violent deaths.
In every Destination, death not only makes some real progress on its checklist, but for some reason gives a seemingly random character a head’s up on the disaster that’s about to take place. One premonition later, and that character tries to warn everyone to no avail, and then witnesses in horror as their nightmarish vision comes to life.
Why the head’s up? Why, in this film, does it occur only to Nick O’Bannon (Bobby Campo)? Well, because then otherwise the movie would end after the first scene. Or not begin at all. Other than that theory, no reason is given.
But luckily, Nick talks the rest of the characters through the proceedings with some great lines: “I’ve got a bad feeling,” “I have a feeling something bad is going to happen,” “I had a premonition,” and “I had a dream with these images, that were like clues.” Something along those lines. What he’s referring to are the cartoonish computer-generated dream sequences that foreshadow the deaths he’s about to fail at preventing.
It should come as no surprise that even in the face of these premonitions, eerily prophetic dreams, and every survivor of the opening accident being implausibility decimated in freak accidents, that some of the survivors remain skeptical. That’s horror logic for you. I suppose it would be much less scary if one supporting character said “hey, you know…we might have to actually think this one through.” But then they’d be characters, as opposed to pre-packaged corpses.
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