Review: The Final Destination (2009)

[Scott Mendelson]

The Final Destination
2009
81 minutes
Rated R

By Scott Mendelson

Like any number of horror films that spawned a franchise of gore-
cartoon sequels, the original Final Destination was a real movie. It
was a genuinely frightening little fable about grief, loss, and
predestination. It had characters worth caring about and worth
mourning when the grim reaper eventually came to collect his due.
What's shocking about this fourth entry is the series isn't that it is
basically a clothesline for which to hang grotesque Rube Goldberg-
esque death scenes, it's that the movie makes absolutely no attempt to
disguise its snuff-film intentions. Unlike even the lesser, more
cartoonish sequels, this one doesn't even pretend that it's a movie.

A token amount of plot - Four friends (whom we learn nothing about
over the course of the film) are attending a Nascar racing event when
one of them gets a vision of a horrifying crash and resulting fire
that will occur moments from now. Ushering his confused friends out of
the stadium, several others are pulled outside in the confusion and
thus saved from a fiery and/or gruesome death. But in the days that
follow, the fatefully spared are swiftly picked off one-by-one in
seemingly random accidents. That's pretty much it. While the first and
third films involved high school graduates dealing with new found
feelings of mortality and the second involved professional adults
caught in the inevitable web of death, this fourth entry involves... I
have no idea. While a few of the would-be victims are given a token
character trait (one is a busy mother of two young boys, two others
are blue-collar laborers whose wives died in the stadium), our four
main young adults are given not a single fact about them. We do not
know if they are in high school or college, we do not know if they
have jobs. We never meet their parents or anyone outside their
personal circle. They are absolute stick-figures to be gruesomely
picked off. Only Mykelti Williamson registers any sympathy or
intelligence. As a recovering alcoholic who killed his wife and
daughter in a drunk driving accident years earlier, Williamson's
character gets the film's only new idea (that of a fated victim
accepting and welcoming his demise). But even his arc goes off the
rails and fails to pay off in any meaningful way.

So, fine, the film is a barely written skeleton on which to hang the
series's trademark death scenes, that may not be an issue to the
target audience. But outside of the opening race-track carnage (which
itself isn't nearly as frightening as the previous films' opening
massacres), the death scenes lack both invention and skill.
Ironically, the 3D effects means that many of the death scenes involve
merely cgi gore instead of the practical effects and stunt work that
has been a franchise trademark. And worst of all, two of the most
impressive set-ups turn out to be giant teases. The film out-and-out
cheats in several places as life-saving equipment fails at one moment
but works at another for no discernible reason. There is no rhyme or
reason to the set pieces and the pay offs are pale imitations of the
previous pictures.

Overall, the film itself is an abysmal nothing. The characters are
blank slates, there is no real running narrative, and the death scenes
aren't worth sitting through. Some of the 3D effects are fun, but they
are relatively run-of-the-mill and the film looks gray, hazy, and
cheap when viewed through the 3D glasses. Frankly, if not for the 3D
gimmick, I imagine this would have gone straight to DVD under Warner's
Raw Feed banner. This certainly feels like a cheaper, lazier variation
on the long-running series. Finally, the D-Box gimmick is currently
just that: a gimmick. Yes, it's fun when your chair gently shakes,
vibrates, and rocks back and forth during scenes of violence and
action, but the full potential of this technology is still far away.
But The Final Destination is not worth seeing in any format under any
circumstances.

Grade: D