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After the rebirth of the slasher movie with Scream in 1996, there
came a cavalcade of poor yet profitable imitations. But for those who didn't
really give a shit who did what last summer, there was one movie which stood
out. In 2000, the surprisingly well-reviewed sleeper hit Final
Destination may have suffered from the standard case of hammy acting and
cheesy dialogue like its peers. But its conceit, that cheating death will
make it come back for you, was ingenious. Final Destination 2
predictably followed and was more of the same fun, albeit with a lighter
tone.
With Final Destination 3, the original creators and have promised to
provide the 'ride of your life' (or at least that's what the poster says).
So the mayhem begins this time on an unruly roller coaster. Wendy (Mary
Elizabeth Winstead) has a funny feeling that something terrible is going to
happen. Forced onto a giant roller coaster by her friends she has a
terrifying premonition that it's going to crash and kill all of its
passengers. Leaving the ride, along with some other classmates, her
premonition becomes true. But soon after the accident, the people who got
off realise that you can only cheat death once, before the guy with the sickle gets
really annoyed.
You're either someone who avoids a movie like Final Destination
3 like the plague, or someone who'll appreciate the air-headed excitement that it can
bring. I admit that I was a fan of the first two instalments as there's
just something primal about watching poorly paid unknowns get inventively
sliced and diced. Yes, the dialogue still reeks of cheese and there isn't a
character amongst them to care about, but these movies live and, um, die by the
quality of the kills. And this sick little puppy pays up.
Right from the opening roller coaster crash, the adrenaline kicks in.
Capturing the fear and exhilaration that such rides can incite, it's a
heart-pumping spectacle. It may well do for roller coasters what the
original Destination did for planes. From then on, it's guess who dies next
and all the more important, how they die. Thankfully, this Destination seems
to get rid of a lot of the clumsy exposition which plagued the first two.
The makers have recognised the giddy fun of predicting what will happen to
whom and they deliver a ton of gruesomely clever demises. Working on the
sequel rules of bigger meaning better, everything is cranked up to 11 on
this one.
The film manages to keep its tongue firmly in its cheek throughout,
which is refreshing. On the death following the initial accident, the song
Love Rollercoaster plays while the characters seem to possess an
incredible lack of grief or shock for the mayhem which surrounds them. So the
key is not to take this movie seriously. Instead, like me, you'll hopefully
have a lot of fun with it. Momentum is maintained through to the
bitter end and there's a ridiculous number of hand-over-mouth moments.
There's no point really criticising a film like this for bad
characterisation or a lack of logic, because that's taking it on a level
which even the filmmakers themselves don't. I had to
re-check what the main character was called when reviewing, but the
devious set-pieces and the sheer reckless abandon of the movie make it a
memorably engaging genre offering.
Final Destination 3
knows what it's doing and doesn't care how many rules it breaks. Oh - and just
before you start passing this off as a trilogy, just wait for the final
scene.
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REVIEW: 
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