Cynical Cinema

Final Destination (4/10):  The first Final Destination movie was two things.  Terrible and great.  In a movie that follows the conventions of the teen-horror genre, it manages to be kind of original.  Sure, there are hot young actors getting into scary situations and so forth.  But Final Destination manages to inject some life into this.  You see, a kid (Devon Sawa) has a premonition about a plane crash.  When he freaks out and demands to be let off the plane, along with several others, the plane does indeed crash.  Then Death has to even the score, and each of those who escaped death on the plane get picked off one by one.  Which means there is no real villain, it’s just Death coming out of nowhere.  Which leads to some crazy, out-of-nowhere, all-of-a-sudden death sings which are genuinely jolting.  The special effects are cheesy and bad, the dialogue is inane, and Devon Sawa is simply dreadful as the lead.  But at least people get killed in really interesting ways.  Final Destination was directed by James Wong.

Final Destination 2 (5/10):  An even more ludicrous plot than the first one, with Ali Larter, the lone survivor from the first movie, locked up in a padded cell, terrified that Death is still coming for her.  When a girl (A.J. Cook) has a premonition about a car accident, she manages to save several people.  Again, Death comes for them, and they enlist Larter’s help to defeat Death.  Then there is some nonsense about a pregnant lady and a birth interrupting the chain of death.  It is an even-more ludicrous premise and idiotic denoument than the first movie.  But what makes this movie better is simply that Cook and Larter are much better actors than Sawa, the dialogue isn’t quite as stupid, and the special effects are better.  Which means those amazing death scenes are that much more jolting.  James Wong is out for this one, and David R. Ellis replaces him as director.  He is slightly less ham-handed, but this movie is still really stupid.  It’s just stupid AND fun.

Final Destination 3 (2/10):  The worst in the series.  At this point, we’re used to the crazy, out-of-nowhere deaths.  We know what to expect.  And of course, they’re still shocking.  But this plot, (now revolving around a roller coaster accident) is amazingly preposterous, even for this series.  After a pretty decent second installment in this series, they have gone back to the people who created the first one.  James Wong is back as director, and brings all of his ineptitude to the table.  Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the girl with the premonition this time, and she is average at best.  There is a pretty good death scene involving a tanning bed.  But what makes this movie dreadful is…well many things.  Here are a few of them.  The special effects are, once again, dreadful.  The opening scene with the roller coaster is full of shaky cameras, bizarre camera tricks, and nothing cool.  The movie makes references to Abraham Lincoln and 9/11 when the kids start to investigate what’s going on.  A staggering series of leaps in logic that leaves us really angry.  We get even more angry as the death scenes, which are no longer a surprise, drag on.  And on.  And on.  Just kill them already!  We know what’s coming!  In fact, just kill this movie already.

The three movies came out in a package yesterday, courtesy of Alliance Films.  They are available in a bargain trilogy, all on just one disc.  Final Destination and Final Destination 2 are on one side of the DVD, Final Destination 3 is on the other.  There are no special features worth mentioning.  When it hit stores, there was a 2-disc edition of Final Destination 3 that allowed you to change the movie - choose how the characters die, whether they die at all - that was kind of neat.  But the movie was so bad to begin with that there was no possible way I could care about these special features.  Therefore, the best way to get this series IS on a single disc.  If you want to get it at all.

 Oh, and the FOURTH installment in this series is scheduled to be released in 2009.  Which might well make this “trilogy” incomplete.  Perhaps you’re better off waiting for Alliance to release a thirty-one disc box set of all thirty-one installments once this series has finally bled itself dry.  On the plus side - David R. Ellis will be directing the fourth movie, which means it might be pretty good, like Final Destination 2.