Movie Scum

I caught a lot of crap at work for “liking” the Final Destination series . Primarily, this is coming from a guy who proclaims his favorite movie ever is the original Saw, so I consider his opinion moot. Given the unevenness of the series, I would say “tolerate” is a more appropriate verb for my feelings on these films. That seems fair since Final Destination films seem to range from pretty good, like the original, to the offensively stupid, such as a large chunk of part 3 and all of part 4. Since the various writers and directors of the previous four films seem to have moved on, Final Destination 5 's writer Eric Heisserer and director Steven Quale have almost a blank canvas to create on.

I will admit that I did not have entirely good expectations going into this one. Our own #pbf referred to this as garbage, and he has not seen THE third film in this series. I had seen a few positive reviews for THE Final Destinatio n though so I figured maybe it was an acquired taste, much like Mountain Dew: Live Wire. Oh, dear God was I wrong. So, so wrong … I knew in THE first ten minutes of this film that it would be given THE “honorable” crap category. THE other seventy minutes were merely confirmation that I can judge a stupid movie by its even stupider fucking cover.

It’s not apparent during the first viewing of Final Destination 3 , but there is something missing which greatly strips out a lot of enjoyment compared to the previous films. Well, of course, there are plenty of graphic deaths and gore so that is present and accounted for. There is a skimpy callback to the first film, so nothing out of place there. And even Tony Todd returns, in voice at least. So what is it that the returning team of Glen Morgan and James Wong forgot in this installment? Where should we start?

The original Final Destination is no grand pinnacle in cinema, or even horror films, but it does a few things right. Its follow-up is again no grand treasure, but a pretty effective continuation of the first and one that tries to loop back into the mythos of the first. Final Destination 2 ' s main draw is the focus on elaborate deaths no doubt, but it almost taps into some of the humanity of the first. Moreso than those killer logs in the first act anyway.

Who would have thought that a spec script for The X-Files TV show could launch one of the bigger horror franchises in recent years? Apparently, someone at New Line Cinema did and the result is lots of dead people by way of some rather bizarre methods. After four movies (and a fifth with Emma Bell! coming soon), no one goes to see a Final Destination movie for the characters or the acting. We go to see how morbid writers can concoct a way for someone to die. But it wasn’t always that way.