This Final Destination Was A Scary One

In The Final Destination, on what should have been a fun-filled day at the races, Nick O’Bannon (Bobby Campo) has a horrific premonition in which a bizarre sequence of events causes multiple race cars to crash, sending flaming debris into the stands, brutally killing his friends and causing the upper deck of the stands to collapse on him. When he comes out of this grisly nightmare Nick panics, persuading his girlfriend, Lori (Shantel VanSanten), and their friends, Janet and Hunt (Haley Wenn & Nick Zano), to leave… escaping seconds before Nick’s frightening vision becomes a terrible reality. Thinking they’ve cheated death, the group has a new lease on life, but unfortunately for Nick and Lori, it is only the beginning. As his premonitions continue and the crash survivors begin to die one-by-one -- in increasingly gruesome ways -- Nick must figure out how to cheat death once and for all before he, too, reaches his final destination. 

The Final Destination is definitely in the race to be the best horror movie so far this year— thanks in large part to two key scenes, one of which takes place at a NASCAR racetrack. It's the opening sequence, which is always absolutely essential in these Final Destination films. In case you do not know the franchise scheme, it always begins with a large-scale accident of some kind during which a few people (typically impossibly good-looking 20-somethings) escape the Grim Reaper… but of course, death doesn't like to be cheated. So, one by one, each survivor gets the kibosh put on his or her newfound lease on life. The enduring conceit is elaborate set piece deaths done as if conceived by all-night think tank sessions with James Henry Atkinson, Rube Goldberg and David Copperfield. In the first movie it was an elaborate airplane crash; in the second (also directed by David R. Ellis) it was a hellish highway smashup; in the third a wrecked rollercoaster; and now it's the track. Ellis, a master of motorized manipulation, does some pretty awesome things with four wheels and 3D here. Then there is another death trap set inside a beauty parlor (a bitchy customer, scissors, razors, nail clippers, and flammable hairspray don't mix!) which is a great, er, tease.

Aside from that, the movie is pretty stock. The actors (main cast consists of Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano and Haley Wenn) do the best they can with flimsy material (presumably some character-building moments were excised to make for a faster-paced 80 minute popcorn movie) and they are likable enough. They have some funny dialogue and they deliver it well. They are in some pretty humorous scenes involving suicide (yeah, what a knee-slapper!) and unorthodox use of tampons (at least they weren't maxi-pads). At the top of the laundry-list of must-do's is fun. The killings may be shocking and bloody (we are talking rated-R here), but there's always a sense of escapist unreality. Wafer-thin, The Final Destination is definitely the weakest entry to date —  but worth a peep anyway if you enjoy rides like these. This gets a 3 on my "Go See" scale. It may not be the best one, but it satisfies.