The Final Destination 3-D

It's been a while since my last review, so here's my latest - a review of the (quite) popular franchise, Final Destination. Having seen the previous 3 - yes, this is number 4, despite the deceiving title - I had high hopes for the final installment (at least, I think it's the final installment) to offer scares, laughs and everything in between.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed.

The latest batch of misfits to be part of "Death's plan", were four teens, maybe 19/20 years old, a character who had no name and was just called "Racist", a mother of two children, the husband or boyfriend of a girl who dies in the best way, which is explained later, and a Security Guard. Nick, the unfortuante be-holder of preminitions, played rather poorly by Bobby Campo managed to get these 7 lucky people from a Speedway race, just moments before hell broke loose. The highlight of the film was the preminition itself, giving full use to the clever 3-D effects, with debris seemingly flying out of the screen (ironic, considering a later scene) from the race track, and spiky objects all over the stadium, impaling people left, right and centre, cars and engines flying into the crowd crushing the unfortunate mother-of-two and many people getting crushed by the collapsing ceiling. The highlight, however, was the first death in the preminition (a woman being be-headed by a tyre), and therefore the first real death of the movie, by, err, getting be-headed by a tyre, the first-preminition-death was the element of surprise, the first-real-death being the goriest death of the movie, with the addition of seeing the unfortunate woman's head and spine strewn over the floor.

Sadly though, the film never reaches the standard of the first preminition.

The following deaths were lacking in gore and scares to fully satisfy the onlooking cinema audience's need for scares. Probably the reason they came into the cinema to see it. Instead, they were treated to a film that was either intended as a horror, but surely failed, or intended as a comedy, but surely failed. It was impossible to tell which genre it was aimed at, with Nick, Laurie (Nick's girlfriend, Shantel Van Santen) and Janet (a friend, Haley Webb) taking it way too seriously to take it as a comedy. However, Hunt (another friend, Nick Zano) and George (the security guard, Mykelti Williamson) provide comic relief at a satisfactory level, with George having the most laughs after his attempted suicides which all failed, due to the fact that he wasn't "next on Death's list".

Overall, it was a film of a satisfactory level, brought down by the lame lead actors and actresses. But as the opening preminition is the best yet, I'll give it the most average of average scores - 5.0/10.