Movie Review: Final Destination 3

Every film critic loves the chance to review an award-winning movie. After drudging through mediocre film after mediocre film, it's a joy to finally review something that will be nominated at the year's end and rewarded for its contribution to cinema.
'Final Destination 3' is such a film. Except in this case, it will certainly be nominated in the prestigious category of "The Worst Film You've Ever Seen" or perhaps the "Wait, this didn't go straight to DVD?" honor or even the "I think I saw that on Spike TV last night" award.

What passes as the story in "Final Destination 3" goes like this: Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Christian) takes a few pictures of her friends on her digital camera while they're at an amusement park. When she gets on a roller coaster, she foresees everyone dying. Being freaked out, she demands to get off. Her friends get off with her. Everyone else left on the coaster dies after it becomes derailed.

And those photos? They predict exactly how each person is going to die — in the order they were originally on the roller coaster. Then Wendy and her friend Kevin (Ryan Merriman) go around warning their buddies (who for some reason are usually hanging out around swords and heavy machinery) that they're going to die. Then they do.

Sounds pretty decent for a horror flick right? Not really. Not only are we told who is going to die, and in what order, but we also know how. This leaves us with this movie's fatal flaw: why the hell are we watching if we know exactly what is going to happen? At the promo screening of this movie, the audience was literally laughing every time someone died. It became a comedy, the deaths were so ridiculous and gory, the only thing left to do was laugh. But as a comedy, which I suppose someone could argue this is, it fails as well. If I want to laugh at physical comedy, I'd rather see someone slip on a banana peal than get killed with 20 nail gun shots to the face.

The only genre conventions it gets right is the use of the "token black guy" who says stuff like "What up, dog!" The film is borderline racist and absolutely tasteless. The only blacks that appear in the film are on the football team, and they only appear lifting weights and grunting.
On a different note the film equates the "mysterious force" that is killing off the characters was also responsible for 9/11. Does it go any deeper into this "photograph's predict the future" scenario, especially considering this fantasy horror movie just linked it's B-movie plot to a real disaster? Nope.

Basically it comes down to this: "Final Destination 3" is a horror/slasher film without the knife-wielding masked psycho. However, it does use that kitchen utensil in a different way. It uses it to cut away anything that would make this film remotely entertaining. Making us care a little about the fate of the main characters? Sliced. Giving us some explanation as to why these characters are being killed one by one? Diced. Gratuitous shots of breasts? Well, at least they kept that in there for their target audience of 13-year-old boys. Everyone else's destination should be avoiding this movie so it really is the final one.

Grade: F