1 out of 5

Directed by: David R. Ellis

Given the way I felt that Final Destination 2 improved on the original’s can’t-escape-death formula, more successfully balancing the stupid/smart of it all, I was looking forward to the return of that film’s director – David R. Ellis – and one of its co-writers – Eric Bress – on the fourth film in the series: The Final Destination.

There were positive signs in the now well-established opening gambit – during which one of our leads, Nick (Bobby Campo) witnesses a catastrophic event, only to rewind to moments before the event, realizing it as a premonition – as the cast of boyfriends and girlfriends (and randoms with whom they’ll go through the film’s travails) have the kind of innocent goofball vibes that gave the second film its sense of eagerness, and self-awareness again seemed to be in Ellis’ toolbelt, jumping right into the mayhem with a more direct hand than the “maybe this is all an accident!” setups from before, but once said mayhem kicks off, there’s kind of a make-or-break factor, especially for those who are watching this well past its original airing: it was 3D movie time, baby, so expect a lot of stuff flying at the camera, necessitating overly CGI gore effects to make sure we get mass splatter and jumps from the audience. While such stuff was better in the theater, it always affected how the whole movie was shot, encouraging Ellis to lean into his Snakes on a Plane style of theatricality to an extreme and essentially turning the cartoon vibes of the movie up to 11. I think if we were going totally overboard in a Dead Alive fashion, this could work – the cast, again, is likeable, and they all play their parts sincerely – but that’s not the energy here. Instead, the opening credits, which are like a highlight reel of all past accidents from the series, underlines that that will be the movie’s entire m.o. The gore has no impact or cringe factor; it’s just stuff splattered on the screen.

Although for different reasons, this is similar to FD3, where thus we’ve sucked out much reason to watch the rest of the movie and not just wait for a subsequent highlight reel. Additionally, that aforementioned “more direct hand” removes most of the creativity of the Rube Goldberg kill setups, coming across as a lazier collection of the camera drifting across sharp things which are all rolling into position, then waiting for the director’s cue to throw blood into the camera. From afar, these things play on quality fears, but it’s telling that the most simple of these (a death in a pool) is the most effective.

Minused out interesting kill sequences, and with some of the fun gore makeup or practical effects or shock value reduced to not-aged-well CG that’s especially emphasized for the 3D, all we can hang on are the characters, who are placed 100% behind the accidents, and with 0% lore expansion on the FD concept, again repeating FD3’s “let’s read about what happened before and explain it in one scene” shtick, and that’s that.

Burying the plot-description lede: in the Final Destination movies, the accident premonition allows our cast to avoid said accident, which only kicks off the ire of our unseen antagonist, death, who then keeps trying to kill the cast in variously complex ways. A cool concept that got a spike of creativity in film 2 was at least streamlined in film 3, if for diminishing returns, but presents nothing new in this entry – and presents it in gimmicky 3D.