Movie Review: Final Destination 3

By Frank H. Woodward Feb 9, 2006, 17:28 GMT

The fright-filled Final Destination franchise returns to theaters in the supernatural thriller Cheating Death: Final Destination 3. Set six years after the original Final Destination film, the latest installment in the series centers around a high school senior who has a premonition of a fatal roller coaster accident involving herself and all her friends. When the premonition proves true, those who have “cheated death” and survived the accident are forced ...more

All you need to know about FINAL DESTINATION 3 is right there on the poster.  More roller coaster ride than the black comedy it could have been, FINAL DESTINATION 3 still manages to entertain.  What the film lacks in believability and strong
characterization it makes up for with laugh out loud thrills. 

I was a little worried when I went to see FINAL DESTINATION 3.  Having missed FINAL DESTINATION 2, I wasn't sure if I had also missed out on some key story points or characters.  Fortunately, the third in the FINAL DESTINATION series seems to ignore most of the second film.  This may have something to do with the original film's creators (director James Wong and producer / co-writer Glen Morgan of THE X-FILES fame) being back on hand for this latest episode.

Like Film One (and I'm guessing Film Two), FINAL DESTINATION 3 follows a group of teens who cheat death and how Death comes after them with a vengeance.  Just before setting foot on a roller coaster that basically spits in Death's face, Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has an ultra-realistic vision of how she and all her friends will die on the ride.  Needless to say, it's not pleasant and Wendy drags most of her friends (not all) off the ride.  Of course, her vision tragically becomes true. 

Now there are 10 kids walking around who should have been killed.  Death (depicted as a force rather than the classic Grim Reaper) starts to visit the survivors one by one, in the order of how they would have died, to restore balance to the universe.    Most of the fun in FINAL DESTINATION 3 comes from the Rube Goldberg-ian ways each kid meets their demise.  It's not a matter of simply dying in a car wreck.  It has to be the most outlandish sequence of events leading up to the wreck, a sequence that would make even Wile E. Coyote proud. 

As ridiculous and improbable as these death scenes are, director Wong plays the suspense for all it's worth and in a very traditional way.  Alfred Hitchcock (yes, I'm citing Hitch in a review of FINAL DESTINATION 3 -- get over it) once explained the art of suspense by describing a bomb under a table. The thrill isn't seeing the bomb explode.  The thrill comes from knowing the bomb is ticking away while all the other characters are oblivious to the threat.  In each of FINAL DESTINATION 3's set pieces, we watch the mechanics unfold to such a heightened degree, full well knowing what is about to happen, that suspense takes hold in spite of ourselves.  James Wong delivers the goods in this department like a master craftsman.

Alas, edge of your seat carnage does not justify some of FINAL DESTINATION 3's shortcomings.  Characters we care about would go a long way towards elevating the film's tension.  FINAL DESTINATION 3 does make an attempt with the character of Wendy.  Mary Elizabeth Winstead is quite effective as the teen Cassandra.  She and her partner in survival Kevin (Ryan Merriman) are even given a back story that could have gone somewhere quite human.  Unfortunately, their story line falls off the face of the earth as soon as teen blood is ready to be spilled. 

Most of the other kids in FINAL DESTINATION 3 are mere red shirts (you know, the security guys on STAR TREK whose sole mission in life was to die horribly).  There is another abandoned attempt to portray these disposable characters as high school caricatures much like HEATHERS did (the jock, the geek, the cheerleaders, the goth kids).  In fact, at one point, Wong uses visual humor very much in the same vein as that black comedy (see a smash cut to a funeral that's only missing the word "Eskimo" -- you HEATHERS fans will know what I mean).  FINAL DESTINATION 3, however, remains a simple teen meat grinder thrill ride... and that may be enough for this sequel.