The Final Destination

The Final Destination is the 4th and hopefully the last of the franchise that started out in 2000 with a pretty good first installment. But as with most franchises the series declined in quality with each installment hitting rock bottom with this movie.

The plot, of what there is of it, is basically the same as the other three movies: teenager has a premonition of a terrible accident, gets everybody saved by freaking out only to find out that Death will off them the same order they would have died according to the premonition. The running time of the movie is around 75 minutes so they have no time to waste it on character development. This movie is about deaths, and deaths only.

While some still creative, the deaths are becoming more far fetched than ever and due to the lack of character development not really involving. The build-ups to the accidents are often too long and relies on fake scares too much. The accidents themselves are pretty boring also; a pebble launched by lawnmower, sucked to the bottom of a swimming pool, dragged behind a car… but the most annoying kill is the one featuring a bus that suddenly comes out of nowhere. Sound familiar? It shamelessly copies the first movie without even trying to intend it like an homage or something.
They also use the previous movies as the foundation to explain to these characters what’s going on. In the first movie there was a whole subplot of Devon Sawa being accused of the accidents/murders, the second required the return of Ali Larter to explain what was going on. Tony Todd made an appearance as an undertaker giving death character. Well you can scrap all those elaborate things to give some substance to the plot as this movie just has the main character, who was so uninteresting I didn’t even remember his name, google his current situation which has him printing out some webpages with the stories of the first 3 movies printed out. This movie’s explanation exists because the previous movies exist.

What really disappointed me were the special effects. The movie was shot in 3D so in some cases shots due feel forced, but the CG-work in this movie is really bad and looks like it was made in 1996 for a B-movie. Every death scene looked horribly executed wether it was somebody being pushed through a fence or an animation of a snake in a premonition. Even the whole opening-massacre any of these movie has looks terrible. It’s not like the two camera’s you need to shoot in 3D are that expensive so some good artists can’t be hired.

The deaths are not really funny good or well executed and that’s what these movies stand or fall with. Unfortunately this movie falls big time making it the worst and most shallow of the series. Let’s just hope that this really is the final installment of the franchise.

1996 called, they want their state-of-the-art CGI back.