Final Destination 3 (2006)
Mary Elizabeth Winstead: Wendy Christensen
Ryan Merriman: Kevin Fischer
Kris Lemche: Ian McKinley
Alexz Johnson: Erin
Sam Easton: Frankie Cheeks
Jesse Moss: Jason Wise
Gina Holden: Carrie Dreyer
Texas Battle: Lewis Romero
Chelan Simmons: Ashley Freund
Crystal Lowe: Ashlyn Halperin
Amanda Crew: Julie Christensen
New Line Cinema presents a film co-written and directed by James Wong. Also co-written by Glen Morgan.
Running Time: 93 minutes
Rated R for strong horror violence/gore, language and some nudity.
Release Date: February 10, 2006
Review Date: March 3, 2006
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Final Destination 3 is more or less a pornographic film. Or at least it maintains the same formula. In a pornographic feature, you sit through a few minutes of bad acting and then a few minutes of what you really came to see. This picture is only a little different because, while you still get the bad acting, the payoff is a bunch of cool death scenes.
For those of you familiar with the format of this franchise, absolutely nothing has changed. For those of you unfamiliar, it's more simple than it seems. A group of teenagers get ready to engage in some activity, until the main character has a premonition that everyone is going to die. S/he and a few others get away in time and watch everyone else fall to their grizzly demise. Then, unwilling to accept failure as an answer, death itself (with Rube Goldberg as a tag team partner) comes after the rest of the teenagers one-by-one to finish the job. The only difference here is that instead of an airplane or interstate, Final Destination 3 starts off on a roller coaster.
I laughed long and hard throughout this motion picture, and I'm wondering whether or not that was the intention. The cast was so blatantly stereotypical (the creepy guy with the video camera, the two overly-tan cheerleaders, and even the token black guy) that I couldn't help but ask myself if the filmmakers are trying to mock other Dead Teenager Films, or lazily run through another one.
The acting is truly absymal in Final Destination 3 - much worse than in the first two films - and the film never strays from its overly simple formula. We see the two main characters (whose names escape me, because I can't remember a single character's name or a single line of dialogue a mere 14 hours or so after leaving the theater) discussing how to cheat death and trying to figure out how to save who's next. Then they meet up with who is next and catch the live show of their horrible, grusome, and usually hilarious death. Wash, rinse, repeat, roll credits. I don't think that I'm twisted for laughing throughout - everybody else in the theater (the four other people) were laughing too.
I'm sure New Line is preparing on greenlighting Final Destination 4 for another February release as we speak. After all, each film in the franchise has turned a huge profit. And I'm sure it will be lined up with more inventive ways for teenagers in desperate need of an acting coach to die grusome deaths. In the case of the Final Destination franchise, it's not about the formula but the parts of the machine itself. We know why and when the teenagers are going to die before we get to the ticket window - but how and how hard can I laugh when it happens?
Final Destination 3 is a pretty terrible movie, but one that contains some degree of entertainment at the same time. Whether that's intentional or just "so bad it's almost good" I have yet to figure out.
** (out of ****)