The Final Destination can only rank as a complete imaginative
failure. Selling bland fatalism to kids, it’s the work of crooks. The
original movie had the best premise of any slasher film: Making the
killer death itself, while teenagers question the uncertainty of their
own mortality. Rather than expand the mythos, the sequels (and this is
the worst of them) let go of the seriousness, devolving into a string
of countdown-to-extinction gross-out gags. The main character this time
is named Nick. The movie doesn’t know whether he and his friends are
students, hold jobs or won the lottery. Don’t ask so much about stick
figures. By removing any social context, The Final Destination is irrelevant. The concept of high school students contending with
death and immortality gave parts one and some of three their gravity.
Director David R. Ellis, of Final Destination 2, has made the
dumber, more gruesome series entries. If the freeway collision that
opened part two hit too close to home for some viewers, nothing here
quite crosses that line of reality. Still, the light tone of a scene
where two young kids watch their mother killed by lawnmower shrapnel is
misguided. Besides, Ellis ruins his shocks with too many CG effects.
Having directed the energetic B-movie Cellular, he approaches
The Final Destination exactly the wrong way. Dying isn’t the
biggest concern; it’s already brain-dead.
Park Lane, Bayers Lake, Dartmouth Crossing, Sackville
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2009.