Wendy (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is enjoying a night at the carnival with her friends before graduation. While on a rollercoaster, she and everybody she cares about is killed gruesomely when the ride goes off the tracks. It all turns out to be a vision. Wendy freaks out, and manages to get a group of people off the ride. She is horrified when she she sees her vision come true, and everyone that stayed on the ride-including her boyfriend and her best friend-are killed. It doesn't take long before Death starts stalking the survivors. I admit to being a fan of this franchise, possibly even an apologist in some cases. Let's start things off with the positives. The lead performance by Mary Elizabeth Winstead is actually really good (probably better than the material she has to work with). The kills are pretty creative (as they usually are). You know things are probably pretty solid when Death manages to make good use of mix between tanning beds and the honest-to-God stupidity of the characters. At least, that's kind of what I took out of it.There's a bit more of a cynicism to this movie that I kind of like. A character cracks a joke about how Death was sitting behind him on the rollercoaster. It doesn't really feel forced to me. But, I can't really say it's going to work for everybody. I also like the incorporation of the photographs, as it actually makes sense in the concept of the
Final Destination universe. It feels a legitimately good progression of the signs from the previous films in the franchise. On the more negative side of things, this movie is really easy to pick apart. There are a ton of plot holes that you either going to forgive or get mad at. I'll admit that I do kind of lean more on the side of forgiving them. As much as I appreciate this movie's more hardcore gore compared to the first two films, the use of CGI blood is kind of distracting, and I'm not a particular fan of it. The character development is pretty thin. Even our lead doesn't really have a lot of development to her. Some of the dialogue (while not awful) can be clunky. For example, we're constantly told that Wendy is a control freak, but we're never really shown it. Would I consider this the best film in the
Final Destination franchise? No, but it's still a fun way to kill 90 minutes.
6 / 10
I couldn't have said it better. I do enjoy the FD franchise as a whole, and I do find this one to be quite fun and watchable. Like, yeah, the character development is bad, but it's a slasher film. And of COURSE they were going to make the death scenes bigger, more gruesome, more complicated. That's what we're watching for. No one is watching Final Destination 3 thinking "gee, I hope they make it." LOLS I do think practical effects in things like blood do work better, however, I also understand that having something be more "believable/realistic" can affect the rating, and they wanted to play it safe (and cheap) since they already had some horrid death scenes. But yeah. I enjoy this entry.
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