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Published on February 13th, 2006 | by Erich Becker

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Review: Final Destination 3

Final Destination delivers everything you would expect from a horror movie sequel, but this series has a lot more to live up to due to the cleverness of the first two movies in the series and the most inventive deaths this side of Friday the 13th. Sure, the series hasn’t really broken any new ground, or gone gangbusters at the box office, but Final Destination and its two sequels are guilty pleasures that you watch with a group of friends as you see just how twisted the screenwriters can be towards these characters.

If that sounds morbid, it should.

Whereas the first movie focuses on an airplane tragedy, and the second a multi-car pile up on the interstate, the third takes a smaller, although still lethal, approach. This time a rollercoaster is the ride of death and like the previous two movies; one character has the creepy premonition that all the kids looking for fun are going to die.

The series has always been one of my personal favorites simply because it’s a balls-to-the-walls affair when it comes to picking off characters one by one. Sure, the writing outside the deaths isn’t the best, but when you see how much thought it put into some of these sequences, you can’t help but feel a little bit giddy, no matter how disturbed you feel afterwards. If pieces of shrapnel and airbags hadn’t made you weary of just about anything in this world, you’ll want to stay away from forklifts, home improvement stores, giant signs, and tanning beds. It goes without saying that this is one bloody movie.

Director James Wong (Final Destination) doesn’t skimp when it comes to knocking off characters in globs of blood, in fact several characters get sprayed on more than one occasion in a visceral rain shower of bits of brain.

After Final Destination 3 opens with the customary, over-the-top disaster, the movie does sink into a bit of a rut between deaths. The two “main” characters come up with an explanation too fast as to what is going on, presumably by a simple Google search. They also bite on the theory without any doubt in their minds which seems like the death scenes took too much of the writers time and they had to fill in the rest by making the remaining characters hyper-intelligent. Wendy (NAME), the girl who sees this all happen, is prone to crying at just about everything, and seems strangely comfortable with her position of identifying who’s next and how they will die.

Overall the rest of the film is, again, what you would expect for a cheaply made horror movie. The special effects are adequate, as the series has never been known for spending lots of money in this department. The acting is two dimensional for just about everyone as the characters are genre staples like the cool, confident jock, brainless girls, and the angry goth kids. You won’t find anything that breaks the genre barriers here, and by not expecting anything, this sits pretty comfortable with you.

Final Destination 3 is a fun movie to watch, and while it isn’t as good as the first or second films in the series, it still serves the audience well by giving them what they want, cool, innovate, and painful death scenes spliced in-between profanity, nudity, and sexual tension. Really, what more could you ask for on a Friday night at the movies?

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About the Author

Thirty-something with a love of everything we cover here, and a few things we don't. Erich has run Entertainmentopia since the site's inception in 1999, countless redesigns, a few crashes, and a lot of media later, here you have it!



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