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Back Shelf Beauties
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Final Destination 3 If you have seen the first two Final Destination movies, you know what you are getting into. If you haven't seen the first two, why start now? Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as Wendy - a high school senior having fun with her classmates at the amusement park. Working for the yearbook, she has been taking pictures of everyone having a good time and enjoying one of the last nights of carefree youth with their pals. To top the evening off, her boyfriend, Jay (Jesse Moss?); best pal, Carrie (Gina Holden); and Carrie's boyfriend, Kevin (Ryan Merriman), want to ride the roller coaster, but as she is being strapped into the harness, Wendy has frightening visions of a disaster killing all of them, and freaks out. Some people get off with Wendy, but those who stay on the roller coaster die as Wendy's vision comes true. Soon, those who got off the ride that fateful night start dying one by one, and Wendy is convinced death is after them, since they avoided their fate on that scary night at the amusement park, and death pursues you like a fat guy chasing a kielbasa until it catches you. Can Wendy protect those being chased by death? Each of the Final Destination movies is known for a decent premise (that you cannot elude fate and death is a compelling the idea), bad acting, average to horrible dialogue, and entertaining death scenes. Yes, you have to have a twisted sense of humor and an appreciation for the macabre to get some laughs out of the death scenes, but most of us are twisted, and director/co-writer James Wong plays each grim reaper whacking as a horror movie parody intended to make us laugh. He does a good job setting up elaborate chains of events that lead to the payoff and give us enough time to wonder how one action will lead to the next and lead to the next, etc. to cause the death of the character in peril. Frankly, you have to be quite imaginative to come up with this many detailed scenarios, so Wong deserves some credit for designing them and presenting them in such a vivid manner. Sadly, that's where all of the effort goes in Final Destination 3. Wong and co-writer Glen Morgan are more interested in creating an orgy of gore and blood than they are at developing characters or giving them something interesting to say. Each one fits a stereotype from the jock to the hormonally challenged horndog to the non-conformists to the valley girls. At times when the movie dives directly into mockery of the horror genre, the script works, but Wong isn't trying to make a parody like Scary Movie. Sometimes, Final Destination 3 is funny. Other times, it is supposed to be a serious horror film. This uneven tone reminds us how bad the supposedly serious drama is , since none of the characters are very likable or heroic. We never learn much about them other than they will die in some horrific fashion, as if we should just view them as sacrificial lambs. The script leads to a myriad of performances with very different motivations for each character that never seem to work in a cohesive fashion. Winstead, the movie's heroine, is forced to be very melodramatic throughout a film we are not supposed to take seriously. She reacts with dread and horror as danger creeps closer and closer to her, but the performance is too much. Winstead is like the person who shows up to a Halloween costume party wearing a formal evening gown. Almost everyone else in Final Destination 3 is having fun and clowning around, while she is stuck being the responsible one. Final Destination 3 is purely mindless, guilty pleasure viewing for those who don't get offended easily. It's full of gore, violence and some nudity, which earns an R rating. 1 ½ Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2006 - WaffleMovies.com
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