Well, atleast Death has a sense of humor. He certainly doesn't have an eye for talent, anymore. It strikes me that Death could easily be defeated if people learned how to use a screwdriver properly and stopped placing containers of flammable liquid on the edge of the table. But that would require more brains than any of the characters in this 4th(!!!) installment of the death cheating franchise ever display, and I'm hoping that maybe this is the film where everybody finally kicks the bucket for good.
As usual, the film starts with a premonition of a huge disaster, killing dozens of people. This time around it's at a NASCAR event. I guess Death's plan is that watching cars drive in circles for hours will eventually lead to mass suicide, but after awhile he must've gotten fed up and started flipping cars over onto people. Nick, the non-descript lead dude who had the vision, causes a ruckus that gets he and his friends kicked out, avoiding their demise. Death kinda sorta takes issue with that. I'm sure he's got quotas to meet like everybody else.
Death starts picking off the escapees in the same order they should've died in the disaster. But Death must have a weird guilt complex or something, because he keeps warning Nick and his friends who's next and tells them exactly how they'll die. What's up with that? It makes no sense. Perhaps he..or more likely "she"(Death seems like a chick to me) probably was trying to keep these boring characters out of his realm. I wouldn't want to spend eternity with this nameless crew of mannequins. These jokers make Devon Sawa look like George Clooney. They never should've killed off my girl Ali Larter, but they do manage to homage her character in one of the film's few bright spots.
Clearly, the Final Destination franchise has gone to the well once too often. One of the things I liked about the first two films was that the characters actually tried to find a way to end the cycle of death for good. There was an element of problem solving that broke up the eventual monotony of just waiting for the next character to get hit by a flying razor blade or something. They barely even bother trying to figure out what's going on anymore. And maybe that's why the movie was only about 70 minutes long(minus credits). It felt like the writer was struggling to find something for these characters to do when all he's really trying to get to is the next kill. Maybe that was fun the first couple times, but by now it's old hat. I saw it in 3-D, and as usual it adds a couple of cool shots but can't make a crappy film more enjoyable. Truth be told i'm so over the 3-D thing....well, atleast until Avatar comes out. Avatar's 3-D was mighty impressive. The only thing impressive about The Final Destination is how far it's fallen, and how badly they've killed the unique spirit it once had.
3/10
