The otherwise wholly satisfying combination of really obvious "suspense" sequences and grisly massacres comes together in a horrible mess in "Final Destination 3." Written and directed by the same presumed derelict as the first two "FD" installations, James Wong, the third panel in this triptych of terror is redundant and even boring.
Nonetheless, any self-respecting fan of mindless entertainment should flock to the theater to see this. It may not be worth a $10 ticket though, so don't forget the student ID. The movie starts off like the previous two: with a ridiculous freak accident montage, resulting in serious carnage and mangled teens. The first "FD" kicked off with a gnarly plane crash that had Devon Sawa peeing his pants. The second had an epic billion-car pile-up that had some unknown teenage actors looking spooked. And the third kicks off with a roller coaster malfunction that was - you guessed it - predicted by an unusually attractive high school student named Wendy. A group of high school seniors is spared by the clutches of death at the last minute.
The rest of the movie goes pretty much according to plan. The kids start getting knocked off in the order in which they were "supposed to die" on the roller coaster, which was aptly decorated with a series of angry decals of Satan. Each death is grislier and grislier, involving such remarkable weaponry as a nail gun, cannon, some weightlifting contraptions and more.
The movie is actually just a series of small vignettes about each kid's eventual demise, because Death never forgets, or something. (You'd think with about a zillion people to knock off every day, Death would be on to bigger and better things. "Foiled again!" Death would say.) There is no depth to any of the characters, other than the minor attention afforded to Wendy, whose boyfriend is knocked out of the way early on with the initial rollercoaster ordeal. You really just sort of envy the poor dude for not having to put up with his hyper-dramatic girlfriend anymore. It's hard to feel any sympathy for Wendy, either. As far as we're concerned, her boyfriend could have been a raging nose-picker and cheated on his tests.
There are also the token "alternative kids" who seem to fight back the urge to quote Foucault's reasoning on punishment when Wendy confronts them to inform them they're next to go. There's also a token sleazeball and uber-competitive African-American athlete. Somehow, you go the whole movie without even realizing that you never knew these characters' names. That can probably be attributed to the total lack of dialogue, which is rejected in favor of "Noooooo!!!!!" and a lot of screaming.
Oh, it's not all bad. This is just an outline of the idiocy that anyone going into this movie should be expecting, anyway. At this point, anyone going to see "Final Destination 3" should leave any beliefs that it isn't a carbon copy of the previous two at the door. Once you do that, an hour-and-a-half watching the destiny of hapless high school morons realized through really intentional suspense is pretty entertaining.
