One of the good things about the Final Destination movies is that each time we get introduced to a fresh set of actors (apart from one survivor in part two, who finally gets what’s coming to her). If you’re a Final Destination fan then you know the story: the main character has a death-cheating premonition and saves a handful of people temporarily, then tries to work out how to survive as one by one death comes back to finish them off.
This movie was a lot different from the first two in that there wasn’t a lot of explanation required as to what was happening; it just got into it, leaving the survivors little time to change their fate. The deaths themselves were more gruesome this time around. Two girls burn to death in tanning beds (innovative if implausible) and there is a guy who gets his head chopped into by a car engine…which was pretty funny, um… I mean sick. Final Destination 3 involves a bunch of senior high school students, so encompasses the whole teenhigh-school cliché characters – like the hot snobby girls, the jock, the goths and the really obnoxious greasy guy who tries those cringing lines with all the girls.
As it first started, I tried to think, “OK, what happened at the end of the second one?” but soon realised this was unnecessary, and details from the last FD were left out. It was nice and short, and honestly, why would you bother developing characters and personalities when they’re about to die anyway? Good thinking Mr Director. I liked it, a good way to skip a lecture.
DIRECTED BY JAMES WONG
Hoyts, Reading Cinemas