by Joe Buffaloe
Daily Lobo
Months of frantic anticipation are at an end - finally, the climax to the "Final Destination" trilogy has arrived.
Of course, "Final Destination" is about as much of a trilogy as "Smokey and the Bandit" parts one through three. If you're looking for an epic story that took three movies to tell, your search will not end with this series. Instead, you will have paid three times to see essentially the same movie.
The story is the same this time around - some teenagers are about to ride on a roller coaster when one of them has a psychic vision of their deaths and decides to get off. Those who follow are saved from the fatal accident, but death won't let them off that easy. Soon they start dropping like flies, in the same order they would have died had they stayed on the roller coaster.
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It's up to Wendy, the girl who had the vision, to warn her friends and break death's sinister pattern. Through a clever series of ironies, however, she learns she is powerless to save anyone.
It doesn't help her case that the villain in this installment of the series - death, or some force that wants them dead - has apparently become incredibly resourceful. If there is a message in this movie, it's that death is inescapable, mainly because the Grim Reaper can crush your skull using only a paperclip and some Silly Putty. The malevolent force seems to have picked up the ability to drive a forklift since the last movie, too.
The dialogue plays like a rough draft from a screenwriting class, and the characters aren't differentiated far beyond their hair styles - Mary Elizabeth Winstead, as Wendy, pulls off a mean Meg White do. There are a number of fun visual gags, and director James Wong keeps the story moving at a fast pace, but the film can't shake the big studio, cookie-cutter feel.
But while the story, style and acting lack teeth, the gore is surprisingly first-rate. The deaths are far more bloody, gruesome and just plain sadistic than any nonindie horror movie I've seen in years.
Nailgun. There, you've been warned.
For a useless repeat of a movie that wasn't that good in the first place, "Final Destination 3" pulls off some surprisingly scary scenes. More than any other film in the series, this one seems to understand the concept of horror. There is a terrifying bloodbath struggling to emerge here - it's just a shame that the rest of the movie gets in the way.
