You may wish death upon yourself while watching this..
The Final Destination (2009)
Directed By: David R. Ellis (Snakes on a Plane)
The Prologue
So we are up to the 4th installment of Final Destination. And what did the company behind this decide to do in order to promote this one? Call it, The Final Destination! Notice that “THE” in there? They went the old school route of acting as if this was going to be the very last Final Destination movie ever made. They just skipped the other old school tradition of calling it “The Final Chapter”. And perhaps it was meant to be the last, but after it made as much money as it did it forced another one later. But after having seen this one, I have NOOO clue why soo many people went to see it.
The Movie
In a car race in McKinley Speedway, twenty-something Nick has a premonition of a deadly car crash with many casualties in the audience and convinces his girlfriend Lori and his friends Hunt and Janet to leave the place. They are followed by the security guard; a racist guy; a mother with her children and a mechanic, that are saved from death. When the racist guy and the mother die in mysterious and creepy incidents, Nick and Lori research and find many similar cases in Internet. They try to lure The Ripper to break the chain of deadly events and survive, but destiny does not help them.
So here we go again, and this time we are using the biggest redneck pass time known in existence, race car driving. And I may be from Tennessee, a place that loves that Nascar crap, but I can’t stand it and it really does nothing at all for me here. I noticed right out the gate that death seems to be a bit more aggressive this time around and the characters seems to be a lot more cookie cutter and annoying. Not that this franchise has ever been guilty of having the most likable leads, but it’s just worst this time around. I think the biggest saving grace in the entire film is the fact that it isn’t that long, thank you Jesus for that!
This movie just seems to get waaay too goofy. It’s also rushed along without taking a moment to breath and really set anything up. The deaths are not half way as cool as some of the others in this series, and they come without any grand setup, so it gets a little dull. I think the best way to put it would be for me to say this film just lacks heart. We have boring leads, we have some lame kills, and we have what I think could be the worst CGI I’ve seen in this series (and it has had some bad CGI). I mean it’s soo bad that it’s almost cartoon-like on more than one kill. And it’s bad for the movie due to the fact that without any real drama, the film just tries to toss gore at us at a fast pace, which doesn’t work due to the CGI being just soo bad.
The movie does attempt to get a little cute with the audience a time or two, and I’m torn on if that actually helps or hurts the film as a whole. Since I am torn on that issue (and if you see this you’ll know what scene I’m talking about), I won’t hold it against the movie at this time. Sadly, there is probably a lot of mindless teens that love this film, and that would be because odds are they just don’t know any better. But for a more mature horror fan you won’t be that impressed with this movie, that is IF you are impressed at all. The movie lacks in a lot of areas. It lacks in even having Tony Todd, the only one in the franchise that doesn’t have him btw. If you are ever going to sit down and watch all of these like I did, it’s OK if you want to skip this one. It’s by far the weakest.
The Conclusion
Maybe it’s a good thing this wasn’t really THE Final Destination, because what an awful way it would have been to end the whole series. I know part 3 wasn’t groundbreaking by any means, but it was a lot better than this one was. Plus, I think this is by far the lamest disaster in the whole bunch. I guess one way you could look at is the biggest disaster in The Final Destination isn’t the car crash at the racetrack, it’s the movie it’s self.
The Rating (5.5/10)
