‘Final Destination 3’ brings a flawed premise to an end

“Final Destination 3” may actually live up to its name of being the final destination of this series. It’s merely a rehashing of ideas in the prequels with brand new characters and extra-gory death scenes.

Seven high school seniors board a roller coaster at a local amusement park when Wendy Christensen, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, has a premonition that the coaster will run off its tracks and kill everyone riding. She starts screaming to be let off, and she, along with a number of others, decide that this ride isn’t either worth the drama or they are just too freaked out by her panicked behavior.

After this harrowing incident, people who got off the ride begin to die in extremely bloody and painful ways. Mary and her new friend Kevin Fischer, played by Ryan Merriman, discover that by preventing the deaths of those who got off the coaster, she had merely postponed the inevitable on a very short timeline.

For what it was, this movie was worth seeing. Each death resembled more of a lack of control for the victims than the pure carelessness exhibited in the second film. However, there were certainly some that could have been easily avoided. The film also showed some borderline offensive images of the attack on the twin towers and other disasters.

The main problem with the film is that the background of the series has been flawed from the start, and not really scary at all. Yes, we are all going to die, and sometimes there are freak accidents, but this film strives once again to defy logic and cut into the audience’s most basic instinct to make a buck.

Nothing resembling psychological horror or creepiness is found in this film. It ‘s merely one cheap shot after another to attack those most basic of all instincts with loud noises and utterly nonsensical suspense when given any amount of thought.

Plausible as these situations may seem to some, the idea that death is stalking those who avoid it with premonitions is utterly and completely ridiculous. The fact that this film even tries to strike some sort of philosophical chord in the audience is the most disturbing part of this movie-going experience, but this is not new. Every film in this series has tried to produce the same result on a flimsy and unimpressive crux.

3.5 stars