Film Review: The Final Destination (3D) (Spoilers)

The fun of the 3D effect aside, this film shouldn’t work. After all the ‘Final Destination’ format had run its course, the script is hackneyed, the acting half-baked, but somehow it’s still an awful lot of fun. Scratch that, this is a highly entertaining film that’s unexpectedly worth your time. It may follow the basic format of 2000′s ‘Final Destination’ – a group of kids escape from the site of a disaster because of the premonition of one of their number (in this case the cute Bobby Campo), and because they cheat death’s design, they then get pursued by death, which then takes them in the order they were originally supposed to die. All three of the previous films followed it, it’s followed here, but this outing doesn’t take itself seriously for a moment – this is shock horror, self-indulgent gross-out for the sake of excessive, 3D gross-out. And director David R Ellis is pretty much right to go down that route – after all just what else could there be to add to the concept?

Cute teen couples Bobby Campo & Shantel VanSanten and Nick Zano and Haley Webb are at a racing track on a study break when things go badly wrong. A freak mishap at the rundown stadium sees everyone but them die, in impressively rendered 3D, after Campo’s conveniently timed premonition. The film proceeds blindingly obviously (yes they do all eventually die), with no character development and this time not even an attempt to explain what’s going on – writers Eric Bress and Jeffrey Reddick completely abandon the mythology, which for the most part works. Instead they just deliver one 3D death after the other, and while some of them are this time obvious, the 3D is a lot of fun (as is the gratuitous male nudity – Nick Zano anyone?) They do however abandon another plank in the formula – that of initial disaster having to tap into the audience’s primal fear about something; air travel worked in 2000, but a racing track? ‘Final Destination’ stuck in everyone’s head – this one won’t.

That aside it’s good, harmless fun, despite the cynical price hike inherent in the 3D format. It’s unlikely to make Campo’s, Zano’s or anyone else’s name, but it’s a good laugh for 90 mins if you’re bored.

7/10 (the final 1/2 because it’s a good laugh)