Final Destination 4 (AKA) THE Final Destination

Ah, New Line. I knew it wouldn't be long before I ended up taking a look at New Line Cinema. A studio known mostly for making films that become huge franchises, like "Nightmare On Elm Street", but that's perhaps for another time. Today I examine one of it's more recent, and probably it's dumbest, franchise installment, "The Final Destination."
Ok first of all, what the fuck is up with that title? Seriously! Everybody knows that this is the forth movie, so why not just call it Final Destination 4? Are they just so ashamed they made 4 sequels that they wanted to trick people into thinking this is the first one? This is a problem that a lot of movie sequels have these days and I'm not the only one that's pointed it out. "Rambo", "Rocky Balboa", "Fast and Furious", all examples of this.
But really I didn't rent this because I thought it was the first one, I knew it was number 4, I just wanted to see why in the hell this movie franchise can exist after one movie! For those not in the know, the plot of "Final Destination" (The real first one, not the 4th one, we'll get to it in a minute.) is a bunch of people are on a plane, one person has a vision about the plane crashing, gets everyone to get off... and the plane actually crashes. However since they weren't supposed to get off the plane, there is a rift in Death's plan, yes THAT Death, and they now must all die in sudden and horrible accidents. I must admit, prior to renting this, I'd only seen the first one cut up on basic cable. But as a horror movie, I have to give the first film credit, it's at least trying something new and can actually sort of, kind of make an entertaining movie out of it. The problem is, the way the movie works means that there really can only be the one movie. Then it made money and the studio started with the sequels. And with each sequel, they basically just remade the first movie with different situations and different people at the start.
Thus we come to the latest, and supposedly final installment. It starts at a NASCAR derby... Let that sink in. One character, Nick for those who really care, has a vision of a terrible crash that kills all of his friends, some other people there, and of course himself. But he has the time to save them and this is starting to sound familiar.
The acting in the movie is, well, terrible would be nice to these people. One is the whiny girl that always just mopes and goes "why us?" through out the whole thing and I seriously could not wait for her to die. There's the asshole, who just likes to go out of his way to be the most unlikable douche in the entire world. Then there is Nick and a security guard that he also rescued from dying. They are both wooden and unbearably annoying. Since the guy playing the security guard is better known as Bubba from "Forrest Gump", that's really tragic. Probably The only character I kind of liked was Nick's girl friend Lori, and I'll admit that at least 100% of why I liked her was that she was really cute looking and didn't whine as much as the other girl. The rest of the cast you just basically want to see die, and the movie is more than happy to give you that.
It's another problem with this series though, the deaths in these movies get more and more elaborate each time and just become flat out silly. In this entry one character is killed by a pool drain, yes a pool drain, that sucks their vital organs out of their ass... I'm not kidding. You have to be pretty creatively bankrupt to try and make an audience buy that, or for that matter try and make them believe you can drown in a car on dry land.
On top of that, it's verbatim the same plot of each of the other movies. Dead serious. If you've seen any of the other films in this franchise, you've seen this one. Which really shows that this was never intended to be a franchise. Actually, I did some snooping and found out it started off as an idea for an "X Files" episode that was then rejected. Considering what actually made it in some of those episodes, that takes some doing. The only thing that sets "Final Destination 4" apart from the other movies is that it was filmed in 3D, the gimmick that won't die.
Originally started in the 50's, 3D was among several gimmicks that Hollywood came up with to compete with the rising popularity of television, which they were fearing would keep people from going to cinemas. Now, history seems to be repeating itself with pirated copies and DVD being the opponent. For this kind of movie though, 3D is good in theory, but on DVD, it's a rental at best and the one I rented was 2D, so the shots of stuff flying at the screen just suck and have no impact other than being corny. It's the same fate that's fallen on films like "Jaws 3D" or "Friday the 13th 3D". It's maybe, possibly fun in theaters, but on video or DVD it's just stupid.
Overall I just watched this for entertainment value, and found none. It's actually really short finishing in at just a little over an hour, I guess I should be thankful. There's no actually plot other than "We're all gonna die!" to pad out the run time so it seems like it isn't just death scenes, which it is. so if you're hoping to find at least enough to make the rental fee worth it, trust me when I say it isn't going to be here.

More from New Line still to come!!!