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This is the fourth Final Destination movie, and the worst. The first one was brilliant, unique, and suspenseful. The second one was slightly less so. The third one had more of a mystery quality to it that made up for its lack of suspense and any connection to the first two, even though it still had a lot of unnecessary junk. The fourth one isn't even trying anymore.
The acting is second-rate at best, the writing and directing both make the movie look like it was designed by a middle school-er, and the obvious attempt at a twist ending was not only expected but totally lame. The characters spend the whole movie acting like nothing is wrong unless their lives are in immediate and obvious danger. We learn nothing personal about them, and the one time we get close to an emotional moment, it dies quicker than the actors and does an unbelievable flip, leaving you to assume that the characters are either schizophrenic or brain dead.
This movie makes only a half-a**, token attempt to connect to the plot of the original two movies through the use of a one-second-shot of a blurry newspaper photo of a scene from the second movie. There is no suspense whatsoever since the main character gets magical visions that tell him exactly how the next person is going to die, even though he is too brain dead to figure it out for himself, despite the incredibly obvious visuals. Even Death gets screwed over by this movie, as the plot leads up to a totally random reveal that the three remaining characters at the end were fated to "cheat death" and go through all that chaos just to get to a particular coffee shop at a particular time and die in a particular way. This breaks the tradition of the death chain in all the previous movies, as if the writer were trying to make them as pointless as this fourth installment in the series is.
The point of the original story was the hope of being able to cheat death and the fear that it couldn't be done. This movie takes that away by making it seem like there was never any point to any of it, and everyone was always destined to die in the way they did, despite the clues from Death and their efforts to stop it. It's all very nihilistic, which may be great if you're a philosophy student looking for a media-related subject for a paper, but not so great if you're a movie-lover looking for some entertainment that makes any sense at all.
So let's say you have the ability to ignore bad acting, bad directing and editing, bad writing and a weak plot, and an apparent attempt to ruin other movies. Maybe you just like splatter-fests and good special effects and a few laughs. Sorry, but you're out of luck, too. There isn't a huge amount of gore, and what there is is bad. Not bad in a cult, this-is-so-bad-it's-funny kind of way. Just a poorly done kind of way. Anybody with two brain cells will look at the FX death scenes and think "that would not happen." And that just ruins whatever enjoyment you might get from the splattery deaths.
Someday, this movie may be funny to people who collect bad films. Someday, it may even be a cult classic to people who love the Final Destination series and are willing to forgive its biggest flaws in order to complete their collection. But today, it's a stinker.
I will admit, however, that I haven't watched the 3-D version. Some movies were made to be viewed in 3-D, and watching them in 2-D ruins the experience and leaves you with a bad impression. (Although, IMO, if you have to make a movie 3-D in order to make it any good, you should quit and go back to McDonald's.) I doubt it will make a difference considering all of the problems this movie has, but I'll give it a shot and let you know.
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