It's been a long time coming. I really think I'm making some good headway into cleaning out some of that backlog. But that doesn't mean I don't still have plenty left to give you. Coming soon on this site, look for reviews of: Dave Chappelle's Block Party, From Justin to Kelly (don't ask me why), Inside Man (I have a LOT to say about this, very little of it good), Munich, Roll Bounce, Testosterone, Unknown White Male and more. You'll definitely want to keep coming back for those. In the meantime, you know them, you love them: the Final Destination movies. See what I think about all three below.



Final Destination
Review by Jon Waterman

***1/2

A high school French class is just about to jet off to Paris for an amazing, and surely educational, field trip. All the students get on board the plane, and that’s when it happens. Alex has a vision that shortly after take off, the airplane explodes, killing everyone inside. He freaks out, tries to warn everyone and eventually stays behind with six others. While they’re arguing in the terminal about missing the trip, the plane explodes in mid-air. Because of Alex’s vision, they’ve cheated death. But not for long.

Finally, we get an effective horror movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The problem with so many in the genre is that they try to pump you full of scares by playing around with musical cues or creating unnecessary tension. Most of the time, it doesn’t work and simply comes off as being just another pathetically stereotypical slasher flick. “Final Destination” isn’t like that. It isn’t even scary. It does give the audience plenty of shock, however.
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++++++++++


Final Destination 2
Review by Jon Waterman

*

Kimberly is off with three of her best friends on a vacation to Daytona for some relaxing and partying. Right when they’re about to get on the highway, Kimberly has a vision that a massive car accident is about to occur. Dozens are killed a fiery blaze of twisted metal after a truck’s cargo of lumber falls off into the road. Her premonition freaks her out and she skids to a stop before leaving the on-ramp, trapping all those behind her. A cop is there to see this and as she tries to explain why she accidentally blocked the road, the accident occurs just as she envisioned. All the people stuck behind her car (which gets hit) are saved. But as these people learned from watching the aftermath of Flight 180, death has a design, and this group is being painted right out of the picture.

With a new director and new writers, the series takes its own 180 and becomes a rather conventional horror flick. Except here’s the thing: it’s not scary in the least. All the fun has been sucked out of what we saw in the first one. The days of the unexpected deaths are over. In the previous film, you either didn’t see it coming at all or you saw that something was going to happen, but you never knew exactly how the fatal blow was going to hit. Everything here is completely telegraphed and so the shock factor is non-existent.
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++++++++++


Final Destination 3
Review by Jon Waterman

**1/2

Wendy has always been a paranoid person. Her fear gets taken to a new level while the senior class is having their graduation party at a local amusement park. Never one to enjoy roller coasters, Wendy freaks out after having a vision of the cars derailing killing everyone who rides its fast twists and turns. Eventually she causes so much fuss that the ride operators take her and the rest of the people in her section off the car. The group then watches the rest of their classmates as the coaster does exactly what Wendy had envisioned. All still on board die. Those that got off live to see another day, but how many more do they have?

The third installment in the series begins its return to form. With original writers Glen Morgan and James Wong (also the director of this and the first) back in control, a lot of the fun is back. The plot still seems like a convenient stretch but not nearly as convoluted here as in number two. I think it has something to do with how the pictures taken at the fair foreshadow how the people will die, and the characters know this. Despite this, they can’t really prevent anything from happening, because they are too dumb to make any further connections, even though the audience recognizes them immediately.
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