Directed by David Ellis
Screenplay by Eric Bress
Rated MA, 82 minutes
Cinemas everywhere
THE horror movie has a proud history of political and sexual allegory. Monsters, zombies and vampires have all been recruited to serve as metaphors for the destruction wrought by the atomic bomb, the Vietnam War and the perils of falling for the wrong person.
The Final Destination, however, makes no such claims. It's interested exclusively in the diversity of ways in which a human body can meet its end.
This is the fourth film in the series and its view of the Grim Reaper remains as severely practical as ever. You can forget that vision of a skeletal figure holding a scythe. Judging from the amount of heavy machinery the Reaper employs in this series, it's an unseen force with an insatiable bloodlust and a postgraduate degree in mechanical engineering. It enjoys devising plane crashes, roller-coaster collapses and intricately designed traffic pile-ups in which bodies are impaled, dismembered, shattered and splattered.
And in the latest instalment, they're coming at you in 3D.
Other Deathly characteristics include a mastery of time-and-motion techniques and a fetish for the domino effect. This film begins with a motor race where the consequences of some spilt fuel and a misplaced screwdriver gradually build into a conflagration that kills 52 people. But the Reaper is also a tease and one person is always picked out of the crowd and treated to a premonition of the mayhem.
This means that he and his friends escape the carnage. They're also given time to entertain the possibility that they're going to get out of the film alive. There's a reason why it has not built any of its cast into stars. No one is ever allowed to stick around long enough to make an impression. The series compensates for these high casualty rates by economising on the scripts which all work to the same formula. As a result, you can count on hearing at repeated intervals the lines: ''I have this really bad feeling'' and ''It's not over yet.''
Nobody in the film expects to learn why such violence is erupting around them. The only questions that matter are ''When?'' and ''How?'' So in between explosions, you can occupy yourself wondering who's going to be served up next and who's going to be saved for dessert. The catastrophic opening sequence gives you a fair idea of how the selection process works. After Nick O'Bannon (Nick Campo), the clairvoyant character, emerges unhurt from the race track explosion with his girlfriend, Lori (Shantel VanSanten), and their friends Hunt (Nick Zano) and Janet (Haley Webb), he and Lori decide to go to the memorial ceremony for the dead. The insufferable Hunt declines. No survivor guilt for him. ''If we made it, we deserved it,'' he says, ensuring himself one of the more inventive of the film's catalogue of grisly endings.
This is the second Final Destination from director David Ellis and writer Eric Bress and they're old hands at building what passes for suspense in these mechanistic conditions. In one typical sequence, there's a close-run race between a wobbly ceiling fan and a can of hairspray that's come in contact with a heated curling wand. Will the fan fall on the woman sitting under it before the can explodes in her face? Or will both these calamities be pre-empted by the man with the lighted cigarette who's standing on the grass outside pouring petrol into the tank of a lawnmower?
On these metaphysical questions, the plot turns. As for Ellis's use of 3D,
I can't really say it displays any of the fine tuning that Dreamworks's Jeffrey Katzenberg, 3D's most enthusiastic proselytiser, has been talking up lately. The film showers you with gore while dumping a motor engine in your lap and poking you in the eye with a burnt stick. If that turns you on, then The Final Destination is for you.
Screenplay by Eric Bress
Rated MA, 82 minutes
Cinemas everywhere
THE horror movie has a proud history of political and sexual allegory. Monsters, zombies and vampires have all been recruited to serve as metaphors for the destruction wrought by the atomic bomb, the Vietnam War and the perils of falling for the wrong person.
The Final Destination, however, makes no such claims. It's interested exclusively in the diversity of ways in which a human body can meet its end.
This is the fourth film in the series and its view of the Grim Reaper remains as severely practical as ever. You can forget that vision of a skeletal figure holding a scythe. Judging from the amount of heavy machinery the Reaper employs in this series, it's an unseen force with an insatiable bloodlust and a postgraduate degree in mechanical engineering. It enjoys devising plane crashes, roller-coaster collapses and intricately designed traffic pile-ups in which bodies are impaled, dismembered, shattered and splattered.
And in the latest instalment, they're coming at you in 3D.
Other Deathly characteristics include a mastery of time-and-motion techniques and a fetish for the domino effect. This film begins with a motor race where the consequences of some spilt fuel and a misplaced screwdriver gradually build into a conflagration that kills 52 people. But the Reaper is also a tease and one person is always picked out of the crowd and treated to a premonition of the mayhem.
This means that he and his friends escape the carnage. They're also given time to entertain the possibility that they're going to get out of the film alive. There's a reason why it has not built any of its cast into stars. No one is ever allowed to stick around long enough to make an impression. The series compensates for these high casualty rates by economising on the scripts which all work to the same formula. As a result, you can count on hearing at repeated intervals the lines: ''I have this really bad feeling'' and ''It's not over yet.''
Nobody in the film expects to learn why such violence is erupting around them. The only questions that matter are ''When?'' and ''How?'' So in between explosions, you can occupy yourself wondering who's going to be served up next and who's going to be saved for dessert. The catastrophic opening sequence gives you a fair idea of how the selection process works. After Nick O'Bannon (Nick Campo), the clairvoyant character, emerges unhurt from the race track explosion with his girlfriend, Lori (Shantel VanSanten), and their friends Hunt (Nick Zano) and Janet (Haley Webb), he and Lori decide to go to the memorial ceremony for the dead. The insufferable Hunt declines. No survivor guilt for him. ''If we made it, we deserved it,'' he says, ensuring himself one of the more inventive of the film's catalogue of grisly endings.
This is the second Final Destination from director David Ellis and writer Eric Bress and they're old hands at building what passes for suspense in these mechanistic conditions. In one typical sequence, there's a close-run race between a wobbly ceiling fan and a can of hairspray that's come in contact with a heated curling wand. Will the fan fall on the woman sitting under it before the can explodes in her face? Or will both these calamities be pre-empted by the man with the lighted cigarette who's standing on the grass outside pouring petrol into the tank of a lawnmower?
On these metaphysical questions, the plot turns. As for Ellis's use of 3D,
I can't really say it displays any of the fine tuning that Dreamworks's Jeffrey Katzenberg, 3D's most enthusiastic proselytiser, has been talking up lately. The film showers you with gore while dumping a motor engine in your lap and poking you in the eye with a burnt stick. If that turns you on, then The Final Destination is for you.
