I'm going to be in the minority and say it's not bad at all. Besides, Krista Allen is in it (until she dies):
‘The Final Destination' is the fourth installment in a popular series of thrillers that was the brainchild of X Files co-creater James Wong. Much maligned and oft dismissed as ‘horror-lite' (lightweight horror targeting the teen audience) by serious horror buffs, the FD series do share a lot in common with other long running horror-lite franchises like ‘Scream' or ‘Friday the 13th': A cast of good-looking young men and women who die in violent and imaginative ways, usually at the hands of a masked deranged serial killer of some sort. They're also often spiced with humor, intentionally or not, and are populated by stereotypical, disposable characters so shallow and annoying that you sometimes cheer when they meet their grisly ends.
Having reached the ‘Saw'-like milestone of being more than a mere trilogy, the ‘Final Destination' series has shown that it's got serious legs (not just those supporting the pretty girls in it) and will not die so easily (no pun intended). If you are unfamiliar with the storyline, the theme of ‘Final Destination' is invariably about cheating Death, as if Death is an intangible force of nature (the archetypal Grim Reaper comes to mind). All four movies in the series begin with tragic accidents which claim the lives of many except, that is, for a handful of attractive young twenty somethings, because one of them always gets a vivid and detailed premonition of their impending doom in daydream fashion right before it happens and thus avoids said Fate. Having been cheated of his proper due, Death (which is more felt than seen) then proceeds to hunt down these people who had the temerity to presume that they can escape rather than submit to Him, while the survivors desperately hold onto the slim to none hopes that they can stop Death by ‘breaking the chain,' or disrupt the rigid order in which the deaths must occur, and thereby live normal, long and happy lives. What a foolish notion!
I enjoyed the first three Final Destination movies for the light fare they were, and got exactly more of what I expected in FD4: lots of graphic, gruesome deaths in creative, often preposterous freak accidents. One of the gimmicks in the FD movies is the old magician's trick of misdirection or sleight-of-hand; a scene would agonizingly build anticipation and lead you a certain direction with a left feint before the right hook is delivered. For instance, an overhead spinning fan would slowly work loose from its mounting in the ceiling while a victim sits unwittingly below it, or a cable would break close to barrels gasoline, fooling you into thinking that the victim(s) would die spectacularly in a certain way. Then the danger would pass, or that person would step out of danger a second before catastrophe hits, and before he or she (or you) could even breath a sigh of relief, some other event suddenly happens to reap them.
The CG fx in the Final Destination movies have always been pretty good, whether it's the plane crash in the original, the freeway accident in the second, the roller coaster mishap in the third, or the Nascar disaster in this one. FD4 can even be seen in 3 D, providing you with a more vivid ‘Final Destination' experience than ever before. With a 25+ million take in its first week of release, ‘The Final Destination' is now the #1 movie in America, dethroning Tarantino's violent WWII revenge fantasy ‘The Inglourious Basterds' and soundly thrashing Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's competing gorefest ‘Halloween 2,' and may have just proven to its critics' dismay that it hasn't reached its ‘final destination' just yet, which is more than I can say for its hapless young victims. At least they never died looking so fabulous!
finds out what happens when Elves go bad...
