film review: The Final Destination 3D (2009)

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while (or if you know me… like most people who seem to read this) you’ll know that I watch a fair number of horror films. They’re not like a favourite genre of mine or anything but I like a good horror film, so I watch them in the hope of finding one. Unfortunately, like many things in life, you have to go through a lot of stinkers before you find that golden nugget (Err… actually, when am I going to find a golden nugget? must go to lotto.ie again…). The Final Destination was not one of those golden nuggets.

I may as well start by saying that I’m not actually a fan of the Final Destination. I saw the first one years ago, probably about a year after it came out and I didn’t like it. In the interests of full disclosure I have to admit… I didn’t like it because I didn’t realise it was meant to be funny… I just thought it was the stupidest film I’d ever seen. Later I watched through different eyes as it were and yes, it was good fun.

But anyway, the original Final Destination came out in 2000 and there have been a 2 and 3 between this 2009 version and the first. It isn’t a remake of the first so I don’t know why they didn’t call it 4 – beyond the fact that Final Destination 4 3D might have been a bit confusing – but surely they could have come up with something else. Anyway that’s neither here nor there. The point is that it’s quite an old franchise at this stage so they really needed to do something to keep it fresh and they didn’t.

This is a lazy lazy movie which pretty much pares back anything that was good about the Final Destination films I have seen. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t clever, the deaths weren’t that outrageous and I didn’t even hate the characters that much. (insofar as there were characters) At least if I hated them I would have been happy to see them die. As it was I just didn’t care. Didn’t care at all.

Ok, it wasn’t the worst film I’ve ever seen (I save that honour only slightly unfairly for Reeker). It wasn’t really offensively bad, it was just plain bad. And boring. I did actually like the opening scene though and I thought the 3D was very good, for that bit, I don’t really remember much of it in most of the rest of the film.

Anyway I don’t think I have anything else to say about it except that you shouldn’t bother going to see it. You’d be better off watching one of the older ones, at least there are a few good deaths and a few good laughs there.

Actually, I just remembered that I saw the trailer for Pandorum before this, that looked like a bit of a laugh… kind of like Event Horizon and Aliens smooshed together. So I suppose one good thing came from watching this film.

4/10