Final Destination 5

The Final Destination franchise exists for one reason only: to giggle ominously while delivering evenly paced bursts of simulated-death trauma with a paucity of boring spots. And the filmmakers go at it with the enthusiasm of a back-alley Hitchcock, milking every drop of sweat out of the buildup to inevitable splatacular. And each entry reliably reboots the same script: a core group of douchebags are spared from a cataclysm by the premonition of some nice person. This time the collapse of a suspension bridge fills in. As the dust settles, we go into our brief holding pattern to get to know the survivors better before Death clears his throat and begins to pick the wannabe death-dodgers off in grisly, appalling and amusingly unlikely ways. CGI still isn’t capable of photorealistic blood effects, but on all other counts the mayhem here is pretty spectacular. As usual. Which is all well and fine, but after all these entries the shtick is admittedly sort of tired. FD5 harkens back more to the original in tone, but at the loss of the same giddy joie de mort of the ensuing entries. The death porn is delivered competently, but in an almost perfunctory manner. They’re bored, and it shows. Cinemark 14, Feather River Cinemas and Paradise Cinema 7. Rated R