The Final Destination

Don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors, but apparently God does have a sick sense of humor. In the cosmos of the Final Destination series, just before disaster on an epic scale is set to unreel, one of the scheduled participants is anointed with a vision of the mayhem moments before it occurs, allowing them to warn their friends to clear the scene before the shit hits the fan. Hapless? Well, that’s where the sick sense of humor comes in, as Death then sets about picking off survivors in vignettes of Rube Goldbergian complexity. Essentially a slasher film without a masked killer, this entry in the franchise again offers up annoying archetypes to root for (to die) and boneheaded dialogue, but as a delivery system for grisly death vignettes the sick puppy delivers. It helps that this one maintains a sense of humor about itself and overcomes the inherent weakness of the previous entries, in that it’s hard to maintain the momentum when the big adrenaline set piece comes in the first 15 minutes of the film. This one tweaks the problem by going all meta and noisy toward the end. Not brilliant filmmaking, but adequate entertainment for nihilists. Feather River Cinemas, Paradise Cinema 7 and Tinseltown. Rated R