The Final Destination

As the latest in a series of drawn-out preludes to slaughter in David R. Ellis’ The Final Destination began to unspool, one audience member actually cried out, “Uh oh!” It was perhaps the most redundant thing ever said in a theater. This is the fourth Final Destination film, and the addition of a definite article to the title may be the only thing that differentiates it from previous entries. The setup is the same: A young man has a premonition of grisly death that saves a few people, but fate keeps beheading and dismembering them through Rube Goldberg-meets-Saw scenarios (including the only movie theater in history that stores 80-gallon drums marked “spontaneously combustible”—is this what they’re putting on the popcorn?). Of course, this is the first one in 3-D, so now the nails and sharp stakes fly at your retinas.