The Final Destination

This has got to be the oddest named sequel in film history. The first one was called Final Destination. The next two were called, fittingly, Final Destination 2 and Final Destination 3. Now, instead of Final Destination 4, we've got THE Final Destination. Who the hell told these jokers that the could just ignore the entire tradition of sequel naming? It would be one thing if they went with something idiotic like FD4, or FD3D (cuz it's in 3-D, get it?). At least there's a precedent for that.

The makers of The Final Destination must've used up all their creativity with the title, because the rest of the movie is as by-the-numbers as possible. Just so ya'll know, I don't have a problem with this. The Final Destination movies are not horror films, no matter how they're categorized on Netflix. They're comedies, and comedies that never fail to deliver. No, the characters aren't funny; they're barely even humans. They don't have jobs or relationships or even names as far as I remember. It's all about the death scenes. The ridiculously complicated Rube Goldberg death contraptions that power these films are essentially blood-soaked slapstick routines; Three Stooges shorts where Moe actually gouges Curley's eyes out. Or, rather, where Moe spills a viscous fluid on the floor, Curly slips on it, and the impact of his heft on the floor makes a gardening shear fall off of a nearby table and into Curley's eye socket. It's sort of a deadpan version of Sam Raimi's splatstick, but this time, it's in 3-D, so the severed heads and billowing plumes of organ meat shoot right out at you. If you're the kind of person who finds decapitations inherently funny, this is your movie. For the record, I am one of those kind of persons. Although I'm also the kind of person who gets pissed off with basic historical illiteracy. At one point, an irascible old dude in a hospital tells his Asian physical therapist: "you know how many of your people I killed in the Korean war?" The Asian responds "I'm Chinese." As though that invalidated the old dude's comment. MOTHERFUCKER, WHO DO YOU THINK KNOCKED MACARTHUR BACK ACROSS THE 38TH PARALLEL?! EVER HEARD OF THE CHOSIN RESERVOIR, FUCKHEAD?