As a longtime fan of the series, for reasons I'll come to explain, I feel entitled to review my first watching of Final Destination 4, which was historically known as THE Final Destination, until a trailer for the 5th FD continued the epic, altering history in a way that a film like this should know is a precarious gamble with fate. That said, the 4th was released in 3D in 2009, so I'm a little late to get around to watching it and I wasn't able to witness it in 3 whole dimensions. Needless to say, it's about damn time.
My honest all-time favorite movie is Saving Private Ryan.
A war-era tragic tale of a brave group of soldiers battling insurmountable odds and probable death in order to save one man's mother from losing all four of her sons to the same war. Top-notch acting, heart-wrenching script, moving soundtrack... Beautiful film. Truly.
Final Destination 4 was none of that, save for the part about gruesome death. But you have to know that ahead of time. You can't watch this movie in any mindset but one: mindless. It's the epitome of popcorn entertainment for the people who really, really loved the game Mouse Trap. Like myself. With time came the desensitization toward violence in the media and a primal enjoyment of witnessing pain that developed at a young age from watching too much America's Funniest Home Videos. This is a movie that knows it belongs on the straight-to-video shelf, but has the budget and fan-base to be as ridiculous as possible and so long as they can get a cast of about ten culturally-unique main characters to kill off and borrow at least half the dialogue from the other three films, Final Destination 4 will make the fans happy.
My only complaint is that it can't quite live up to the enjoyment of the first film. Maybe that's because I hold onto the memory so fondly. The shock and awe it delivered. The darkest of dark comedies, where the humor comes from bad script-writing more than the jokes and the gore is lifted to ridiculously exorbitant levels, resulting in a forgettable string of narration between well-choreographed graphic death scenarios. It's fake horror. Final Destination 4 is shock and awe without a soul, as it has been from the beginning, though lacking a soul lowers the repeat value. I can watch Saving Private Ryan everyday and feel good about myself, if a little lazy. If I watched Final Destination 4 every day, I'd feel like Showtime's Dexter.
So what's this memory I hold onto so fondly that puts FD4 on some special pedestal? It's watching the first sequel with my dad, FD2, both big fans of the original, thereby cementing the series as permanently cool. There's nothing cooler than sharing interests with Dad. We're watching fifty-foot logs with the girth of washing machines bounce across four lanes of highway smashing cars and bringing doom to all commuters within the blast radius--and we're laughing our asses off. Less shock and awe and more shock and guffaw.
After that, the FD series simply couldn't go wrong. The formula was too simple. Give someone a premonition, assign an order, kill folks, save the hero for last, end it with a shockingly unexpected accident. Asking for more was asking too much. I'm sure someone could reboot the series (not a bad idea) with a more serious tone, better writing, scarier scenarios... But for now it's all we have in the Death Revenge category, and it's not half bad, for what it is.
We could argue it's a really graphic safety precaution video.
Don't cross the street without looking both ways. Don't use wire to hang your shower curtain. Don't throw spaghetti out your third-floor apartment window. Don't stand by the barbed-wire fence. Don't go to a hospital. Avoid liquid of all kind. Skip the tanning salon.
Where Final Destination 4 adds its own flair is with the multiple endings, which means there are multiple "Thank God we made it out alive" lines followed immediately by dramatic music and a sudden breeze knocking over an oil can. They literally put two Final Destinations into one. Maybe three.
No the acting isn't great. No there's not a lot of time for back-story. We get each character in snapshots. We get people who witness hospital patients get crushed under a bathtub full of water falling through the roof from the flooded floor above, then walk away like nothing happened, arms swinging in the sun. We get stereotypes and cliches and impossible physics. We get to turn away in shock and groan, then laugh because you don't know what else to do after watching a race-car tire tear someone in two.
Final Destination invites viewers to get involved. We start guessing people's fate. We anticipate death's plans. And in time, we learn what not to do if we were ever in these situations. We learn to be careful and to keep our eyes open. We avoid clusters of pigeons near suspended plates of glass. We steer clear of sizzling computer monitors and unattended nail guns. We keep our butts off the swimming pool drain. Yeah, that was as gross as it sounds.
I'd never recommend Final Destination anymore than I'd recommend someone read "American Psycho." Both try to go the extra mile to make your stomach curdle when it comes to gore, though in this particular comparison I'd say "American Psycho" is the only one that will soil your clean, innocent mind. Final Destination is harmless fun, for the viewer at least, as we watch the sad tale of karma pit regular folk like you and I against inevitable death by way of the Rude Goldberg method. It's tension entertainment. An exercise in patience and stomach. A mindless exploration of fate.
Whereas the Saw franchise played up the evil within mankind, which is depressing, the Final Destinations play up the evil in everyday objects, which is horrifying. I never look at a rubber ducky the same way. I hate driving by logging trucks. No clown doll on a tricycle is scarier than a dark shadow and a whoosh sound.
Anyway, it's worth Netflixing.
- Left to Fry
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