THE FINAL DESTINATION 2009, dir. David R. Ellis 82 min., Rated R. Starring: Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten Review by Phantom Troublemaker

I don’t hate the franchise that produced this movie. The original Final Destination was a fun, original movie. I can’t say it’s one of my favorites, but I do own it and have definitely watched it more than once. I groaned along with everybody else when the second one was announced. Did this premise really need to be revisited? Yeah, it did. Final Destination 2 gave us one of the most memorable opening sequences since Saving Private Ryan. Think I’m exaggerating? Go watch it right now and then try driving down the interstate without becoming extremely nervous. Let me know how that works out for you.

Final Destination 3 wasn’t awesome, but it seemed like the people who made it kind of felt like everybody was in on the joke and wanted to create something fun, special and – for the home release – unique to say good-bye to the franchise. The DVD featured a choose-your-own-adventure thing where you could sort of determine the course of certain characters in the movie. It was a gimmick and not entirely successful, but it was something new and different and that always gets credit in my book.

You’ll notice that I suggested part 3 was a farewell for the series. And it damn well should have been. The Final Destination is just awful. It’s what you would get if somehow SyFy got the rights to the name and made it an original movie. Only not entertaining. The whole movie is based around it being in this exciting, new “3-D” thing all the kids are talking about. Apparently, anything you release in 3-D is just magically awesomer. I wish the people behind The Final Destination knew their film history, because Jaws 3-D, Nightmare on Elm Street 5 and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone prove that just isn’t so.

The fourth entry in the Final Destination franchise has bad acting, shitty “look at that CGI!” effects and a bad story with a lame ending. The action starts at a NASCAR-type event, where the main character has a vision of disaster that allows him to save his friends and a few other people while simultaneously dooming them to be in this shitty movie for longer than the lucky actors whose characters actually died. We all know the plot here.

The movie does have one historic aspect, though. It shows that our country’s destructive rampage of Political Correctness has gotten so out of control that it now extends to the lowest common denominator – the stereotypical redneck. There is a character in the movie that displays every redneck, white-trash attribute you could ever think of – racism, abuse towards females, truck-driving, general dirtiness, stupidity. Rather than refer to him with the obvious classifier – “redneck” – the other characters refer to him as “the racist”. This is weird. It would be one thing if he was in a suit and tie or well-spoken or even a black guy or something (“Get your damn cracker asses out of my yard!”). Then “the racist” might well be your most obvious moniker. It just comes across as forced and odd every time the other characters refer to this guy. Well, at least we know the PC movement is working against everybody, now.

I have used too much space to tell you to avoid this movie (although that was my intent, I guess). The Final Destination isn’t good at all. It’s not even so bad it’s good. I don’t recommend you rent it, or put it in your queue or even watch it on cable. I would even say you should leave any room it is playing in. There is no fun to be had here. Don’t bother.

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