Final Destination 3 (2006)

Final Destination 3Wendy Christensen is a high school student who goes together with her boyfriends and some friends to have a good time at an amusement park in Pennsylvania. They’re going to board the Devil’s Flight roller coaster (nothing bad can happen on a ride with such a name, right?), but of course Wendy has a premonition that promises total mayhem as lots of people die during the ride due to a dropped camcorder that lands on the roller coaster’s eroded tracks. Following the same formula as the previous films, Wendy sees everyone (including herself) die horrible deaths, and afterwards she freaks out and tries to warn everyone. A total of nine passengers decide to get off due to her hysteria, but several others still remain on the ride, including her boyfriend Jason. And those people all die of course. So, what happens next? Well, you guessed it: the survivors are dying one by one under mysterious circumstances. Kevin, one of the survivors, tells Wendy about the Flight 180 incident (from the first film), and they realize they are in the same situation.

 

Final Destination 3 is the third film in the Final Destination franchise, and it was directed by James Wong and released in 2006. While Final Destination 2 was very much a direct sequel to the first film, this one was envisioned as a stand-alone film. And just like with the earlier films, few critics gave very favorable reviews but it still became yet another financial success, with a box office of nearly $118 million which made it the highest grossing of the three current films at the time. It was originally intended to be the final part of the series, with the original title actually being Cheating Death: Final Destination 3, where they intended to make it a trilogy. Hah! As if. O f course you don’t just drop something that keeps making bank with every movie that’s being made.

 

The idea for this film actually came from an incident in Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth (obviously not always, though). Wong said he was inspired by a 2003 Big Thunder Mountain Railroad incident, where a derailment occurred where one man died and 10 others were hurt. So while the first film stirred the fear of traveling by plane, and the second film reminded us how dangerous the highways can be, this third film evokes the fear of roller coasters and how utterly helpless you are if something bad happens. The cast members couldn’t have had much fear of rides like this, though, as they had to ride the roller coaster a total of 26 times on the same night (!) in order to shoot all the scenes for Wendy’s premonition. Must’ve been a blast!

 

By watching this third film, you can’t blame anyone except yourself if you expected something very different from the first two. Once again the main focus is centered around the deaths and all the details that leads up to them, where you keep wondering how everything will unfold. Sometimes it feels like watching Death playing a point ‘n click game where all kinds of small things eventually lead up to the death of the current victim. As always, the deaths are often over-the-top and cheesy, but that’s just part of the entertainment value in these movies.

 

Final Destination 3 is more of the same, but still just as much fun.

 

Final Destination 3 Final Destination 3

 

Director: James Wong
Writers: Glen Morgan, James Wong, Jeffrey Reddick
Country & year: USA/Canada, 2006
Actors: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ryan Merriman, Kris Lemche, Alexz Johnson, Sam Easton, Jesse Moss, Gina Holden, Texas Battle, Chelan Simmons, Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe, Amanda Crew
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0414982/

 

Prequels:
Final Destination (2000)
Final Destination 2 (2003)

Sequels:
The Final Destination (2006)
Final Destination 5 (2009)
Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)

 

Vanja Ghoul

 

 

 

 

 

Final Destination (2000)

Final DestinationAlex Browning is a high school student who is going on a trip to Paris with his other classmates. He boards Volée Airlines Flight 180, but before the takeoff he has a premonition where he sees how the plane explodes in the air, killing everyone on board. He starts panicking, screaming that there will be an accident, and he is removed from the plane. Several of his friends and some other classmates follow him, including one of the teachers. They don’t believe him, of course,with the exception of one: Clear Rivers, who found his reaction so believable that she also decided to leave the plane before takeoff. Afterwards, they can see that the plane explodes shortly after takeoff. Huh! So Alex wasn’t just a crazy loon after all. Naturally, him predicting this beforehand makes him suspicious, and he is interrogated by the FBI. Suspicious or not, it’s pretty clear he doesn’t have anything to do with the accident, and he is just one of the lucky people to be alive. Or…that is, until the survivors keep getting killed in freak accidents. It seems Alex has disrupted Death’s plan, and the lives are now being claimed in the order they would have died if they hadn’t left the plane.

 

Final Destination is a supernatural horror film from 2000, directed by James Wong. The screenplay was written by Wong, Glenn Morgan, and Jeffrey Reddick, and it was based on a story by Reddick that was originally written as a spec script for an episode for The X-Files. The movie became a financial success despite receiving mostly negative reviews from the critics, making $10 million on its opening weekend. There has since been 5 other films made, with the 6th is heading to the theaters later this month.

 

What makes Final Destination, and all its sequels for that matter, so entertaining is it’s rather simple premise that still opens up for so many ideas. How many ways are there to die? More than we could possibly fathom. Everyday situations, household items, everything can literally turn into a death trap if the circumstances are right. And while the film series could have become too repetitive, it still manages to serve up so many inventive ways of how people could die in the most unexpected ways possible. In this first movie, the first death provides the classic formula for many of the deaths: several things happen which makes you constantly wonder how the person will get killed off, often with a few red herrings thrown at us as well. Many of the deaths are shown in a slightly cartoony way, sometimes with a bit of gore (although no excessive amounts). Storywise, the suspense mainly lies in how our protagonist, Alex, tries to figure out a way to beat Death while getting help from Clear, the only one who truly believed him right from the start.

 

Final Destination is a fun popcorn horror movie, where the many ways to die in otherwise normal, everyday situations is the fun part. And while this movie probably didn’t have the same effect as Jaws had on its beach-lovers, I can guess it at least gave a few people the jitters if they were traveling by plane shortly afterwards..

 

Final Destination Final Destination

 

Director: James Wong
Writers: Glen Morgan, James Wong, Jeffrey Reddick
Country & year: USA/Canada, 2000
Actors: Devon Sawa, Ali Larter, Kerr Smith, Kristen Cloke, Daniel Roebuck, Roger Guenveur Smith, Chad Donella, Seann William Scott, Tony Todd, Amanda Detmer, Brendan Fehr
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0195714/

 

Sequels:
Final Destination  2 (2000)
Final Destination 3 (2003)
The Final Destination (2006)
Final Destination 5 (2009)
Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)

 

Vanja Ghoul