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Final Destination 3
Orange-Alert America
2006
Review: February 14, 2006
Director: James Wong
Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ryan Merriman, Texas Battle, Sam Easton
Extremely useful in these types of situations.
THE SETUP:
Buncha teens could not stop for death, so death kindly stops for them.
DISCUSSION:
This is one of the few movies I have been really looking forward to since I first heard about it—though if course it’s a bit sad it didn’t turn out to be in 3-D, as originally planned. The premise of these movies is that at the beginning, someone has a premonition about a horrible accident [FD1: airplane explosion, FD2: freeway pile-up, FD3: rollercoaster accident], and a bunch of them get off [I mean, off THE RIDE] —and the accident happens. Which means that they are marked for death. The rest of the movie consists of this group being claimed by death in extremely complicated ways. The end.
But that doesn’t get across the prime virtue of these movies; how they are machines carefully calibrated to wind an audience up and up and up and then relieve it all in a cathartic explosion of violence and black, sadistic humor. That’s why I made sure to see this movie on opening night with a big, pumped audience, because their screams and laughter are really the reason to watch these movies. I would almost see no purpose in watching these movies alone.
So how about this one? It’s pretty good, though maybe not the best, in terms of pure squirm-factor. This one is the most self-aware of all of them however, by a mile, as we will see. This was directed by James Wong, who did the first movie but not the second, and looking back, the second one had more in the way of squirmy suspense. You had situations that really wound you up, like a guy who has to put his hand down a sink disposal, and a anesthetized kid in a dentist’s chair being menaced by a rubber toy that might fall into his helpless mouth. And I recall that these sequences really had the audience squirming with anticipation—and this one doesn’t go that far in terms of screw-twisting build-ups that get under your skin, it’s just that you know something bad is going to happen, and then it does.
And that’s the other thing about these movies—they reflect [though perhaps not consciously, until this installment] the current pervading fear in American society that SOMETHING IS GOING TO GO TERRIBLY WRONG AND THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. They reflect the suspicion that all of our technology and gadgets can easily turn into agents of death, and the million little incompetencies surrounding us [the kind that show up glaringly on September 11th, with the Iraq war, after the tsunami, after Katrina… well, pretty much everything for the past 10 years] are very likely to result in your death, and you are helpless to stop it. Some critics have taken offense at the explicit, seemingly trite reference to 9/11 in this movie, but I think that is the movie’s way of drawing the connection between the state of our society and what’s happening in the film—that’s what I meant by this one is a little more self-conscious than the previous installments.
Plus, if you’re paying close attention you’ll also note a great deal of content around the idea of presidential assassination. Among the pictures we’re shown toward the beginning is one of president Lincoln with a line indicating where he was shot, there’s the name of the high school, McKinley, and late in the film the characters are on a subway that makes stops at both Oswald and Booth. There is also all this stuff about the American revolution—even though it’s ludicrous that this Pacific Northwest town would have any kind of American revolution anniversary in 2006—it’s obviously just there as a signpost [though it does lead to the amusing line: “Fuck you, Ben Franklin!”]. I think this is part of their intention to tie the kind of fear we feel in the movie with current events, and for the writer and director to very slyly suggest a solution. There is a lot of play in the movie given to whether one has control over one’s fate or not, and the death of a president certainly tends to give society a feeling of great insecurity and lost control, that “nobody’s driving” feeling [Holy shit, and there is a scene in here featuring a truck that no one is driving!], which would result in the kind of fear portrayed in this movie—and which the movie has taken pains to compare to the state of fear in our current society. But I think what’s really going in is much more subversive: I think the message the writer and director are trying to work in is calling for an American revolution, and possibly worse. I guess I am—honestly—worried about getting a call from the NSA, but when you add it to the series rule that the only way to stop death’s plan is to kill a person out of the established order, and we’ve had all the previously-mentioned stuff re: Oswald and Booth, it all begins to seem like it’s suggesting something definitely NOT to be uttered over electronic communication. Let’s just be glad Ann Coulter or Bill O’Reilly won’t be seeing this movie. Though, you know, as if they’d get it.
Nevertheless, we have to give this one mad props for taking this giant leap in self-awareness, which really sets it apart from the rest of the series. Read a much better analysis of this interpretation by the webmaster of Sinlechuga... who sits at the next desk from me at work, and who I saw the movie with. We basically spent all day yesterday talking about it.
There’s also some criticism of the gimmick here that the main character’s camera records indications of how its characters are going to die, but I think that this is the McGuffin of the film. The characters NEED some plot device to give them a quest, to make them feel that there is something they can do to stop the deaths, or else there would be nothing for them to do, and nothing to the movie except a string of gruesome deaths.
I found James Wong’s directoral style to mute the excitement to a minor degree here. Like I said, there was a lot less audience squirming during the build-ups, just a burst of screaming and laughter when someone’s head would get obliteratied. Others have mentioned that this one is fairly gory, and it is, but there’s something about the new way of doing gore that seems less effective to me, though I guess here it keeps the tone fun [nasty, sadistic fun, yes, but fun], rather than truly horrifying.
So anyway, I would rush off to see it while there’ll still be crowds in the theater, because that communal feeling of everyone on a thrill ride together is really the fun of the experience. How apt that they chose a rollercoaster for the centerpiece of this installment.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Yes, and take a bunch of friends with you.
RELATED FILMS:
FINAL DESTINATION was the first, and was a whole lot of fun.
FINAL DESTINATION 2 was the second, had a bang-up freeway accident, and was a lot more squirm-inducing, though nowhere near as self-aware.
