The Final Destination (2009) Dir: David R. Ellis
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Recently, I've been rewatching the first three films in this entertaining horror franchise, but now, with this fourth installment, I had arrived at the films I hadn't yet seen. David R. Ellis had also directed the second film, which gave me some encouragement, considering that was probably my favourite of the three.
The first thing I noticed was that the film had the worst special effects of the franchise by a mile. The CGI looked ten years older than the film. Part of what made the previous films so fun and memorable was the inventive and absurd practical effects.
As such, this one's heavy reliance on mediocre CGI was very disappointing to see. This included some awful effects clearly only featured for the use of 3D, which was, of course, the big thing at the time. The opening titles looked cool though, so that's something.
Characters are not the strength of this franchise, but those in this film are some of the most dull and under-written. None of them have much depth at all, aside perhaps from the security guard. There was also a totally unnecessary use of a racial slur from a racist character - his presentation was enough, the film didn't need that line of dialogue.
The story wad a rinse-and-repeat job of the previous films, but somehow even less expanded upon. I didn't get the impression that anything new was happening, nor was anything particularly interesting happening, for that matter. There's one good false ending, but that's about it. Everything else is as generic and uninspired as it comes.
Bobby Campo's protagonist lacked charisma and presence. Ultimately, he felt like a side character with an awful lot of dialogue. It was hard to care about him because he was so bland. In fairness, the aforementioned writing did not help his cause, but Campo's acting was nowhere near good enough.
No one else was much better, with Shantel VanSanten and Mykelti Williamson being the only two to give half-bearable performances. The rest of the supporting cast, namely Nick Zano, Haley Webb, Krista Allen, Andrew Fiscella and Justin Welborn, were all pretty below par. It was not a good film for acting.
Overall, this was quite comfortably the worst film of the franchise so far. It lacked imagination, creativity or any real identity beyond what had long been established by the other films. Worse than that, it's a more boring version of what we've seen before, which made it all the more disappointing.
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