Final Destination 3 Movie Review – "Not Again!"

Runtime: 93 minutes
Release Date: February 10, 2006
Rating: R
Director: James Wong


Wendy is spending Senior Night at an amusement park with her best friend, boyfriend, and her boyfriend's best friend Kevin. Kevin is also dating her best friend and plans to propose, not knowing that she wants to dump him. When it comes time to ride the big roller coaster in the park, Wendy and Kevin end up stuck together in the back. The roller coaster goes off the tracks, and she sees everyone die before flashing back and realizing that it was just a premonition.


Wendy instantly wants off, and she tries to get others to follow. A few people willingly give up their seats, while others get thrown off because of a fight. Her boyfriend, best friend, and everyone else dies on the roller coaster. Like all of the other Final Destination movies, death comes after each person who should have died that day on the coaster. Kevin is the only one who believes her, and everyone else thinks that she's crazy even as she goes out of her way to save their lives.


I said before that the Final Destination movies are my favorite horror movie franchise, but this one isn't as good as the earlier films. For every good death in the film, there's another that doesn't seem nearly as good. We get two vapid girls trapped in a tanning booth as a fire breaks out that literally melts them, but then we get a guy smashed in a gym. We also have a random death of a person killed when a post goes through her body, but the movie doesn't even establish her as a character. The other films did a good job of making us care about the different characters and become involved in their stories, but this one just wants us to focus on the deaths.


Wendy eventually learns that her little sister should have died on the roller coaster, but even that storyline seems forced. We constantly see the two of them fighting and Julie acting like a spoiled brat. She only cares about herself, wants her sister to do things for her, and doesn't seem to even care that her sister just lost her best friend and boyfriend. By the time we learn she was on the coaster, I wanted to see her die. Instead, we see one of her friend's die, and that character only appeared maybe twice before that scene.


Had Final Destination actually spent some time on character development, I think it would have been a stronger movie. Despite that, the movie did make me look twice every time I see a tanning salon...