| ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN : James Wong's 'Final Destination 3' [6/10] |
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| Sunday, 12 March 2006 | |
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Gory, funny, and very very daft, Final Destination 3 - a kind of grand guignol for thrill-seeking teenagers - is acceptably enjoyable multiplex fare, adhering slavishly to the template established by Final Destination (2000) and Final Destination 2 (2003). As the bald sequel-titles indicate, this isn't a film-series which prizes originality - which is a little ironic, as the franchise's basic concept - there's never a corporeal 'killer' as such, merely the machinations of malevolent fate - was strikingly fresh and intriguing when it was initially dreamt up by FD1 's writing team of Wong, Glen Morgan and Jeffrey Reddick. Wong (later responsible for The One and Willard) is back in the director's chair here, having surrendered such duties on 2 to David R Ellis (who went on to the underrated Cellular). He and Morgan are also credited with the script - J Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress wrote 2, then came up with 2002's delirious guilty-pleasure The Butterfly Effect (which they also directed). Though largely dismissed by the critics, Final Destination, The One, Cellular, The Butterfly Effect are some of the most solid, surprisingly entertaining and well-crafted 'B' movies of the current decade. Sad to say, FD3 doesn't match up to that standard: after a very strong start, the picture becomes less impressive as it goes on, petering out with a frustratingly up-in-the-air ending that was reportedly the result of hasty rewrites and reshoots. The exact same thing happened on FD1 (and indeed FD2), of course, but Wong and Morgan aren't so lucky this time: we leave the cinema reasonably satisfied, but not exactly counting the days until FD4 rolls around. After niftily old-school opening titles, the engagingly protracted curtain-raiser takes place one night in an enormous amusement park - a set which looks as if it consumed a hefty chunk of the reported $25m budget. A group of teenagers from the local McKinley high-school go on the park's main attraction, a rollercoaster dauntingly named the Devil's Flight - and are all killed when the ride goes messily haywire. At which point - and this won't come as a surprise to anyone who's seen the first two pictures - the cataclysm is revealed to be the dream/premonition of one of the teens, bookish Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Understandably freaking out, Wendy is escorted off the rollercoaster - along with half a dozen of her pals, who then look on in horror as Wendy's nightmarish vision comes true. But death can't be cheated so easily, and proceeds to pick off the survivors via a fiendishly 'imaginative' series of wildly unlikely 'accidents' involving sun-beds, nail-guns, weightlifting equipment, etc. The gimmick this time around is that Wendy (handily) took a series of photographs of her pals on the fatal evening, which upon further examination reveal 'clues' to the nature of their demise - shades of David Warner's doomed snapper from The Omen, perhaps. To the frustration of both audience and characters, the photo clues are frustratingly vague - though they do set up one amusingly OTT scene in the high-school weights room, where every prop (the barbells; a man-sized stuffed bear; a pair of fake scimitars mounted on the wall) becomes a potential 'weapon'. As in the scene-setting amusement-park prologue, in which the most innocuous detail becomes freighted with menace and danger, Wong skilfully amps up the tension in this sequence: aided by Robert Maclachlan's skittery camerawork, Shirley Walker's score and Chris G Willingham's editing, he really socks over the fearful Wendy's spiralling paranoia. Unfortunately such inspired moments become rather fewer and farther between as the body-count rises - an amusing eleventh hour 'cameo' by Benjamin Franklin (Grahame Andrews), and the spookily sinister, repeated use of the Vogues' 1968 track 'Turn Around Look at Me' ("There is someone / walking behind you..."), notwithstanding. As if determined to up the ante, Wong and Morgan opt for decidedly sadistic death-scenes - some victims remaining conscious for a few agonising seconds even after they've been torn in half, or had a dozen nails shot through their heads - but ultimately succumb to the inexorable law of diminishing returns. At its best, however, FD3 recalls the superb episode in Philip K Dick's novel Eye in the Sky where the characters enter the mind of a woman who sees the world as a relentlessly hostile zone of incipient threat. Science-fiction adherents may also be reminded of (Dick-admirer) Stanislaw Lem's brilliant The Chain of Chance, set in a near-future where (to quote the back of the recent Northwestern University press edition) "the population has numerically exceeded its critical mass; certain patterns have begun to emerge from the chaotic workings of society," resulting in elaborate, seemingly-purposeful 'accidents' (it's a variation of what used to be called the 'cosmic joke' theory of reality.) On a more prosaic level, if nothing else these Final Destination films will surely encourage their youthful audiences to minimise hazards and prioritise safety in their daily lives - FD3 in particular providing a cautionary tale for those thousands of teenage girls worldwide who think nothing of spending many hours a week under the lamps of their local 'tanning-parlor.' The fun of the movies' mishaps is, of course, their wild improbability - but nevertheless this must be the only horror franchise of which RoSPA would wholeheartedly approve. Neil Young 12th March, 2005 FINAL DESTINATION 3 : [6/10] : USA 2006 : James WONG : 93 mins (BBFC timing) seen at Cineworld cinema, Boldon, (UK), 1st March 2006 - public show |
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