Movie Review: Final Destination 3D

Final Destination 3D (2009) 

Directed by David R. Ellis 

Written by Eric Bress

Starring Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Mykelti Williamson 

Release Date August 28th, 2009 

Published August 28th, 2009 

It was George Carlin who pointed out, in reference to a ludicrous airport announcement and not the movie series, that Final Destination is redundant. All destinations are final. Yet, here we are on the third sequel in the Final Destination film series. This time, we are told, this is The FINAL Destination and to celebrate the filmmakers have dressed up the manufactured gore in 3D technology.

A group of non-descript models turned actors and Forrest Gump's pal Bubba star in this latest sequel that sets up a series of rube goldberg-ian death scenarios and runs people through them with an allegedly escalating amount of suspense. Unfortunately for director David R. Ellis, the 3D tech can't shake the 'been there, done that' factor.

Someone named David Campo picks up the mantle as the latest idiot psychic who, gifted with precience is able to rescue people. The first film it was a plane crash. Number a two a massive car wreck. The third film got inventive with a rollercoaster accident. This fourth outing a NASCAR event blows up. Coincidence or commentary on the sport, you decide.

Bobby Campo as Nick saves his friends and a couple of other people and sets up a grizzly series of events as death comes back around to pick up the crumbs of his destruction. The first happens just after the event as a flaming tire takes a young woman's head off. And thus begins a series of what the audience I was with felt were some of the funniest scenes of the year.

Death after death the audience howled as if at a Chris Rock show. I don't exactly know what it is about a guy on fire being dragged down the street or another man being hit by high speed ambulance or a woman crushed in machinery gears, but the audience I was with thought it was all brilliant fun. Nevertheless, they were rolling in the aisles.

I was thinking that I have lost my taste for such things, for the mechanics of modern horror. But, that can't be it. There is no bigger fan of the Saw series than I. I also loved the 3D good time of My Bloody Valentine. True, I dislike most modern horror offerings but it has nothing to do with hating the genre.

The problem with the modern horror movie is the gore smeared on the screen is used to hide the poverty of ideas. Horror filmmakers have become so consumed by presenting human suffering and what modern tech can help them to do in terms of the presentation of viscera that they have stopped worrying about creating compelling stories and characters.

David R. Ellis, like his weekend co-hort Rob Zombie whose Halloween 2 also opens this weekend, is part of a generation of horror filmmakers who think blood and guts are the end all be all of horror. Who needs a story when technology allows you to follow a projectile right through a woman's eye-socket or get a unique perspective of a man being impaled.

It's as if all of modern horror were based on a misreading of the Saw movies. People assumed that the Saw series was successful because of the elaborate death scenarios. In fact however, Saw succeeds on the stone cold logic and endlessly compelling character of Jigsaw who never merely kills anyone. Jigsaw has an aim and his victims a way out. The logic and the lesson are horrifying but fascinating in the way they expose human nature.

Final Destination 3D could not care less about logic, ideas and especially about human nature. The only insight into humanity come in the various ways they can find to take a human's insides and spread them on the outside. Gore is part of the genre. You accept that going in. For me, however, I need more than just gore. Final Destination 3D is noting but. If that is enough for you, so be it.

Movie Snakes on a Plane

Snakes on a Plane (2006) 

Directed by David R. Ellis 

Written by Sebastian Gutierrez 

Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna Margulies, Rachel Blanchard, Flex Anderson, Lin Shaye, David Koechner 

Release Date August 18th, 2006 

Published August 17th, 2006 

The phenomenon that is Snakes on a Plane is one of the more remarkable marketing triumphs in history. New Line Cinema with the simple decision to abandon their preferred title of Pacific Air Flight 121 in favor of the working title placeholder Snakes on a Plane, created an uncontrollable internet sensation that they could not have planned or even imagined.

Now that the film itself is replacing the faked trailers, posters and audio clips, could it even come close to matching the pre-release hype? Yes and no. Yes, the film features seriously campy moments of ridiculous gore and foul mouthed fan requested dialogue. And no, the film was supposed to be either so bad it's good or actually be pretty good and it turned out to be neither.

Snakes on a Plane is simply nothing more than a bad movie with an eye catchingly simpleminded title.

There really is not much to describe in terms of plot. The title says almost all you need to know. There is a plane with snakes. To be more specific, a flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles carrying a federal witness, Sean played by Wolf Creek star Nathan Phillips, and a pair of FBI agents Neville Flynn (Jackson) and his partner John (Mark Houghton), is filled with poisonous snakes by a mob boss whom Sean witnessed murdering a prosecutor.

Also on board this flight are a group of caricatures and stereotypes who line up to be victims of the hissing, slithering bad guys. Flex Anderson plays a germ phobic rap star, Kenan Thompson -from Saturday Night Live- is his sassy, video game loving bodyguard. Julianna Marguilies, once an Emmy candidate on E.R, plays a flight attendant on her last trip alongside Farrelly brothers regular Lynn Shaye whose character just turned down early retirement. Comic actor David Koechner shows up to give the film a little comic jolt as the plane's politically incorrect pilot but his energy is quickly dissipated.

Maxim magazine regulars Rachel Blanchard and Elsa Pataky round out the cast of those with the best chance to survive, process of recognizability elimination, if we have a vague idea who you are you have a better chance of surviving. It's what would happen if the love boat turned into the titanic.

Blame director David R. Ellis who had shown a modicum of suspense skill in his previous high blood pressure thrillers Final Destination 2 and Cellular. In Snakes on a Plane Ellis can barely ring a few minor seat jumps from this story which would seem to have built in thrills. Snakes are falling from every opening, slithering up from every hole in the floor, the possibilities for them to strike are endless and yet Ellis never really establishes the tense situation beyond his colorful ideas as to where to attach a rubber snake to the human body.

As for star Samuel L. Jackson, it's difficult to decipher whether Jackson is in on the joke of Snakes on a Plane or the subject of the joke that is Snakes on a Plane. In interviews Jackson blasted the idea that the film would be full on camp and yet he was more than happy to include the joke phrase that internet fans demanded the creators put in the film. His delivery of the line "I'm tired of these motherf*****g snakes, on this motherf*****g plane" does rouse the audience but it seems to lack conviction and feels more than a little forced.

With something as cheeseball goofy as Snakes on a Plane you can't help but have a few cheap thrills to enjoy. It's nearly impossible not to enjoy watching the plane's resident jerky passenger, the pushy fastidious complainer guy, get his snakey comeuppance. There are also some very creative ways to dispose of snakes such as with a lighter taped to the side of a bottle of hairspray or the kickboxer with the quick squishing kick.

These momentary thrills along with a high gore quotient will be more than enough for some people. For me however, I checked out during the scene in which a nameless extra is using the toilet and ends up with a snake attached to a very sensitive portion of his body. There are cheap jokes and then there is simple crass exploitation. I should not have expected anything less from Snakes on a Plane but that does not dismiss my disgust and dismay.

Criticizing Snakes on a Plane for being mindless is as futile as... well.. being trapped on a cross pacific flight with boxes of angry poisonous snakes. You simply have to accept fate. Snakes on a Plane was going to be brainless from the moment it was conceived. It was a dullard idea when the first screenwriter put fingers to keyboard to type it out.

Still there was the potential here for some camp fun, there in fact is a little camp fun, but there is simply not nearly enough fun for me to recommend Snakes on a Plane.

Movie Review: Final Destination 2

Final Destination 2 (2003) 

Directed by David R. Ellis 

Written by J. Mackye Gruber, Eric Bress

Starring Ali Later, A.J Cook, Tony Todd

Release Date January 31st, 2003 

Published January 30th, 2003 

The first Final Destination was your average teen slasher movie spiced up with some surprisingly un-PC gore, and made palatable by a pair of former X-Files producers (James Wong and Rob Morgan.) And do not forget its cast of Hollywood's hottest up-and-coming actors including Devon Sawa, Ali Larter and Seann William Scott. At a time when horror movies were shying away from classic gore Final Destination reveled in beheadings, electrocutions, and fiery, graphically-depicted explosions. Bubbling underneath the gore was a surprising amount of suspenseful setups that were as thrilling as the deaths were disgusting.

As surprisingly entertaining as the first Final Destination was the odds were stacked against the sequel. The fact that it is a sequel tells you that. Add to that the fact that the sequel was without the originals star, Sawa, and it's creative team, Wong and Morgan, and the pieces are in place for a disaster. Yet despite those losses Final Destination 2 manages to be almost as good as the original thanks to the same spirited non PC approach to blood and guts gore.

As we join the story, a teenage girl is lying in bed listening to a man on television discuss the tragedy of flight 180, the plane explosion that precipitated the original film's series of disasters. As the unknown expert relates the story of how none of the kids or teachers who miraculously avoided the plane explosion were still alive, a skeptical news anchor asks just what the expert is getting at and the expert explains that there is no chance or luck, there is only fate, or rather, death's design. The teenager named Kimberly pays little attention to the guy on TV as she and some friends are about to hit the road for spring break in Florida.

Once on the road, Kimberly begins to have strange visions of the people in the cars passing her on the highway. The visions lead to a fiery multiple car crash after a tree breaks a chain and falls off a truck flying through the windshield of a police car killing the cop. The cop car flips leading to a series of accidents that also kills Kimberly and her friends.

Kimberly then awakens suddenly; it was all a dream and she is still stopped at the on ramp that would lead her to the spot where the accident took place in her dream. She sees all the signs again, the same song on the radio the same cars in line behind her that would be involved in the accident. Kimberly decides to stop in the middle of the off ramp and prevent herself and everyone else from getting on the highway and thus saves their lives when the accident happens moments later. Unfortunately for Kimberly, after the same cop from her vision asks her step out of her car and explain why she was stopped on the off ramp, another truck that was involved in her vision plows through her car and kills her three friends. It's a car crash right out of a Faces of Death video.

From there, it's the same plot as the original. Since the people Kimberly held up on the on ramp would have died in the accident, death must now come back and collect them. In a series of increasingly gruesome deaths--impalings, beheadings, and a graphic crushing--nameless actors are offed to the disgusted delight of the audience.

Ali Larter is the only cast member from the original film to return for the sequel. Thought to be dead, her character, Clear Rivers had checked herself into a mental hospital in order to escape death. In the films most disappointing moment Clear explains what happened to Devon Sawa's Alex from the original film. Alex was thought to have survived the original but because they couldn't bring Sawa back for the sequel they invented a backstory explaining his characters demise that is highly unsatisfying. Also unsatisfying is Clear's fate, but I will leave the mystery for those of you who go see this film.

The good thing about Final Destination 2 is how faithful it is to the original. In fact, it is basically a retread of the original, only more disgusting; and that is what I liked about it. In an era where gory disgusting death is seen as being in bad taste, this film revels in bad taste. It's disgusting and bloody and graphic and if you don't have a strong stomach you will want to avoid it. The film's special effects and makeup go for the gusto with as much realism as possible (without actually killing anyone.) When a character is crushed under a giant piece of window glass, the blood spatter is enough to make the most hardened horror fan hold his stomach. When you see a film in which more than one character is impaled through the skull, you know you're not watching your average dull horror film.

Gruesome and disgusting Final Destination 2 sets out to horrify you with its gore and succeeds in eliciting shocked gasps and screams. Its over-the-top horror is outright comical and very fun to watch. It is a rare film in this day and age that ignores the cries of liberal politicians and goes balls out to disgust you, standards of good taste be damned. Final Destination 2 is that rare unapologetically twisted horror movie.