Final Destination 3 (2006)

Elevator Pitch: When Wendy Christensen has a premonition that the roller coaster on which she is about to embark with a dozen or so college friends is about to crash, she and some others get off, and the disaster occurs killing everyone on board. Her friend Kevin has heard of a plane crash where the survivors subsequently died and wonders if their situation is the same. When two fellow students who got off the roller coaster are killed in a bizarre sun bed incident it seems that he could be right.

Content: There is no drinking, drugs or sex. Two well formed young women strip down to their thongs, but almost immediately die in a sun bed accident. There follow further strange and elaborate accidents requiring a coincidence of a number of events for them to occur. Almost all of then involve a lot of blood. Wendy begins to get clues about who is to die by examining the photos she took at the fun fair. The students argue a bit, particularly those who are going to die but don’t accept the warnings.

A View: This is the first Final Destination film I have seen, although I am aware of the franchise and know how it works. The whole theme has been dissected by  those who discuss the philosophy of movies. In these films there is no “monster”, the opponent is death, and what pleasure there is in watching them is how ingenious the  writers have been in creating the coincidental events and the gruesome results. I am generally not in favour of films where people spend the whole outing looking anguished and distressed, so not really a watch even for nothing.

Additional Info: In the American TV version Ashley and Ashlyn do not get down to their thongs in the tanning booth – they still die though.