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Final Destination 3 Review

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This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time for a really bad film and trust me when I say it’s reallllllly bad. At the same time, I didn’t quite think it was a 0 so we have that going for the film. It’s probably the best thing I can say about it to be honest. Like there’s really nothing good about it but I didn’t feel like it was worthy of being at the very bottom of the bucket. Small mercies and all right? Still, if you’ve made it to Final Destination 3 then I imagine you’re probably at least a slight fan of the series so maybe you’ll appreciate this one more than I did.

The film starts off with a bunch of annoying teenagers enjoying a fair and messing around. They all tend to be unlikable jerks and the kind of cliques that you’d want to avoid. If you see them coming then you need to cross the street but it’s probably too late by that point. They decide to head on a roller coaster but Wendy gets the feeling that they’re all going to die so she makes a huge scene and gets off. This starts a chain reaction of other kids getting off and the ones who stay all get destroyed. Now Wendy is feeling some survivor’s guilt and most of the other kids aren’t even grateful that she saved them. It was all coincidence and all that. The problem is that death is mad about the way they survived this and has decided to bump them off one by one. Can they find a way to stop such an all powerful being or is this going to be yet another lesson in futility?

This is a problem with a lot of supernatural slashers which is that we all know the heroes have absolutely no chance. What are you going to do against an opponent who can’t die, can’t feel pain, etc. Death is also immortal so he has all day while the main characters will eventually slip up. Death has no true weaknesses or limitations in his abilities either so yeah this is going to be a long film for the characters. It would help if Death himself actually appeared to gloat or something but he’s treated more like a natural disaster. He also seems like a troll since you could make the case that he gave Wendy the vision in the first place. Sort of like he is bored and just needs a reason to keep on murdering.

Right off the bat the film isn’t helping itself either with all the demonic imagery. Yeah it makes sense to remind the characters how evil everything is but they could have at least pretended to have a little subtlety. Then we also have to make one of the characters a total creep which is annoying. He basically exists to annoy and pester the girls. Even the main guy who we’re supposed to be sympathetic for, decides to take an inappropriate photo of one of the girls in his first scene. The film goes out of its way to make the characters super unlikable.

It’s one of those tactics I understand because then you don’t feel as bad when they are bumped off, but this backfires almost every time I would say. After all you’re now following a bunch of characters who are all just pretty bad. Also not all of them are as bad as the others so some of them feel like they are paying a price that is way too drastic. For example there are two girls who are not very smart, they shown to be rather shallow and really unaware of what’s going on but that’s hardly enough for them to get a grisly murder. You can’t put them in the same category as the perv or the guy who is always ready to pick a fight.

At the end of the day, almost all of the characters are going to get bumped off regardless. I suppose life not being fair could be just another message but it’s not one that I’m a fan of. Then you also have Wendy figuring out the death rules but it doesn’t really make much sense. At least in the first two films you had the mysterious guy throwing in a bunch of lore and helping to confirm what’s true but here she picks up on all of it with the flimsiest reasonings possible. You have a very hard time believing that she actually pieced the puzzle together like that.

For starters, the roller coaster deaths seem hard to predict the order of compared to the airplane. It would have been way harder to keep track of them all. Then conveniently there are people covering the photos at times right up until the murder happens. Again, it feels like death is just trolling the whole time which means the main characters are even more doomed than usual. Mix in how over the top violent it is and that’s a recipe for disaster. What you end up wishing for by the end is at least a few normal deaths. A relatively quick/painless death instead of it always having to be super disturbing.

Maybe have one character cheat death several times with some cool athletics or something. You can afford to lighten up the tone just a little bit instead of the films always being so somber. Even the shock ending isn’t quite as shocking as it could have been. I will say that the subway seems like a fun backdrop though so I’d be cool with that being the main setting for one of these films. Perhaps it would get old quick but I think there is some potential there. Not that this franchise as a whole has much potential though. First thing you need to do is come up with some actual likable characters. Something that can be used as a foundation to push the film forward. Throw in a real plot and definitely give Death at least the illusion of a weakness. If you do that then perhaps we can actually have an adventure.

Overall, Final Destination 3 is definitely the weakest entry in the series. It’s really just an excuse to have a bunch of characters all murdered in very grisly ways. You could say that’s always been the point but at least there was some semblance of a story stringing it all together. I would say this film barely even bothers with the pretense. The characters just keep getting bumped off and at no point in the film are you actually having any fun. It’s just all way too grim dark the whole time for any of that. Definitely stay far away from this film and you will be glad you did. You won’t be missing anything of value here.

Overall 1/10

Rabid Review

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This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

There are some movies where right from the jump you know it’s going to be a miss and this is one of those. You’ll be shaking your head the whole time here because this vampire type film just isn’t it. The world doesn’t handle the threat very well and the whole film is going for grim violence the whole time. It’s basically a B grade slasher film but in all the wrong ways.

The movie starts with Rose and Hart driving down the road at massive speeds. They are defying destiny to try and make them crash and sure enough they run off the road and do in fact crash. Hart has a lot of broken bones but he’s mainly okay while the same cannot be said for Rose. She is taken to a nearby hospital where they run a very experimental surgery on her. Basically their justification was that she was not going to last otherwise but the head also needed quick results because funding wasn’t going well. Unfortunately while the surgery was a success, it came at a great cost.

See, by mistake the surgery gave Rose a giant stinger in her armpit which she could now use to destroy everyone in her way. She no longer has a taste for real food and only seeks to consume the living. Whoever she drains becomes a zombie and this infection continues to spread. Basically she is patient zero and the only silver lining of this is that she keeps some semblance of free will while everyone else becomes mindless zombies. She’s always hungry now too so she bumps a lot of people off and then afterwards it is unclear just how much she knows about it. See, she knows enough that she wants to always get away from her friends to murder a stranger instead but then seems to have headaches and isn’t totally sure of herself. It’s almost like a split personality but that may be giving her too much credit and she was just trying to make the whole situation look like that.

Regardless that is basically the entire plot in a nutshell. Rose goes around murdering everybody and nobody can figure out how to stop her because nobody even knows that she is the one doing it. She always waits until only her victim is in the room and then she makes her move. Whether it’s a poor girl just trying to have a refreshing swim or a doctor who leans in too close, Rose takes them all down. Often times the people she’s destroying aren’t even bad people which is the most tragic part like the truck driver who was just trying to help out. They all meet rather gruesome ends before the adventure concludes.

The movie is rather unrelenting in that respect. There is always something sinister or dark happening at all times and so the viewer can’t catch a break. There is no time for lighthearted banter or any really happy scenes to be honest. Instead we just see the world descending into chaos. They also squeeze in some animal violence of course as Rose goes after a cow or a horse. I forget which but of course she can’t control her hunger again and this is why she has to be considered as one of the main antagonists here. In the end she could not control her abilities at all and that was a big problem.

She also makes some very bad mistakes like at the end deciding to prove her innocence by trying a blood transfusion with someone. It’s great to test out a theory but she didn’t have any kind of safety precautions and so it’s really as if she just blew herself up. There was never going to be a positive outcome from all of that and that was the problem here. It just makes for a really dark ending and ends the film on a super sour note. Not that the film had any hope left by this point mind you but at least having a decent ending would have been nice. Instead the film is doubling down on making everything as tragic as possible which is definitely unfortunate. Not what you want to see from a title like this.

Hart also has almost no point in this film. Rose may as well have been driving by herself in the intro. He barely appears until midway where he runs in to call her a monster and runs off. By the time he cools down it’s already too late for Rose. Rose’s roommate did a better job of being there for her and even then she was doomed from the jump. In this film nobody is really safe and all you can do is make a run for it or you will probably be devoured next. Now is there anything I can say in favor of the film?

Unfortunately no, but I can at least say that the concept of having a stinger in your armpit is unique. Not even sure if I would say it’s unique in a good way but it’s a premise I had never thought of before and will probably never think about again. It’s just so weird but that’s the kind of idea that can make you rich if it’s handled right. This one just wasn’t and the film gets lost in the sauce really quick.

What the film should have done was to focus on the world at large a bit more and how they were handling it. Of course one governor just said they should shoot the infected while a lot of other people were panicking but focusing on the government a lot could have been fun. Lets see what they think about all of this. Sure, the virus is spreading fast but the zombies are really slow right now so you don’t figure that they should be a big threat at any rate. Just take them out and all it a day. I want to see a zombie invasion film from the start of when it was happening for once and how the government handles it. I think there is a whole lot of possibility there. Perhaps it will be negated by all the blood sucking and zombie eating but maybe it could pull this premise off.

Overall, Rapid is a film to stay away from without a doubt. The whole time you’re watching it you will be realizing that there are much better films to check out. Nobody has heard of this film for a good reason. It’s just not that good and certainly ahs not aged well either. This is not the kind of film you would ever rewatch either and so in the end what that means is that you will be shaking your head here the whole time. I don’t know where I would start in trying to tell someone how to do a good remake of this one so instead I’ll just say that the whole premise is probably doomed and you shouldn’t even attempt to make a movie like this.

Overall 0/10