Final destination-Holywood movie

final_destination_ver4 In theaters August 28, 2009

Rating: R, Thriller

Are we finally at the final Final Destination? Maybe. Maybe not.

The Final Destination, installment number four in the series of supernatural horror thrillers, offers the same basic premise as its three predecessors: Death sets out to collect those who somehow evaded dying during a catastrophic accident.

So, with the bar raised ever so high by predecessors Final Destination (2000), Final Destination 2 (2003), and Final Destination 3 (2006), what’s new this time out? That article at the beginning of the title is about it.

TFD finds a young man named Nick O’Bannon, played By Bobby Campo, who has a premonition about a bizarre sequence of events at the stock-car racetrack during which a number of cars crash, sending burning debris into the stands, killing a number of his friends and causing the stands to collapse.

He persuades his girlfriend (Shantel VanSanten) and their friends (Nick Zano and Haley Webb) to leave. They do and manage to escape with their lives just ahead of this horrifying catastrophe.

Then, one by one, these survivors begin (c’mon: say it with me) reaching their final destinations, courtesy of an array of freak accidents.

Can Nick avoid reaching his?

Director David R. Ellis (Snakes on a Plane) — who also directed Final Destination 2, and once again collaborates with Eric Bress, who also scripted FD2 — handles this fourth outing. Again, it’s a straightforward rendering of fate balancing the books after a group of near-victims narrowly escape perishing.

The degree of suspense generated? Zilch. The sanctity of human life celebrated? Zilch.

As always, our species’ perverse and understandable fascination with death is about all this dispiriting franchise has going for it. Consequently, the only scenes that seem to matter to anyone involved — it’s obvious they figure that that’s what the audience shows up for — are the elaborate Rube Goldberg-like stagings of the deaths. The rest is indifferent filler.

There’s nothing wrong with the basic hook here and there never has been. The guilt and fear that follows for those who feel they’ve cheated death seems a legitimate theme or topic to explore. But all these FD films — and that certainly includes this latest effort — lose interest in their own subject matter the moment they kick off, immediately turning into mindless shooting galleries.

As for the 3-D accoutrement that’s a component of the series for the first time, the process apparently claimed whatever energy was expended on this project. Let’s see, the committee of behind-the-scenes artists must have said to one another, how can we devise the various dismemberments and decapitations so that they send body parts hurtling toward the audience?

The result: lots of one-dimensional characters meeting their literally three-dimensional demise.

Are we having fun yet?

No, not at this sorry, cynical, sequel, we’re not. The Final Destination is a parade of other people’s deaths that may find you longing for your own.