The Final Destination (2009) is directed by David R. Ellis and written by Eric Bress. It stars Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Haley Webb, Nick Zano, Mykelti Williamson, Justin Welborn, Jackson Walker, Krista Allen, and Andrew Fiscella. The film kicks off with Nick (Campo), a typical 20-something who experiences a premonition that saves him, his friends, and a few “lucky” strangers from dying in a tragic speedway accident. Soon after, in typical Final Destination fashion, the survivors begin dying one by one as a result of brutal, convoluted accidents that can only be described as acts of God (or Death). Convinced that Death has returned to correct its mistakes, Nick and his girlfriend, Lori (VanSanten), race against the clock so they can find a way to cheat death – hopefully for good this time.

Other than Campo and VanSanten occasionally providing some likable energy, the performances and characters are by far the weakest of the series. I’ve always appreciated the franchise’s awareness that its kills are ultimately the star of the show, but this fourth installment goes way too far. The script doesn’t even give half of the characters’/victims’ names; it’s as if they were written from their inception to be nothing more than cannon fodder. The opening sequence does such a poor job of establishing the various survivors that when they reappear for their eventual death sequences, it feels like they’re appearing for the first time. Until the third act, it almost feels like nothing more than a half-assed Final Destination anthology film that shows multiple, unrelated deaths. Archetypal characters are bad enough considering their lack of originality, but these characters are even worse than that. They either have no distinguishable traits or one specific trait amplified to the point of absurdity. In other words, they’re either so normal that they feel robotic or so over-the-top that they feel like a cartoon. I also found it strange that the script features two couples who couldn’t be more different from one another on a moral level, but still treats them as believable best friends. This could work if the characters were a bit more nuanced and their differences caused some believable conflict that would ultimately work to strengthen their friendship. Instead, they just come across as two groups of people who hate each other and only spend time together because the script deems it so. 

The characters are written so poorly that at one point, a character who thinks they’ve beaten death’s game acts like it’s crazy that the situation could happen twice right after their friend experiences another premonition. This is like touching a hot stove, burning your hand, and then fully believing that you won’t burn it again if you touch it 20 seconds later. Whether it’s the characters, kills, or the story itself, the film features so many dumb, shake-your-head moments and logical inconsistencies that it makes immersion almost impossible. 

The franchise template/formula was beginning to feel stale with Final Destination 3 (2006), but where that film feels like it’s simply losing steam, The Final Destination hits rock bottom. Its opening disaster sequence is easily the weakest of the franchise due to the fact that attending an amateur car race doesn’t feel like a very universal experience. It also generally just feels creatively uninspired – like it’s nothing more than a lazy variation of the highway crash featured in the second film. This laziness extends to the execution of all but one of the deaths, which only works on a comedic level because of how disgustingly, hilariously absurd it is. It’s crazy to say, but it may cause you to develop a fear of pool filters. Other than that, the kills are easily the worst executed of the franchise. Deaths meant to catch the viewer off guard are foreshadowed in the most obvious ways imaginable. The franchise thrives on the fact that we know most of its characters will die, so it derives its tension from the mystery of how and when their deaths will occur instead of the more common kind that results from questioning whether they’ll die at all. In The Final Destination, it’s clear that the characters will die, but the nature of how they’ll bite it is even clearer. This eliminates any moment-to-moment tension while creating an environment that makes surprising/shocking the viewer nearly impossible. 

The film continues its predecessor’s cringeworthy, cliche teen dialogue but lacks the strong central performances that previously made it palatable. Recognizing that the premise was beginning to lose substance after the previous installment, you’d expect the writers to implement new, creative ways to breathe life into the franchise. Instead, they take the easy way out and fully embrace “bad taste” horror filmmaking in its purest form — the deaths are various combinations of funny, stupid, silly, messy, convoluted, and ironic, but they’re never scary. The franchise works best when it finds a delicate balance between comedy and terror, but this installment is only funny (even when it’s not trying to be). Speaking of problems carried over from the previous installment that are even worse this time around, I was continuously put off by the film’s heavy use of crappy CGI. It’s so bad that I honestly think they should have just gone one step further and approached the visuals as a hybrid of live-action and animation in the vein of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988). It’s already a mostly comedic experience, so why not double down on the cartoonish nature of it all? 

I do have to praise the film’s final set piece for being, on paper, the most ambitious of the series up to this point. It works surprisingly well, but eventually falls apart once it’s revealed that half of it is just another premonition. This could’ve worked well to subvert expectations, but it’s sustained so long that it feels like a complete waste of time. The importance of the scene is massively disproportionate to the amount of time dedicated to it, so it kind of just feels like a big middle finger when considering how short the movie already is. The filmmakers couldn’t even fill 90 minutes without implementing some sort of sloppy narrative trick. I’m not surprised that the writer was pretty much blacklisted after this, but it’s nice to know even the often out-of-touch producers were able to recognize just how bad the movie is. 

Overall, this is a prime example of lazy filmmaking, not only in horror but in any genre. Besides one or two fleeting moments of stupid fun, the script includes nothing that its predecessors didn’t implement in a more satisfying and intelligent way. The heavy use of CGI makes everything look like AI-produced crap, and only gets worse as the years go by. The acting stinks, the dialogue sucks, and the characters feel like they were written to be boring cartoons who shift between being forgettably plain and frighteningly dumb. I will admit that it’s so terrible, it actually sort of wraps back around and works as a movie that’s a lot of fun to laugh at and pick apart. Other than that, it has almost zero redeeming qualities, so I’m honestly surprised it didn’t bury the franchise for longer than it did. I suppose I should have known that, like Death itself, the Final Destination franchise seemingly can’t be killed. If an installment like this couldn’t do the job, I’m unsure if it was ever possible. D