By the time we hit The Final Destination, the fourth entry in the franchise, it’s pretty clear the filmmakers had one goal: put things in your face. Preferably sharp things. Blood, fire, tires, rebar. Whatever they could fling at the camera, they did. Story, tension, character? Not so much. But if you were in the theater wearing 3D glasses in 2009, maybe you didn’t notice. Or care. I wasn’t and I have to say, this doesn’t hold up without the gimmick.
This one takes place at a racetrack. Which is honestly a great setting for a Final Destination premonition. Loud. Crowded. Full of giant, spinning, flaming death traps. Nick, our new boring white guy lead, has a vision of a horrific crash that ends with debris decimating everyone in the stands. He panics, gets a small group of people to safety, and — surprise — it all happens exactly as he saw it.
The survivors are grateful for about five seconds before death shows up, punching a timecard and getting to work. And from that point on, the movie is just a game of “Who dies next, and how ridiculous can we make it?”
The Characters Are Cardboard
I could not tell you a single interesting thing about Nick or his girlfriend Lori, or his best friend Hunt, or any of the other warm bodies on death’s list. They aren’t characters. They’re mannequins in a department store called Predictable Horror Tropes. There’s a racist, a redneck, a mechanic, a model. You can practically hear the writers checking off a diversity bingo card, not for representation, but for kill variety.
Nick’s entire personality is “I have visions,” which would be helpful if he used them in any compelling way. Instead, he just looks stressed a lot and Googles things like “near-death experiences” and “death has a design.” The franchise has already done the “can we cheat death” arc, and better. Here, it’s just retread with no new ideas.
Lori exists to scream and be supportive. Hunt is a walking frat joke with the emotional depth of a Solo cup. And every conversation feels like it was written in a rush so they could get to the next set piece.
Dumb, Loud, and Mostly Lame
Let’s be honest. This series lives and dies by its death scenes. So how do they stack up in The Final Destination? Mostly forgettable, with a couple of unintentional laughers.
There’s a pool drain death that’s more hilarious than horrifying. A car wash sequence that tries so hard to be tense but ends up feeling like a rejected Saw trap. A hospital explosion that goes full Michael Bay. Most of them rely on you watching objects move in the background for five minutes before someone gets skewered in a way that was probably supposed to be clever, but just feels tired.
The 3D gimmick only makes it worse. Everything looks cheap. Blood sprays directly at the camera. Objects float at your face like you’re in a theme park ride. And with the glasses off, all that’s left is a movie with no mood, no grit, and absolutely zero atmosphere. It’s plastic horror. Nothing sticks.
No Style, No Stakes
Visually, this movie feels like it was made by a computer. The lighting is flat, the sets are bare, and every frame looks like it was designed to maximize the 3D effect instead of telling an actual story. There’s no sense of dread. No slow build. Just cut to the next person, set up the Rube Goldberg machine, watch them get obliterated, repeat.
The rules are still the same. You cheat death, death comes for you in order. But even that logic starts to feel flimsy. At this point, the franchise isn’t building on its own mythology. It’s just reusing it without caring if it makes sense. There’s a moment near the end where Nick has another vision, and it just feels like the movie forgot it already did that ten times. It’s like watching a cover band forget the lyrics to the song they’re playing.
Final Thoughts
The Final Destination feels like the franchise trying to hit reset without actually doing anything different. It’s loud, hollow, and painfully generic. The deaths are mostly lazy. The characters are barely sketched. And the 3D, which was supposed to be the big draw, makes it all feel even cheaper.
I didn’t hate it. I just felt absolutely nothing. And for a horror movie, that might be worse than being bad. The best this franchise ever offered was the idea that death is unstoppable and watching it try to take people out is both horrifying and morbidly fascinating. Here, it just feels like a bad joke you’ve already heard four times.
It’s not the final destination. Unfortunately.