Final Destination 3 (2006)

Directed by James Wong and written by Glen Morgan and James Wong the 3rd installment of Final Destination follows a similar formula to the first 2 films. In the review of the first film I went over the first film which was inspired by Jeffrey Reddick’s spooky experience while traveling. The first 2 films in the series are connected by a main character, Clear Rivers portrayed by Ali Larter, who is an original victim of Flight 180, the central accident in the first film, and helped the U.S. Route 23 pile-up survivors from the central accident of the second film. She is able to jump start their journey by telling them her story after they track her down at a mental hospital, voluntarily entered for her own protection. Anyone who visits her must surrender any sharp objects or potential death-traps before seeing her, keeping herself off Death’s metaphorical list and alive.

WARNING: The post past this point will contain spoilers for Final Destination 3 (2006) as well as the other films in the franchise. There are no spoilers for Final Destination: Bloodlines but I will be posting a full Franchise Marathon style post that covers this film. The full post will also include reviews of the films in the franchise without individual posts (2nd, 4th, and 5th).

Jump to the third film however and we are following a completely disconnected group of high schoolers, seemingly random as far as the franchise is concerned. While the second film begins this way this film has virtually zero callbacks to the previous characters aside from Tony Todd’s William Bludwurth. The 3rd installment also jumps directly into the action with no background on the characters which is unlike the first 2 films that showed parents and the group arriving at the scene of the accident.

This film jumps right into the action which is happening around a senior night at an amusement park in Pennsylvania. Nearing graduation the students are celebrating with an assortment of rides, carnival games, and more. The main character, Wendy Christensen portrayed by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is introduced as one of the school’s yearbook photographers. She’s armed with a digital camera and approaching various students to capture shots of the night—which will become important. This is an effective tool to introduce the key characters and eventual victims while showing their archetype which informs about their traits. A jock who breaks a strongman game, 2 popular girls who value appearances trying to get away from a predator with a video cam trying to hit on them, an outcast couple that includes a guy way too into weapons and a girl really into eyeliner, and finally we meet Wendy’s little sister—a junior who has snuck in.

The jock is named Lewis Romero portrayed by Texas Battle, the 2 girls are Ashley Freund and Ashley Halperin played by Chelan Simmons and Crystal Lowe, and then the predator guy is Frankie Cheeks portrayed by Sam Easton. The emo couple is made up of Ian McKinley portrayed by Kris Lemche and Erin Ulmer portrayed by Alexz Johnson, the pair inseparable before and after the accident. Wendy’s sister is Julie Christensen played by Amanda Crew and Wendy is accompanied by her best friend, Carrie Dreyer played by Gina Holden, and her boyfriend Kevin Fischer played by Ryan Merriman. While Wendy’s interactions provide context to these characters the character that provides that most context for her is her boyfriend, Jason Wise played by Gina Holden.

The initial context for Wendy is provided by Jason on the way to ride one of the biggest roller coasters at the park, Devil’s Flight. Wendy is nervous and hesitant, preferring to stay back all together than get on the roller coaster. She sees a sign on their way in reading, “No exit after turnstiles. I’ll see you soon,” with the image of a devil and skulls surrounding the sign. The whole ride is entered via stone tunnel past this sign and it’s very intense on the hell theme, with screaming ghost figures coming out of the stone ceilings. While in line Jason and Wendy talk to Ian and Erin who inform them the odds of dying in a roller coaster which doesn’t ease Wendy.

Jason has to convince Wendy and promise to sit with her and comfort her during the ride, showing they seem fairly into each other. While this relationship seems mutual Carrie reveals in a hushed conversation with Wendy that she plans to break up with her boyfriend and Jason’s friend, Kevin, after they all graduate. When the group of 4 is at the front of the line the attendant directs them to take the front cars but Wendy objects, she’s afraid to sit in the front and be able to see the tracks. Kevin tries to help and suggests that Carrie sit in the back with Wendy and ride together then the 2 guys will sit in the front and ride together. This time Carrie objects however because she doesn’t want to be relegated to the back due to being a girl.

Wendy feels bad and tries to convince Jason she’s fine with sitting in the back alone. Then Kevin feels double-bad and offers to flip a coin with Jason to determine who will sit in the back with Wendy so she’s not alone. Jason wins and goes to sit in the front car with Carrie and tells Kevin to keep an eye on Wendy because she’s freaked out, which Kevin agrees to do. The aforementioned squad of characters happen to be the people in the same group for this ride, each in 2 person cars linked together in a chain. Wendy approaches her stall and sees it’s the number 6, obviously referring back to the Devil. Distracted by this and Jason telling Kevin to keep his hands to himself and Kevin responding he might need to comfort Wendy allows creeper Frankie to slither past them and secure the car behind Ashley and Ashley.

Kevin and Wendy walk further down the way to the open cars and are beat to them by kids while Jason yells after Wendy that he’ll see her after the ride. The kids that get onto the ride and take the last remaining open cars are removed by an attendant which allows Kevin and Wendy to get on the ride after all. The car behind them is empty and both Lewis and Frankie aren’t sitting next to anyone when the handlebars come down. The attendant pushes Lewis’ further down, making the hold tighter, and the camera cuts to under the cars where fluid is now leaking.

Frankie tells the 2 Ashely’s to show him their boobs on the ride, his camera still out until he overhears Wendy getting told to put her loose object aka camera away. He sneaks it into his jacket pocket to hide it as the ride starts up and Kevin puts his hand in wet gum that sticks to his hand. Kevin is very golden retriever energy and tries to hype Wendy up but she isn’t having it, instead she’s noticing all of the clangs and cranks of the climbing roller coaster cars. They clink to the top of the first incline and Frankie’s dumbass has his camera out.

Cheering in anticipation the group is hyped while Wendy is panicked about the height. They begin their descent on the ride and the undercarriage of the cars is shown to still be leaking liquid. Things go normal for the first portion of the ride, Wendy feels uncertain about the safety but everyone else is raising their arms and cheering. Frankie keeps filming and when they are upside down he screams for the 2 girls to show him their boobs and then drops the camera. The video camera falls to the bottom of the loop and wraps itself around one of the tracks by the strap. Not long after the roller coaster car runs over the camera, crushing it and busting its connection with the tracks.

The collision causes a chain reaction under the cars and the mechanisms used to control them start to bust. The handlebars that hold them in their seats suddenly pop up as if released at the end of the ride. Panicked and shaken the teens reach for them as quickly as possible, trying to keep them down enough to stay in their seats. Everyone survives this but then wheels starts to stall on the tracks, becoming broken and looking like they’ll bust off the cars at any moment. Someone screams that they are going to fall off the tracks as they continue to spiral, holding the handlebars down.

As the wheels fail the car is just bare on the track causing sparks to fly up as the ride becomes increasingly turbulent. Just when it seems like the ride could come to an end with minimal injury if it keeps up this way they hit a snag on the track and a cart pops off sending the passengers in it, Carrie and Jason, flying. Lewis is also propelled out but catches himself and is hanging on the side of the cars until he’s thrown back. Kevin catches him and tries to hold on but he flies off and ends up hanging onto the back until a piece of stray metal knocks him into the roller coaster’s metal frame.

The surviving riders end up upside down on one of the roller coaster loops when their cart stalls. Erin and Ian fall out of their seats, hanging on by their now open handle bars. Still upside down but in their seats Wendy and Kevin shout at the them to hold on as they frantically try to hold down their own bars. Ian falls first and then Erin both presumably dying but not shown on camera before another unnamed student falls out of their car. Wendy looks below them and sees their bodies and Kevin gets the idea to rock back and forth to get them moving again. With Wendy’s help this works and the pair go barreling backwards on the tracks, the last 2 remaining riders.

Kevin is standing up now as the roller coaster cars pick up speed and the camera flashes to a piece of metal sticking up from the crash. As they approach he’s trying to get back in his seat with his handlebars still standing up and that piece of metal cuts his body in half above the waist. Blood splatters onto Wendy and she screams as the cars shoot towards a sudden break in the tracks. When the cars hit it the whole line goes off the track and flies into the air sending Wendy flying out of her car. She is rushing towards the tracks nearest the ground and her premonition ends as the impact would have happened.

She has tears in her eyes and looks around to see she’s at the start of the ride again, right as the attendant is waving his hand in front of her camera and telling her to put it away. Obviously Wendy is even more panicked when Kevin touches the gum from her premonition, she starts screaming that the ride is going to crash and a manager comes out and signals to the attendants to release the bars. She warns him that the track is collapsed and that the crash will happen and Lewis is super rude and misogynistic about Wendy, giving her shit for crying.

Kevin goes to confront Lewis for this and their physical altercation starts with bystander Erin getting slapped. Once she’s been hit Ian jumps into the scuffle and it’s revealed that Jason and Carrie are still locked into their roller coaster car. The attendant tells Jason that no one gets off the ride as a bunch of people get off the ride including Ashley and Ashley who proclaim the fight and scenario is “so high school”. Frankie decides to leave because he’s only there for the 2 girls anyways. The group in the back cars who got off the ride are escorted out by security and the front car passengers haven’t been released and attendants start the ride.

As the ride starts Jason screams at them to try and get off and as she’s walking out Wendy hears the ride start up and realizes that Jason didn’t get off. She makes it back to see the cars ascending up the first incline but she’s tackled by security when she screams after Jason. Her and Kevin are kicked out of the ride through the back just as the cars derail and fly off the track. Wendy scream-cries Jason while looking up at the accident unfolding.

Rather than jump to an interrogation or police interview after the accident this Final Destination time jumps to their graduation. Tributes have been erected around the school to honor those who died in the Devil’s Flight crash. Wendy walks around the school in the overcast rain and takes note of these memorials on her last day of school which confirm that Jason and Carrie died in the crash. Kevin tries to talk to Wendy about graduation, telling her he is also struggling from the loss of Carrie and Jason. Wendy tells Kevin she is going to leave their town and never look back because there’s nothing in the town she cares about without Jason.

Kevin protests that he made a promise to take care of her but she slaps that down by telling him they wouldn’t have been friends if not for their partners and each being friends with the other’s partner. Ashley and Ashley see Wendy leaving and approach her inviting her to come tanning with them for graduation. One of them gives her their phone number and they pat themselves on the back for extending kindness.

Luckily for the sake of the plot Kevin doesn’t quit and runs after Wendy telling her about Flight 180. He is able to provide the background that lets us skip the needing to put things together phase of the movie. By the 3rd installment it’s nice that referencing back to the other films in the same universe allows the plot to skip the monotonous figuring out stage. Kevin informs Wendy that the passengers that survived died in the order they died in the premonition. She’s not down with this and tells him to fuck off but the information is planted in her head.

That night Wendy is confronted by Julie for stealing an heirloom necklace and Wendy breaks down confessing her guilt. This reconnects their icy relations and Julie asks to borrow the school camera for graduation. Wendy offers to recharge it while she gets ready and Wendy realizes that there are pictures from their senior night she hasn’t seen. While this is happening the 2 Ashleys are at the tanning salon and have brought a slushy into the room despite warnings not to. This melts in the heat and water travels down the electric wires of the tanning beds which causes them to short circuit.

The owner of the salon mistakenly locks himself out while they are in the beds and doesn’t notice at first. They leave a note on the front and that door locked as well and then set up with headphones in both listening to Roller Coaster of Love. Intercut with Wendy putting together that the photos are her hints to the deaths of the people that got off. She starts to worry and decides to call one of the Ashleys to check on the pair after she sees the photo of them is overexposed and makes them look almost on fire.

The heat they turned on pushes a coat hanger over that then falls onto a CD shelf that breaks off the wall as a flat piece of wood. This piece falls off one of the tanning beds and then slides horizontally between the two beds, effectively trapping both girls in the beds. The beds start to heat up as this is happening to the point that they notice something is wrong but when they got to lift the lids of the beds they realize they are trapped and panic. Skin bubbling, glass shattering heat continues to rise and visibly burns the girls skin. Eventually both beds break through the bottom on fire and the 2 are burned alive in the beds, side by side. The shot transitions from above the beds with the fire coming out of the sides to 2 white coffins next to each other over open graves at a funeral.

The funerals are packed with locals including McKinley and Erin; McKinley taking it upon himself to respond to the sermon out loud, drawing attention and ire from the crowd. He is upset that 2 girls that didn’t do anything to anyone are dead while there are evil people alive and well. Lewis and Kevin take it upon themselves to remove him from the crowd but he goes pretty willingly. Frankie makes it about himself and how he viewed women leading them to change their appearance to impress him. It’s gross and weird as one would expect from his character type, Julie is visibly grossed out by his comments but he perceives it as a good time to make a move and goes to kiss her. She face palms him while walking away with her friend Amber, another junior who secretly attended the senior night.

McKinley and Erin get in his truck to leave the funeral service with Kevin and Lewis in tow, making sure they leave without causing more trouble. He peels out of the parking area leaving the 2 boys behind and Lewis tells Kevin to bring him a PSP if he ever has to come to his funeral, an ominous foreshadow. Wendy calls Kevin from Jason’s grave in the same cemetery, a gesture she’s ready to talk and he comes to her because she didn’t want to upset anyone with her presence. Wendy tells Kevin about the last convo she had with Jason and that she wonders if him pointing out her lack of control induced fear that caused her vision. None of the other protagonists with visions try to come up with a chain reaction for the visions that isn’t related to a prior near death experience but rather a random comment. She describes a presence around her that she knows isn’t Jason because it is, “cold and terrifying,” which triggers a gust of heavy wind that only impacts the pair. After the gust passes Wendy pulls out printed photos and shows examples of photo anomalies that could be predictions of events like Lincoln’s assassination and the September 11 attacks but then includes a photo of a plane fire that had “180” in the background exactly 1 year prior to the accident.

This is when Wendy expressly states her theory that the photos she took that night contain clues about upcoming deaths and possibly the manner of death. She believes they can utilize these clues to save people who got off the ride with them by intervening in the event of their deaths. Wendy almost passes out which cuts to the pair in a car passing a Tri-Centennial sign for their town as they continue on. Distracted by the photos Wendy is showing him Kevin almost hits a man opening his truck door on the side of the road and must swerve to avoid him. They decide to go to a fast food place and Wendy demands they go through the drive thru so that no one overhears their conversation topics. They pull into line at the drive thru and look at Frank’s photo while they wait, believing he is next because he sat behind the Ashleys on the roller coaster during Wendy’s premonition. I like the use of the real world object like a photo to trigger a clue or memory of a premonition in this installment. This feels more realistic and adds to the believability despite the more outlandish deaths like that in the tanning salon.

Based on the photo Wendy has of Frankie they think his brush with death could have something to do with water because of a SpongeBob prize behind him. After a cranky couple honks at them to pull forward Wendy sees a message in the order menu just as the radio changes on it’s own and a moving truck with a lift on the back rams into the side of Kevin’s truck. The trucks pins Kevin’s car just as another truck, the one he almost hit earlier, begins barreling down the hill towards them out of control without a driver behind the wheel. Wendy peeps this through the back window and her and Kevin realize the doors are pinned too shut for them to squeeze through. Panicking they honk for the person in front of them to move forward but get the finger instead. The couple behind them is also oblivious to the impending danger because they’re in full blown argument until the very last moment. The driver spins out backwards leaving just Kevin’s truck to get hit.

Thinking fast Kevin kicks out the front windshield and helps Wendy climb out onto the hood. They are able to jump out of the way of the incoming collision between Kevin’s truck and the incoming truck just in time, Kevin’s arm around Wendy to keep her semi protected. The impact send the car’s engine flying forward into the convertible in front of them, blades first. The blades rip the back of his head open, killing him hopefully instantly because it is a rather brutal death otherwise. The bloodied PlayBoy necklace the victim was wearing is on the ground and they realize it is Frankie who just got killed, the guy they were looking for. The engine blade is still stuck in his head when they approach the vehicle and it spurs one more time throwing his head forward and startling Wendy.

Kevin declines a ride home for either of them, offering to drive Wendy after they walk back to his house, telling the first responders that they will be alright. Wendy immediately asks if they will be when her and Kevin are alone and when he says they will be okay she tells him she feels like there’s a viciousness to these deaths. Kevin however thinks that Frank’s death proves her theory wasn’t true because nothing he remembers from the photo of Frank indicated his death would be like how it was. Wendy wants to leave again but Kevin is able to get her to stay in town, telling her after that he’s not an idiot despite what people may think about him.

They decide to take a closer look at the photos together and see if the order is correct. The picture they have of the full line of cars is half blocked by the attendants hand, making it hard to determine everyone who was on the ride. They keep going through the pictures and stop on one of Carrie, Kevin telling Wendy he’d planned to propose to Carrie after graduation. She wisely says nothing because telling him what Carrie told her would be cruel. They then stumble across a mistaken photo that is more of an up-skirt shot than Frank even took. Behind that up-skirt shot Frank is making a goofy face captured mid-movement and there’s a fan right above his head. The angle of the photo and Frank it looks like the fan is going into his head, symbolic of his actual death.

With confirmation that the photos predict the impending death they go back to Lewis’ because he was sitting directly behind Frank, making him next. They believe that the swords above Lewis in the photo are because he’s at a football came that has mascots with swords. They ultimately decide to warn Lewis after Wendy calls out Kevin for wanting to intervene now when he’d previously advocated to be willfully ignorant. Now however he believes if they can beat it they have to try or he’ll obsess about it. He didn’t want to see his photo but he asks Wendy if it’s bad like potentially embarrassing. They’ve resolved to go to see Lewis and tell him in person rather than risk calling him and him being less likely to believe it.

Despite showing up however Lewis tells them they are “—on crack. Both of you,” in between sets at his football training camp. Kevin explains that Ashley and Ashlyn both died, then Frankie Cheeks who’d been directly behind them and that he’s next which isn’t a bad argument to make even without the other supporting occurrences of this phenomenon. Wendy starts noticing all of the similar items in the photo and gym like the crossed blades and bears but specifically the danger that the gym versions present to Lewis. Lewis’ stance is that he controls his own destiny and his monologue is very reminiscent of Carter in the first Final Destination. He has given himself credit somehow for Wendy’s premonition and him being accidentally saved. The gym is a walking liability with puddles of water coming out of the drinking fountain right next to a boom box plugged into the wall.

Lewis proclaims that in 4 years time he’ll be a second round NFL draft pick going to Oakland, which is sad because Oakland no longer has a team. He talks about super bowl rings and completing 15 seasons, having earlier cited his injury free high school run as evidence of his durability. He’s continually increasing the intensity of his reps and slamming the equipment around in this violation of a gym. A chain of events is set off when a guy going hard in front of a taxidermy bear in the gym snaps one of its claws off. That claw flies across the room and hits a man doing squats in the eye, causing him to drop his weights and stumble back. This commotion causes the blades to come loose of their mounts above Lewis’ machine that cuts 2 of the wires of the machine which causes everyone to stop and hold their breath in anticipation of something bad. Lewis celebrates that he wins, even in the face of death he feels he wins, and he goes to do a celebratory rep with full force. This causes the now broken machine to malfunction and send the weights crashing back down on either side of Lewis’ head, crushing his head and killing him.

Blood and other matter flies out at Wendy and Kevin, standing the closest to Lewis when his head is crushed. Cut to them leaving the field, arriving back at their car with bags and wearing new gym clothes with the school’s logo, cleaned up from the earlier scene. Wendy asks Kevin if she did something to make the accident and subsequent deaths on everyone but he responds he doesn’t know why. This girl has had this same look of cry-panic most of this movie even before the accident, Wendy always pisses me off a little bit.

The next scene opens on McKinley and Erin at what looks like a Lowe’s unbranded knockoff and he proceeds to use the lift to get to the top shelf to shoot pigeons with a nail gun, killing at least one. Communicating via walkie talkie because of course they are Wendy and Kevin approach Erin who then calls over McKinley. The pair are stocking merchandise in the vast hardware department store and McKinley messes with the lights to freak them out. Wendy demands to know who was sitting behind them on the ride but he fucks around and makes a joke, being evasive. Erin jokes that the person behind them was a man in a black cloak with a scythe, implying it was the grim reaper to mess with Wendy.

The group has a discussion about death and if it’s a person or force that is after them if death is indeed after them. McKinley goes on a diatribe about death and reincarnation but in an edgy 4chan way. He says that everything in life is a force going from one thing to another. He keeps talking as Erin hands him items to stock and Wendy starts getting the ominous feeling that precedes an accidental death. She sees banners and thinks that is the clue from the photo, honing in on that and things above them where McKinley has just lifted to. She points this out to Kevin who then yells at McKinley that he needs to watch out for the boxes which causes McKinley to swerve the lift suddenly and a bag of bird seed ends up falling to the ground now ripped open. They try to reason with a sassy McKinley who makes fun of their attempts to help him, however panicked those attempts might be. After saying that he doesn’t know “yet” he scoffs at them but Erin wants to know who’s next in the order. Wendy explains that because they don’t know which Ashley died first they don’t know how the order works for people sitting next to one another.

I like that this is included and not assumed that there’s an obvious way that the order would go, either left to right or right to left. Erin brushes them off however and says that death is complicated but Wendy disagrees, McKinley siding with Erin that life is rather meaningless. He accidentally knocks things off the shelf as he stocks and Erin picks up nails with a magnet that starts a chain reaction. The magnet causes a roll of chain link to start unrolling which falls down and hits the keys on the other lift that McKinley isn’t on. This turns the machine on and then McKinley’s careless driving causes the forklift claws to hit a shelf and cause caulking tubes to fall down which knock a box loose that McKinley earlier pushed back to fall off the shelf and get caught between shelves. This box perfectly lands on the gas pedal of the now turned on lift and it starts rolling forward, knocking over liquid bottles on the way.

Wendy keeps looking for clues in the photo of the couple as McKinley turns on a saw and almost slips into it in the unswept sawdust. The soaped up lift wheels make it through the bottles and into a wall of tools, one of which is a hammer that knocks a lever on the lift. Another hammer falls and hits another lever that pushes the lift forward into the shelves. McKinley is messing with Wendy and Kevin while the chain reaction continues, Erin looking on. Wendy realizes that wooden stakes above McKinley are in danger of falling just as they are hit by the forklift pushing the shelves into ladders that then knock into the shelf the box is on, sending it flying down. She tackles him out of the way to save him and her, Kevin, and McKinley are crushed by flat wood boards falling from a higher shelf also knocked over by the lift.

The fall and crashing of the wood causes a sharp piece to fly out and slice an air pump open which causes sawdust to go flying into Erin’s face which knocks her off her feet. She falls backwards into McKinley’s nail gun that he’d used to shoot birds earlier in the night. The nail gun goes off a considerable amount of times seemingly just by her head propelling backwards into it and the nails go through the back of her head and through her hand she’d raised to shield her face. This death is pretty gruesome and particularly cruel from the invisible antagonist and it doesn’t seem instant, Erin able to look down as blood spills from her head, in complete shock. Cut to Wendy leaving the police station, the officers looking menacingly after her and Kevin who waited for her outside the station. Kevin explains that he didn’t tell them anything but Wendy says that she told them everything including the background about Flight 180 and the connections of the current deaths.

The officers didn’t believe her and she doesn’t necessarily blame them for that. Kevin worries that they missed their chance to save whoever was behind Ian, believing that it’s skipped him since Wendy saved him by intervening in his death. They assume that he’s next and then Wendy but they part ways to take care of respective business—she’s going to review the photos and he’s being picked up by his dad for his volunteer security shift at the Tri-Centennial.

Back at their house Julie steals the charm bracelet her and Wendy have been beefing over while Wendy sleeps, passed out on her desk staring at the photo of the mystery passengers next on the list. She wakes up with the photo of the mystery passengers on the ride and notices the very bold charm bracelet on the wrist of the rider, which she now realizes is Julie. She then sees the bracelet is gone and doesn’t catch Julie before she leaves, trying to call only to get voicemail. She tells Kevin to look for Julie and he asks her to look at his photo so they have an idea of what to look out for if they can’t save Julie. His looks like something blowing up in his face like a flash and hers is normal but Jason’s face is all blurred and she’s wearing a McKinley High shirt.

They think that he needs to stay away from fireworks and she needs to stay away from McKinley, which becomes hard when his car appears behind her as an ominous song begins playing on the radio. Every which way Kevin looks is danger at this celebration, from old weapons to handmade fireworks, electrical equipment in the middle of the field, to horses, and so on. Wendy rushes to the celebration to warn both Julie and Kevin about their impending deaths. Her radio turns on without warning and starts tuning through random channels before stopping on this film’s motif song about a person following another person, “Turn Around Look at Me” by Johnny Mathis. I like that each film has a motif song that harkens back to that accident, generally something that was playing nearby or during the accident. This one is a little random and rather fits the ominous tones of more personified death than previous installments. It doesn’t play during or before the accident in a noticeable way but it does appear often and is a hint to Wendy about possible danger around.

She looks in her rearview and sees Ian’s van, assuming there’s not many vans like his in their Pennsylvanian town. This combined with the notion that McKinley will cause her death, the motif song is playing on it’s own from her car stereo, and now McKinley is hot on her ass following her like an ominous shadow. A random wolf walks into the road that Wendy is able to swerve around before she hits it but McKinley is stopped by it and falls further behind her trail. With this extra time Wendy arrives before Ian and heads into the fair grounds to find Kevin while keeping an eye on her back. Kevin sees Julie and tries to get to her while the crowd moves for the fireworks show. One of the Colonial War reenactment soldiers puts a canon tool leaning against the canon to help with crowd control. This piece falls and knocks over the top canon ball, sending it flying under a tent and causing a train reaction to start. This ball knocks a stand keeping a cart with fireworks stationary just as Kevin finds Julie and tries to confront her about death’s list and the danger she’s in. The fireworks understandably upset the horses that are part of the reenactment but it doesn’t help when 2 teen boys light small fireworks by a horses hooves. The explosion sends the horse running, breaking free of his anchored stake, still following along on a rope attached to his saddle.

Julie keeps running from Ian and Wendy’s confrontation then turns and flips off Kevin like she flipped off Wendy in the photo and as she does that Wendy flashes back to the photo. She screams for them to look out and Kevin pushes Julie out of the way of the incoming runaway horse, which sends her to the ground. The stake trailing the horse hits Julie’s neck and the rope wraps around her, dragging her behind the horse. The horse stops for a moment but is sent running again when the fireworks sound off again, and Kevin grabs one of the reenactment swords as Julie starts being drug again. The horse jumps over a cart and Julie is heading towards the spikes under it at full speed, pulled by the horse. Luckily, Kevin is able to intervene and slice the rope, saving Julie and thus skipping her. Despite being happy she’s okay Wendy and Kevin demand to know who was on the ride with her because they are next.

The upset horse is being tended to by police and it starts to panic again when another round of fireworks go off just as Julie’s 2 friends come running up to her and Wendy in the field. As they approach they hear Wendy explaining the urgency to find who was next to her on the ride and it becomes clear as one of the friends freaks out and goes to stand up like she’ll run away. Just as she does this another chain reaction the horse set off sends a flag pole with a spear like end flying through the air. It impales Julie’s friend Amber, confirming that she’s the next one on the list, or was the next one. This is an instance of someone in the accident group that is a surprise, not confirming until the death which of Julie’s 2 friends got on the ride with her.

In shock from Amber dying in front of them Wendy realizes that Amber’s death means Kevin is next and in immediate danger. She takes off running in the direction he went off in after the horse just as he is flung into a food cart and a shish kebab stick punctures a gas canister pipe. The bust causes an explosion that happens in Kevin and Wendy’s faces, mimicking the face he made in the photo Wendy took but not killing Kevin because she intervened. Julie comes running up as they land and they go to lift Kevin as McKinley sees them and is definitely hunting Wendy. He feels invincible and tells them he believes what they told him before after seeing it himself. He demands to know what is in Wendy’s photo that predicts her death and the look she gives him is really obvious.

McKinley immediately registers that Wendy’s look and clear desire to get away from him ASAP means he is involved in her death somehow, that he causes it. He wants to get things over with and she offers to just pass without a conflict so it can skip her. He tells her he doesn’t care about what happens to her and feels he won’t die now because he survived his death. As he screams about how he won’t die the fireworks cart that the horse knocked loose earlier flies up just as they go off. Wendy sees this as it is happening and is able to get her, Kevin and Julie down and out of the way as the cart pops forward sending the fireworks shooting. Each firework zips past McKinley in spectacular fashion coming close to him on either side and above but ultimately hitting a structure behind him and missing him all together.

This makes McKinley even more confident that he’s invincible and protected from death now. Wendy realizes however that what really occurred is that Wendy’s death was intervened on when the group ducked down out of the way. At that time McKinley wasn’t next so the fireworks missed him as he wasn’t the intended target. Unfortunately he is the next person on the list so Death had a little surprise for him, the fireworks that hit the structure cause the lift to break and send the giant McKinley billboard crashing down over him. This smashes him and sends a chunk of his upper body still twitching flying out. He dies flipping the bird missing the majority of his body. His death means Julie is technically next again. Wendy is in shock with blood still on her face as a tear falls down, partially relieved.

The image of Wendy with a tear down her cheek lying in the grass in shock fades to white and that white image then fades into a shot from subway train tracks up towards the ceiling with the words “FIVE MONTHS LATER,” across the bottom. As the train comes towards the camera the shot cuts to inside a train car, a man is playing guitar and singing songs. The shot pans behind him to a group of 3 young adults asking about which place to get food. It’s revealed that one of them is Wendy and she goes to check the map only to hear the singer’s song transition to the Johnny Mathis motif song. Her mood immediately falls to terror and she starts to see more signs like her blurred reflection in the subway window which makes her recall her photo and how Jason’s face was blurred.

The subway doors she’s been staring at her reflection in open as she stands panicked and frozen in front of them. She is pushed back by passengers and goes to sit down near her friends as the man with the guitar exits, following him with her eyes. Due to looking to follow him she catches the number “180” in a reflection at the train station. Even more panicked Wendy then sees ads on the top of the subway that are related with the deaths like Buildit, the place Erin died, Phoenix Tanning Co. where Ashley and Ashlyn died, and a sign that mentions the inevitability of death. The intercom comes on and warns that the next stop is, “The end of the line,” and to exit if your final destination is not the last train stop.

Despite their stop being the last one of the line Wendy tells her friends they should get off at the second to last and just walk. They protest that it’s really cold and as they pull into the 2nd to last stop a ton of event fans are crowding the station waiting to get on. One of the fans drops a candy bar that is knocked off onto the tracks by the wind from the passing train. A rat runs along the train track infrastructure to eat the candy bar next to open wires. Wendy goes to exit with her friends but they are pushed back onto the train by the fans and then Julie enters and Wendy gets distracted. Their group is now stuck on the train and Wendy goes to catch up with Julie who she didn’t expect to see until later.

Wendy tells Julie she sensed that Julie was coming at this time and that she has a feeling like the night of the accident. Julie is quick to tell her things are over and that without Ian to cause her death coupled with them being skipped they are all safe. Julie says she ran into Kevin at home which means that Wendy is safe since both her and Kevin have to die in order for her to be next. She goes to introduce Julie to her friend and roommate and she notices Kevin at the back of the car, with headphones in. He’s excited to see them and he says he came to see the game and planned to text her after that he was in town. The rat in the tunnel gets too close to the open wire which causes it to short circuit and stop the track from switching completely, stuck between 2 directions.

The train barrels into this derailment not unlike the roller coaster train earlier in the film. The subway starts rocking and crashing, electricity cut off causing the car to be dark. Just as quickly as they are safe each of them dies in gruesome ways, Julie being knocked by flying metal debris through the train car. Kevin is pushed up against a car window that cracks and his face is similar to his face in the photo. Kevin is ground to a pulp when the window gives way under his head, killing him. Now with both Kevin and Julie dead Wendy is next up and she’s thrown from the crashing subway car onto the tracks. The whole station is in shambles and a ton of people have been killed in this crash as Wendy realizes her leg is broken and she’s stuck on the track.

Another train comes barreling down the tracks while Wendy is still pinned. She screams as it approaches and just as it’s about to hit her the camera pulls back like other premonitions to reveal that this is Wendy’s second premonition of an impending accident. It’s revealed she’s having that premonition as Kevin is talking and they are already trapped on the train car. Kevin goes to pull the emergency lever to stop the train and they rush to the doors to try to open them. The train car starts to loose electricity like in the vision and someone is screaming to stop the train before the screen cuts to black. The sound of the crash plays over the sound of the crash as “Love Train” comes on while the credits begin rolling.

The third installment is my favorite of the movies, I think it is the most effective at breaking out of the original story connections and still standing as its own film. I think there’s a good level of camp in this one that helps personify death and give it more flare but it doesn’t push it too far into comedy territory. The deaths are outlandish in this film but so are those in the other films so when not separating it from those these deaths are fairly similar in creativity and shock. The fake outs are decent and it is interesting to see what clue from the photo or photos indicated about that person’s death. The story flows decently despite a noticeable cut back on pre-accident background that helped shape some of the narratives around the characters in the first 2 films. There isn’t much difference between pre and post accident Wendy which seems to be different from both Alex and the 2nd film’s lead.

I appreciated the attempt at the relationship portion, that becoming another repeating element in Final Destination films, a man and woman duo who become couple-like while facing off against death. Despite saying she didn’t like him early in the film by the end Wendy and Kevin are really cool with one another, having some close moments along the journey before the time jump. That they both lost their significant other in the crash made their connection more interesting and layered despite how awkward it could be at times. Wendy pisses me off sometimes and is in a state of emergency at all times even before the crash. She believes she’s responsible for it which isn’t necessarily something that the other characters face. In the first and second films the main characters are upset they couldn’t save all of their friends despite saving random people but in this one Wendy feels she is literally the reason that death decided to chance upon them that night.

This film also lacks the connection of other near death experiences leading the characters to all be around one another at the time of the accident. This was an expansion on the lore from the second film that was discarded in the plot of this installment, opting for the connection as high school peers similar to the first film but without even a teacher this go around. Adults are noticeably absent from this version, we don’t meet Julie and Wendy’s parents despite multiple scenes in their house that even include reference to their parents. This could be because the characters are presumably all eighteen or older but it is noticeably different from the first film that heavily featured Alex’s and Tod’s parents. They were another obstacle and element for Alex to deal with while facing the antagonist of death whereas we only see Kevin’s dad in 3.

I think 3 exemplifies the franchise catching its stride, perfecting a formula for the franchise that could be transposed onto other accidents, free from the relational connection to the first film’s characters. With the widespread use of internet becoming popularized Final Destination can scrap information about death’s list being spread from character to character and instead we have a research montage often found in movies after the mid-aughts. Rather than finding an old woman on a hill to tell you a town legend over suspicious tea the character can spend a couple of nights researching news articles and forums about similar accidents. This is something present in the other films but it is used in addition to information being given to characters as opposed to the main source of background information in 3.

Three will always be my favorite that I’ve watched over and over, a good one to put on in the background that usually captivating my attention in at some point. I cannot say the same for the 4th film in the series. While I love 3 and 2 but find 1 to be just alright I’m actually mad about 4. I was pleasantly surprised about 5 after what 4 had to offer, going into it with zero expectations of it being solid due to the mockery that 4 is in its entirety. The 3D of it all is not even the worst of it but if you’re interested in reading a full Franchise Marathon review of the Final Destination films the full post will be up by May 21st. That post will also include a review of the newest film coming out tomorrow at the time of posting this.