On what should be one of the happiest days of her life, high school senior Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) joins her friends for a graduation night celebration at a local amusement park. As they're about to board a roller coaster, Wendy is suddenly spooked. Her boyfriend Jason (Jesse Moss) reassures her that it's merely the act of relinquishing control that's giving her the jitters. Wendy overcomes her fear, but no sooner has the pneumatic harness descended, securing her in her seat, than Wendy experiences a vivid premonition of a fatal accident in which the roller coaster becomes a death trap for her and her friends. Emerging from her terrifying vision and still on the ride platform, Wendy freaks out and demands to be let off. Her classmate, Kevin (Ryan Merriman), who's seated beside her, feels compelled to accompany Wendy. As they're leaving, Lewis (Texas Battle) taunts Kevin, calling him a wimp. Insults turn to blows, others join the scuffle, and soon a handful of students are forcibly ejected from the ride. As they watch from below, Wendy's premonition proves nightmarishly true - the coaster careens out of control, and all those aboard perish. Those who survive the disaster discover that fate is hard to escape. They were meant to die...and death is not so easily cheated!

At what point after developing a very successful and somewhat ingenious idea for a movie that is clever and very entertaining do you sell that idea out for cheap sequels and a pile of cash. Because that is exactly what the Final Destination movie series has done. In Final Destination 2 they started to get away from the formula that made the first movie so good and in the third chapter they completely abandon that formula for one concept of the series. That concept which was only a small part of the first movie is the cool and ingenious ways death gets its revenge and kills those that should have died. But it abandons the story, it abandons the suspense, it abandons the mystery all for some cheap thrills and finding fun ways to kill people. The first movie introduced this cool idea that death cannot be cheated and if it’s your time, it’s your time ad there is nothing you can do about it. Final Destination 3 just accepts that all the characters make this instantaneous jump from newspaper clippings from the first movie that death is out to get them and because the movie takes no time to actually develop that idea other than just accepting it, it becomes almost silly and makes the movie an obvious crappy sequel.

My favorite part of the first movie is that it was almost like an old mystery novel, they had to figure out why death was after them, who it was going to go after next and why. The third installment does none of that, the characters just accept their fate and figure out clues with an idiotic grace from some pictures that were taken. Not to mention the fact that the two of the people who got off the roller coaster where the two who actually caused it to crash, so why does it crash when they are not on it if they were the reason it crashed. Do the producers think we are so stupid we wouldn’t notice a plot hole so big you could drive a semi truck through it, sadly the answer is yes because much like the Saw series this movie is for the teenager crowd whom they know don’t pay attention during movies. Its not for intelligent movie goers who have seen movies, who love movies and who know something about movies and who catch plot holes and idiotic jumps in logic. I like the cool ways they kill people, its inventive, I like the idea that death can’t be cheated but that simply is not enough for me when the first movie presented me so much more.

It’s obvious that for cheap sequels they also go for cheap actors with little or no acting talent. Because the cast of this movie was horrendous and its was like watching a middle school play where all you had to do was show up to get a part. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is one of the worst actress I have ever seen, she has one scene where she is crying and consoling with her sister that is so bad I wanted to chuck things at the screen. Ryan Merriman is no picnic either as the two just seem to feed off each others bad acting creating some mutation of horrible high school drama mixed with horror movie clichés. But the thing that baffles me the most is that James Wong also directed the first Final Destination and that at no time does he seem to realize that the third movie sucks for larger portions of the film. How does he manage to make the first one so good and the third one so mediocre there is more mystery there then the movie ever produced. Go for the cool deaths and for death stalking its victims but don’t expect much more than that.

Grade: C-