Ryan Merriman and Chris Lemche star in New Line Cinema’s Final Destination 3, Copyright 2005.
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Death is one of those things you try to avoid all your life because you have no idea what it is like and everything you have and do will be over. We have no idea what is on the other side and most of us have no intention of finding out because it is something that no one is able to inform us about.

In James Wong’s Final Destination 3, also the director of the dull and pretentious prequel, Final Destination, he follows the exact same storyline and throws in different characters to die. All the audience knows is that all these characters are supposed to die; the question is how they are going to. I think that the filmmakers know their films are terrible and use the opportunity to exihibit their creative side to show different ways to kill people. “Okay we’ll impale her through the eye, and we’ll give him a really bad wedgie.”

Taking place six years after the original film’s incident the explosion of flight 180,Wendy Christensen (Mary E. Winstead) is with her friends taking pictures for the yearbook, at a carnival whose friends are looking for fun. When they arrive at the huge steel roller coaster, the skittish minded Wendy is having second thoughts about getting on. Her boyfriend Jason (Jesse Moss) floods her with some what seems to be wise wisdom is that, we’re only afraid of things because we are not in control of them.

The group boards the roller coaster, but Wendy has a horrible vision. She sees the group on the roller coaster going to their death in many ways as people fly from the seats and are hit by bars that splatter them across the movie screen.

After realizing it hasn’t happened yet, she panics and manages to get off the coaster. One of her classmates, Kevin (Ryan Merriman) who was sitting beside her, escorts her away from the coaster. Lewis (Texas Battle, cool name), another classmate, taunts them for bringing the ride to a halt. Kevin and Lewis begin to brawl, bringing many other classmates of the coaster.

Unfortunately, Jason is still on the coaster, but the attendant starts the ride and the car begins its slow ride to the top of the track. Clickety, clack, clickety, clack. As security takes the others outside, a crash is heard and the cars on the coaster are seen flying through the air.

Months later, the day of their high school graduation, the school is still mourning those lost in the accident, especially Wendy and Kevin, who also lost his girlfriend. That day, two stuck up girls (Crystal Lowe and Chelan Simons) who were also lucky enough to get off the roller coaster go to a local tanning salon. We see something go horribly wrong in the tanning room and the girls end up cooked alive inside the beds. Wendy has heard of what happened to those on flight 180, over the next few months after the accident, all those who left the plane died in horrible accidents. Now she has a feeling they may be in the same situation.

As I said before, the plot is tediously redundant to the two previous films. We are merely given new characters that you know are going to die. That is all you have to look forward to in this film, because the plot, if any, just keeps moving in a straight line and any possible resolution to it is imaginary.

The writing is dull and flat, not surprising, but with some monologues, it’s as almost if they are trying too hard.
The characters, though being killed off quickly, everyone appears to be two-dimensional. There is absolutely no character development in this film. Winstead remains very skittish and Merriman just as somewhat kind hearted as he was in the beginning of the film.

Though the film will have an edge on the target audience, primarily teenagers and those who saw the other films of the series, the deaths are no where near as elaborate as they were in Final Destination 2. I recall a humorous experience in which my friend and I were watching the film on Comcast cable, if you are familiar with comcast you can play/pause/fast-forward/rewind/. There is a scene in which a boy is running after pigeons, they then flutter into the sky. A crane holding a large sheet of glass is nearby, and the pigeons spook the operator and he drops the glass, crushing the boy. We slowly rewinded it a few times and watched the boy unfold like an accordion.
The film will not at all appeal to adults with it’s plotless formation and redundant storyline of previous dull films, but the target audience will easily be pleased. Obviously just with the title it isn’t hard. But for the filmmakers, here’s an elaborate death if you decide to do another sequel, make them sit through anyone one of the films in the series. As they say in those mortal combat videogames, “fatality.”

Rated R for strong horror violence/gore, language and some nudity. Running time 93 minutes.