| Author | Message | ||
     John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
So Final Destination 4 has finally reached our screens with a slightly different title and in 3D, and while Death hasn't exactly "saved the best for last" it (he? she? they?) still has quite a sense of humour if this is anything to go by. In keeping with most movie franchise Part 4s there's little here in the way of innovative original film-making and all efforts are directed towards the setups and payoffs that have made the previous 3 films such a success. After some very noisy opening titles where Brian Tyler attacks Shirley Walker's theme with what sounds like a washboard and some rusty nails we waste no time in setting up the by now traditional disaster scenario (a racetrack) the premonition (from charisma-lacking star and non-actor Bobby Campo) and the first death following it (a lady's head being burst open to crowd-pleasing effect). All this is not to say I didn't enjoy FD4 - in fact it's a hoot and if possible it manages to be even more of a Warner Brothers' cartoon than the others. I'd recommend you watch it with a like-minded audience and the running time will fly by in a welter of escalator limb-grinding, cinema exploding, rectum sucking fun. And I bet that last bit will cause untold problems to anyone trying to read this in the workplace  | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I really liked the first three films (I got the box set in Tesco for a tenner!), and will certainly watch this on DVD. Not expecting too much from it, though, which probably means that I'll forgive it an awful lot. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.193.101 |
I enjoyed the first three films (especially the first) a great deal, so I'll definitely be seeing this one. In terms of pure creepy fun, I think this series is hard to beat. I think they achieve a nice balance between gory set-piece type horror on the one hand, and the more suggestive, atmospheric type of horror on the other (although they probably lean more toward the former, especially the later films). | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
I loved the first two but thought the third was just a rerun of the first. (the second I thought was very clever in the way it tied in to the first (everyone had been supposed to die but had survived because of deaths in the first film) so it was indeed a sequel and not a complete rerun. I wasn't over-impressed with 3 but I am looking forward to seeing 4 this weekend. The 3d gimmick is good enough for me. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
I actually liked the first and the third but not the second, which was directd by David Ellis who made this one and obviously has a thing for cars and car crashes (which he stages very well I must say). As for the 3D - it works a lot better in this than in the My Bloody Valentine remake, not just in the 'poking things out of the screen at you' kind of way but in providing depth in scenes that really benefit from it. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.163.6.13 |
Saw part 4 two days ago. No comment. | ||
| Niki Flynn (Niki) Username: Niki Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.32.69.29 |
I loved Part 1 and I loved the beginning of Part 2 but wasn't impressed by the rest of the film (2-D characters, silly plot), and thought 3 was a blast, so I was really psyched to see 4. And I loved it. Yes, it's getting tired and predictable. Yes, it had some dreadful acting (the guy who has the vision at the beginning looks like he's just farted instead of witnessed a huge disaster). And yes, it had the usual silly complacency wherein the characters have sussed it all out and are implausibly confident that they know how to break the cycle. Still, the death scenes are terrific fun, especially the elaborate setups that hearken back to that brilliant moment in Part 1 where Miss Lewton reaches up for the tea towel hanging over the knife block. Great stuff! The film really lends itself to the 3-D treatment and I was also struck by the depth of certain scenes - peering through a chain-link fence at a crowd of people, the grinding gears of a mutilated escalator, etc. Those moments impressed me more than the things that flew out at me. I also enjoyed the opening credits sequence, where you basically see all the death scenes as they happen to 3-D X-ray images of the characters. You have no idea who's who or sometimes what exactly is happening, but I thought it was really clever - especially the nails fired into one character's skull. The roller coaster crash from Part 3 remains my favourite set-piece of the whole series. As a roller coaster lover, I find it exhilarating and entertaining but not scary. However, my fear of flying makes the plane crash in Part 1 properly terrifying. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.5.31 |
FINALLY, I get around to seeing this... and, I loved it. Just read what Niki and John said, my sentiments xeroxed. (btw: The opening credits, which are awesome, are an homage to the past movies, showing various spectacular deaths from those earlier entries.) It is formulaic to a science, and you really KNOW what's coming - in one respect - but man, this is why I always say an audience really doesn't ever want to be totally surprised: I ate up every minute of it, happy I was being spoon-fed just what I was already expecting. This series remains significant, in that it - in its cartoony, silly, outrageous, laughable way - touches on a "villain" that is more frightening than all the Freddies and Michaels and such of the world, let alone the latter-day serial killers and torture-pornsters and all that... no, the villain of the FD movies is: capricious fate. Death, personified as a god-like force (another btw: I like how this film, oddly, was more subtler than its earlier entries, in that it never once "shows" Death/Fate working its evil - the entity here is 100% hidden, as opposed to the usual 95%). Life - oddly, scarily, disturbingly - is more like the FD movies (witness, to a far-distant-but-still-analogical way: Haiti), than whole handfuls of other horror movies - let alone, dramas, comedies, etc. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.200.223 |
I saw The Final Destination the other day and thought it was awful on every level. Not worthy of belonging to the FD series, in my opinion. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.226.99 |
Have to disagree with you to a certain degree, Huw. If you like, let alone love, the three films that precede this fourth - you simply HAVE to see the fourth, right? How could you go through life loving parts 1-3, and not see and forgive the 4th? There's now the GODFATHER films for precedent: 1 & 2 were superb, so one could say, then 3 must be loved as well. But 3 had uniquely terrible and/or light-weight actors, and a story that was just not of the caliber of the two that preceded it. But TFD was a carbon-copy of the plots that preceded it, for the most part - so there's not that. The acting is passable - the same for the previous ones. Only the constant CGI was, to me - a squibs-and-squishies fan - disappointing (but lots of fake silly gore in it too; this entry, after all, verged on black comedy). It was so much like the others in enough vital areas, that it was very nearly indistinguishable. In sum: you had to like it Huw, you couldn't not, if you liked the previous entries. End of discussion. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.200.223 |
Bollocks! It lacked the charm and suspense of the previous entries (even the third installment was a masterpiece compared to it), the CG was markedly worse than than in the earlier films, and the characters' dialogue and behaviour was just laughable (victims die in the most horrific manner imaginable, yet their so-called best friends/lovers/whatever are all smiles and acting as though nothing happened). For me this film lacked everything that made the first film (and to a lesser degree the next two) so much fun. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.226.99 |
Okay, here's a better analogy: The first time you made love to this specific person, it was ecstatic in every imaginable way. The second and third times, sure, it didn't stand up to the first, but so what? Now, you've got a fourth opportunity... yeah, you're not feeling well, it's gonna be a bit rushed, the place is ratty and there's a host of distractions... still... what are you gonna do, PASS?!?  (notice, Huw, how I've side-stepped your acceptable critique, and made an argument why one should see it all - clever of me, ennit?) | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 61.216.200.223 |
Well, now that you put it that way, it doesn't sound quite so unappealing... | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 188.147.170.182 |
Craig - you know something, I love you, I have to, but I've got a hammer in my hand...just out of sight...sometimes it's kinder this way... | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 188.147.170.182 |
Craig - how long is it before you try joined up handwriting? It's easy... | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 188.147.170.182 |
Craig - ever heard of a chap called Ebbert? (; Yeah, he's also illiterate...still breast-feeding, too. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.8.199 |
Frank, those last two posts - ??? But the hammer one - I think I get.... | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 188.146.7.64 |
 just teasing. |