1134. The Final Destination (2009)

Starring: Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Haley Webb

Director: David R. Ellis

Running Time: 82 mins

The Final Destination is an American film and the fourth in the Final Destination franchise. After a tragic catastrophe at a motor racing event, one young man begins to see visions of a chain of gruesome deaths in the near future that he must try to stop.

This is a truly horrible film. It’s a frustrating, shrill, excessively gory, boring and overall painful film to watch that doesn’t do its job as a satire of horror movies, falling right into the tropes of the worst that the genre can offer.

The main problem here is the fact that, when this could have been a so-bad-it’s-good movie had the makers gone for a more comedic and light-hearted approach à la Sharknado, it takes itself far too seriously for what it is. You can tell that it knows how stupid its premise is, but, thanks to poor writing and acting, the satirical element doesn’t come through, making this nothing more than a bad horror movie.

Horror movies, if done well, can be an absolute thrill to watch, but this takes everything way too far and ends up making for a hugely unpleasant watch. The gore is more excessive than excessive, and doesn’t contribute to any extra sense of tension or fear, and is as such simply disgusting to look at every time you see it, which is on a pretty incessant basis.

Maybe, if you’re into the genre, or are just having a few friends round for a laugh, this can be relatively entertaining, but as a proper film, it’s despicable.

Away from that, the story is also appalling. In a horror movie, the plot is so integral to creating a thrilling film, because it should create the tension and fear that make you scared or shocked at what’s happening on screen. However, as this film has pretty much no plot at all, and is just a series of scenes where people get killed in the most gruesome way possible, it’s never at all engaging to watch.

There is not one moment where you care at all about the characters, meaning that any time that their lives are in danger means nothing to you, whilst the excessively repetitive nature of the gore and violence means that you become quickly desensitised, and so it loses its shock value that would provide some excitement to the film.

Overall, The Final Destination gets a 1.0 from me, because it’s a simply awful film with nothing in terms of a good story or exciting and shocking horror.