When Death comes hunting, it is nearly impossible to escape, and Final Destination 3 was the first film to truly drive home the point in totality. While the first two entries had ray-of-hope endings – Alex and Clear were alive before the credits rolled on Final Destination, and in Final Destination 2, Kimberly and Thomas Burke were definitively still alive – this one took things in a different direction in several ways.
Set six years after Final Destination, this was the first standalone sequel in the franchise, and with The Final Destination and Bloodlines, half of the series is connected, and the other half is not. Wendy Christensen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is about to graduate with her group of friends – her best friend Carrie Dreyer (Gina Holden), her boyfriend Jason Wise (Jesse Moss), and Carrie’s boyfriend Kevin Fischer (Ryan Merriman) – and their classmates from McKinley High are about to board a roller coaster, the Devil’s Flight. When a Premonition of the ride crashing traumatizes her, Wendy and a handful of others are thrown off. At the same time, Jason and Carrie are forced to remain on board in confusion. When the roller coaster still derails, Wendy and Kevin are left reeling with the lack of closure and faced with the harrowing realization that Death is coming for them.
Unlike Flight 180 and Route 23, the number of casualties in the Premonitory event from Final Destination 3 is decidedly small, with less than twenty people on the ride. In the same breath, this entry also has the largest number of confirmed survivors from one of Death’s lists, with ten people making it off of the roller coaster. As is the norm, it takes more than a few deaths before the visionary truly grasps what is happening, and until late into the game, Wendy and Kevin are incapable of actually altering the order as none of the survivors genuinely take her seriously. This is not a knock against Wendy, who proved to be one of the more resilient visionaries in her bid to upend Death’s list without active help from a previous survivor or Bludworth waiting in the wings.
While Final Destination 3 still ranks as one of the more enjoyable entries, it is impossible to ignore that this was the entry where the characters were slotted into stereotypical roles.
Still, each character had depth to their role, granting them something that The Final Destination lacked – and was one of the key reasons it was viewed as the weakest entry.
For example, Ashley Freund (Chelan Simmons) and Ashlyn Halperin (Crystal Lowe) are portrayed as vapid young women who have more sex appeal than character, but this is merely at first glance. Their invitation to Wendy to their tanning session is played off sincerely, and I have always taken it as their internalized method of mourning. Then again, this is the first and only entry in the Final Destination franchise to feature nudity on top of graphic death scenes. These actresses, notable Scream Queens with impressive resumés, took their work very seriously. The crew ensured nobody who did not need to be on set during their major scene was present. Considering the stories one often hears about these situations, that in and of itself is a good thing.
Alongside Ashley and Ashlyn, the film focuses on Frankie Cheeks (Sam Easton), a man more focused on sexual harassment than anything redemptive, Lewis Romero (Texas Battle), a jock more interested in weight training than the possibility that he could be in danger, Ian McKinley (Kris Lemche), a descendant of the family who founded this particular fictional slice of heaven, and his girlfriend Erin Ulmer (Alexz Johnson), a goth aficionado who works at the local hardware store with Ian. By the time Wendy and Kevin actually start to try and warn them, doubt is the word of the day. Doubt and sarcasm.
When it comes to the deaths, most of them are presented on-screen, which feels more in line with the 2000s trend towards torture porn – a la Saw and Hostel – versus straight slashers and sci-fi horror.
Whether it’s a head being crushed between weights or the fan from a car engine’s motor flying through the back of somebody’s head, Final Destination 3 does not shy away from its gore. Compare this to Kat’s death in Final Destination 2, which used the explosion of an airbag to obfuscate her visceral end, only to then pivot into the three-way slice-and-dice of poor Rory. Final Destination as a franchise has always pushed the envelope when it comes to its death sequences. It is not surprising that 3 is the film in which audiences began attending to see how a character would die rather than who the character might be.
A big part of this entry is that Wendy was already panicked about riding the roller coaster. Through the chaos of the evening in which it crashed, she is not aware of who was on it that was also thrown off. This is because her Premonition gave her a back-row seat to everything that unfolded. While she was indeed the final death in her vision, there were a few people on the list that she never got a clear look at. Figuring out who they are becomes a driving goal because they’re in line to die before Wendy and Kevin. Preventing their deaths could mean the difference between Death claiming them and them getting off of the list entirely. Taking a narrative risk like this offers Final Destination 3 a unique angle that none of the other entries have yet to try.
While an air of mystery is a massive part of each one, the visionary being unaware of a name on the list was a first. Of those two, Julie Christensen (Amanda Crew), Wendy’s younger sister, is the only one with any true characterization in the film, while Julie’s friend Perry Malinowski (Maggie Ma) seems to exist for shock value. What makes this plot point so intriguing is its uniqueness. Each entry tries to find some new twist to bring to the fore to separate it from its predecessors – 2 flipped the list, 3 had a bit more mystery involved on top of the first cruel twist ending where it was all but outright confirmed every character perished, 5 was the stealth prequel, and Bloodlines had a major deviation from every previous entry. The Final Destination remains an okay film.
It should be noted that Crystal Lowe worked with Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Texas Battle in other horror films after Final Destination 3. With Winstead, it was in the first Black Christmas remake, released in the same year. With Battle, it was in Wrong Turn 2: Dead End, released the following year. Additionally, Chelan Simons worked with Jesse Moss in Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, which was released in 2010. Then again, so many of this cast were also in Smallville – Ryan Merriman, Chelan Simons, Alexz Johnson, Gina Holden, Crystal Lowe, Amanda Crew, Ecstasia Sanders, Cory Monteith, Andrew Francis, and Tony Todd each had a role of varying importance on the show… It seems that Death and Superman have the same rolodex.
For Tony Todd, while he did not physically appear on-screen in this entry, he did lend his voice to the mascot for the Devil’s Flight roller coaster. This makes The Final Destination the only film to not feature him, barring any future installments post Bloodlines, with his passing in 2024 precluding any additional new scenes.
Final Destination 3 had some weight behind it – costing slightly less than 2 and earning quite a bit more at the box office, which guaranteed its sequel. That The Final Destination proved to be so underwhelming is perhaps a slight against the desire to capitalize on a successful franchise more than anything else. Consider Final Destination 5 and Bloodlines, both of which had far more compelling characters that you could root for to survive, even if you walked into the theater certain that none of them would. The storylines for the fifth and sixth entries were also more interesting. While every film has its weaknesses, neither of them credited their named characters as Racist, MILF, and Mechanic…
Lloydd Marshall Books 