The Final Destination really doesn't seem like a movie but just an exercise in how to kill people in film in creative ways. There really isn't any character development, the movie's plot is the same as it's prior films and this film isn't about anything at all. I'm not saying that this isn't a crappy film but just more of an experience watching people die.
The antagonist (the bad guy) in The Final Destination is the energy of life itself. People who were supposed to die but escape, will eventually die in a matter of weeks because the order of life dictates that. A terrific idea that of course has lead to many of these films. But I hope eventually they actually explore this theme instead of the individual characters in the film worrying about themselves. Perhaps in the big picture of life it's what's is supposed to happen.
One of the reasons why we don't get to really know any of the characters is because we know they are all going to eventually die. So they don't want us to get too emotionally involved because in Hollywood they rarely give us a character we learn to care for and then see them die. It's too much of a downer and downer doesn't equal a strong box office. Therefore the killings must serve as the key entertainment value for the film.
And many will even question the ways they kill people in The Final Destination and how they really aren't all that creative. We live in a society now where most of us have seen 1000s (perhaps tens of thousands) of people killed in either TV or the movies and it's almost like the Well is tried up in finding new and creative ways. The writers usually take real life situations and then dramatize them but it seems that there might now be not much left. So now where do we go from here? I guess the writers need to get more creative because the Horror genre is never going away.
There is a lot of gore in The Final Destination but it's almost like cartoon gore. We witness a lot of splatter and guts but it really doesn't look all that real as they seem to have gotten their inspiration from a Road Runner episode. This film does get an R rating but only because this is a live action film and the characters who die are played by real human beings.
Curious why there is always that asshole type of character in every one of these type of movies who hangs around with a group of decent people. If the decent people are so decent, why would they hang around with this guy/girl? These characters are always in the film because we as the audience want them to die and we tend to root for them to finally go away.
And thank goodness the filmmakers understood what film they were making and how it deserved only a 80 minute length. In a summer of 2009 where Hollywood turned a two toy movies (Transformers, GI Joe) into almost 3 hour epics, it's refreshing to see a film that has the proper length.
So The Final Destination is what it is. It's not much but it's what you expect.