Year of Release: 2009
Director: David R. Ellis
Starring: Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Haley Webb, Nick Zano, Mykelti Williamson, Krista Allen, Andrew Fiscella, Lara Grice
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 2
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
After the successful "Final Destination 3", the series went back to director David R. Ellis, who had previously helmed the second chapter, to bring this follow up to life. The premise for this installment is similar to the mechanism that rules this series. This time around the central character is a college student by the name of Nick O'Bannon, who is at an auto race with his girlfriend Lori and a couple of their friends, Hunt and Janet. Nick experiences a premonition of a dramatic crash which will set off a series of fatal accidents, which will result in the death of them all, and many others at the site. He panics, and after an ensuing fight with a few other spectators, they're all escorted out of the area, upon which the accident does occur, with massive casualties occurring. The next few days the survivors of the occurrence start dying due to unexpected accidents. Nick is convinced that Death is claiming the survivors in the exact order in which they would have died, had they stayed at the auto race site. He and Lori go about trying to warn the remainder of the survivors, in the hopes they can prevent the worst from happening.
As much as David R. Ellis is adept at telling a story with minimum fuss, this film is the worst in the series, primarily due to a script that has no humor, and very little suspense, and characters that are even more poorly defined than any of the others that came before in the series. It's somewhat perplexing how the film looks and feels as a cheap direct to video release, something that David R. Ellis in his career always managed to successfully avoid with all his features ("Cellular" and "Snakes on a Plane" for instance both had a polished and slick look to them). Aside from the look and feel, the characters in this chapter are literally cardboard cut-outs of what a "persona" should look or behave like, having no demonstrable human traits aside from the ability to talk and move, yet avoiding anything more substantial as giving the audience a glimpse into who they are or if they have a sense of humor. The cast, with the exception of Mykelti Williamson, sadly doesn't help either. All of these actors are truly wooden and uniformly unwatchable, which further sinks this film. The gruesomeness of all the killings can't hide the fact that this film has little to offer, and that everyone involved was just phoning it in, waiting for the big bucks to come in. The production team is uninspired, which is essentially a perfect summary for this film: uninspired and almost unwatchable (and it gets a 2 mostly because of Mr. Williamson and the late Mr. Ellis).
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