Friday, February 10, 2006

With every beautiful heel pointed

Goddamn my Busy Brain™. Last night when trying to sleep, I was having such bizarre thoughts that I then began to think if I could get one of those contraptions that transfers my thoughts directly to this blog like Bobbi Anderson has in The Tommyknockers, then I'd have one of the most bizarre, interesting and probably schizoid blogs around. Of course, should a mental health professional ever stumble across it then they would probably try and track me down and section me. Ah well.

So last night was frustrating. Two mutual friends are falling out with each other and I seem to be trapped in the middle. Without going into too much detail, as it's entirely too complicated and more than a little dull to type out, the whole situation is fucked up and I have been trying to mediate with them but it's just ending up frustrating me. I'm not making matters any better and I sure as shit don't want to make them any worse, so I am going to bow out and let them fight it out between themselves.

It's been six years since, having apparently run out of humans to have as killers, Death itself became a slasher in Final Destination. With a concept so high that, were it a building Superman would be hard pushed to leap it in a single bound, the movie followed 7 high schoolers who, following Alex (Devon Sawa) having a premonition about the plane exploding shortly after take off, disembark a flight to France. Death, apparently pissed at having its plans scuppered, comes after them and offs them in a series of inventive accidents. It was a modest hit and should have been left alone. But of course, the old adage of "too much is never enough" was seemingly coined in Hollywood so three years later, we got Final Destination 2 with a highway pile up in place of a plane explosion, more elaborate deaths and in a desperate bid to tie the films together, Ali Larter reprises her role from the first film. She and Devon Sawa were the only two to reach the end credits of part one still breathing, but Devon apparently had better things to do than show up for the sequel, so his character is killed off with a newspaper obit in the opening credits. What the better things Mr Sawa had to do is anybody's guess though as he doesn't seem to have worked since.



Surely that's enough, right? One sequel should surely suffice. Well no. So now in what is surely the least eagerly awaited second sequel so far (and I say so far because I'm sure it's only a matter of time until Big Momma's House 3 is greenlit, an event that will have me being talked down from a tall building), today sees the release of Final Destination 3. Instead of planes or cars going ka-boom, this time a roller coaster goes off the rails in spectacular fashion. Once more, Death is PISSED that some people escaped and so sets about creating even more crazily elaborate set pieces to off the survivors in increasingly bloody but oddly satisfying ways. There's a big problem though. With part 2, it was a cross section of people who were on the run from death. Here, same as part 1, it's a bunch of high school seniors. Sadly, the writing can't elevate the stereotypes on show (the goth, the jock, the pretty bitches, the girl who doesn't fit in and so on and so on) into anything remotely believable. And some of the actors really don't look 17. Kris Lemche in particular is 27 and looks every day of it. The most exciting part of the film for me was the discovery that one of the cast's real name is Texas Battle. Anyone want to bet his friends call him Alamo?

2 comments:

doomed to be fabulous said...

Great review of the FINAL DESINATION films, Pops!

Popcultureboy said...

Why thank you :-)