BOTTOM LINE: This fourth entry in the horror franchise is dead on arrival, proving that its ‘cheating death’ concept is tired and old, and the addition of 3D simply makes the whole experience even more ridiculous.

THE GOOD: The core concept of a group of teenagers that cheat death after seeing a premonition of warning, and then death catching up with them is a good premise and a reason why the ‘Final Destination’ series has made it to four films. This time, the teenagers are at a race track and one of them has a premonition of a spectacular crash which kills everyone. As before, a group make it out alive, but soon, each member of the group begins to die, one by one, in the order they were meant to die in the original crash. Although a horror film in the sense that you see lots of blood and people getting killed in varied and unique ways, this film treats all of that in terms of pure, light-hearted entertainment. The death scenes are so over the top as to encourage a laugh rather than a scare. This is not necessarily a bad thing because some of it so gruesome that it would be unpleasant if it were not funny. “The Final Destination” basically covers the same ground as the previous films and will no doubt appeal to those who like this sort of thing.

THE BAD: Premise aside, this film has now proven that the franchise is old and tired. Seeing essentially the same idea again is boring, and the gimmick of 3D only serves to make the film worse. Each 3D death scene is ridiculously gory, and looks particularly fake. I am not sure what enjoyment one can get at seeing people’s body parts flying at them from the screen. The creepy atmosphere that was prevalent in the original film is nowhere to be found here, giving the proceedings an arbitrary tone. None of the characters in this film are endearing, or matter that much, so you do not feel anything when they die other than the recoil from the shock when a death occurs; and the shock in this case is more about how amazed you are at how stupid each death is. All in all, the entire exercise of watching this film is a ridiculous bore, and proves that they should stop making more of them.