Hopefully the "Final" one

Gory, scary movies are usually the things I enjoy. They are like a guilty pleasure to me. Friday I went to see the latest installment of a gore-fest in the form of "The Final Destination." One thing about "the" movies before I go on: when you take the name of your first movie, add "the" to the beginning, and release it as your fourth movie, there is a serious issue. Take the "The Fast and The Furious" franchise. For their fourth installment, they dropped the two "the's." That's all I'll say.

This was the fourth "Final Destination," and it reminded me a lot of the first one, which may have been my favorite. All the films have the same basic premise: a group of friends are at an event or somewhere with a lot of people, and one of the friends has a vision of a horrific catastrophe. When he snaps out of it, he gets his friends away, and in the process, saves some other bystanders.

In the case of this "Destination," a group of two men and two women are at a stock car race. One of the men, Nick O'Bannon, has a vision of a bloody demise as cars explode and the track basically collapses on itself. Shaken up, he urges his friends out of the venue, bringing along some unlikely companions he has disturbed while on his way out. Needless to say, the tragedy occurs, and the friends and about 5 bystanders survive.

Until a mysterious fate begins to kill the survivors off one by one. The reason "Final Destination" has survived for so long is because of the unique way people die. The watcher of the movie KNOWS the people will die, its just a question of how. And the people who create these movies find gory, bloody and exotic ways for each to die. Not by simple things; it usually takes a string of seemingly unrelated events to claim their victims.

As the survivors who die do so in order that they did in his vision, O'Bannon realizes that if he stops someone from dying, then the chain is broken, and the remaining survivors will live. That's as far as I'll go with the plot line; you'll have to see it for the rest.

Like I said, you don't go see this movie for plot or acting; you go for action and crazy death scenes. Though not as good as the others, it wasn't a terrible movie, and I did enjoy, and even laugh, at some of the craziness of the movie. "The Final Destination" is rated R for lots of gore, some nudity, language and general death/mayhem. Now playing at the Ronan Entertainer.