2009 The Final Destination

• AKA “Final Destination 4”
• Directed by David R. Ellis
• Written by Eric Bress, Jeffrey Reddick
• Stars Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 22 minutes
• Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gcQCUfDzjc
• Get it: https://amzn.to/3RJtJh0

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

In hindsight, this was called “Final Destination 4,” but at the time it was planned to be the last one. We didn’t see the 3D version, but it’s clear they were filming it with that in mind. It wasn’t as strong as the previous three. The main character has too many premonitions regarding the deaths that give away too many hints ahead of time. It still has the chain-of-events death scenes, but they weren’t quite as fun this time. It’s pretty good, but the weakest of the four.

Spoilery Synopsis

This one begins at the racetrack, as the cars speed around the loop and the fans cheer. We zoom in on Nick, explaining that they’re only really watching in case there’s a crash. Hunt, Janet, and Lori are there as well. Nick notices that the speedway is really old, with crumbling walls and broken bleachers. Janet asks, “Is it safe to sit here?” “Of course, there’s a fence here.” As we see a closeup of the fence bolts starting to vibrate loose.

Nick starts getting a weird feeling. 

We cut to someone knocking over an oil can, and a car drives off with a gas nozzle left inside. A car drives over the nozzle and flips over repeatedly. A tire kills one of the spectators, and a car lands in the stands. Pieces of cars fly everywhere, the stands collapse and catch fire. People get sliced in half, trampled, impaled, burned, and squashed.  Everyone dies!

Back a moment ago, Nick remembers what’s about to happen and displays his knowledge of the very near future. “We have to get out of here. We’re all going to die.” This devolves into a fight, and a bunch of people end up chasing them outside. 

Outside, Nick and the guys watch as mayhem ensues inside. The racist guy’s wife got left behind. A woman still gets killed by a flying tire– credits roll. 

Nick, Hunt, Lori, and Janet talk about what happened at a coffee shop. The death toll is at 52, and they talk about going to the memorial. At the memorial, they talk to a few of the other survivors: some are thankful, and some aren’t. One racist guy makes a scene with George, the black security guard. 

Later, the racist guy drives to George’s house and puts a cross to burn in his front yard. Through a sequence of coincidences, his tow truck drives away and drags him down the street. He catches fire and then the truck explodes, dumping his head right in front of George. 

Nick watches the news report on TV, and he dreamed about that last night. He gets another premonition. 

Next up is the mother with two kids. She goes to the beauty salon, and we see that the chair is faulty. There are curling irons, chemical treatments, sharp pedicuring tools, and a wobbling ceiling fan. What could go wrong? Everything goes wrong all at once, but everyone is fine. Then they go outside and she gets hit in the head with a rock thrown from a lawn mower. 

Nick and Lori tell Janet and Hunt about Nick’s most recent vision and also about the events of the previous movies. They are all going to die at some point soon. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. 

Nick and Lori go back to the racetrack to help him remember the order in which people died in his vision. They run into George, who shows them video of the incident. That reminds him of the sequence of deaths. 

They go to talk to Andy, a mechanic who should be next to die. He was the one whose wife died by flying tire after they escaped. The garage where he works is an obvious deathtrap, He dies as the others talk to him. Hunt and Janet are next, but they died at the same time. 

Hunt is at the country club, hanging around the pool. Janet is picking up dry cleaning and has trouble with her car’s sunroof. Nick gets another premonition that Hunt is going to die in water. 

Hunt accidentally starts the pool drain, which has crazy pressure. A golf ball mishap makes Hunt drop his lucky coin in the pool, so he dives down after it. The drain suction grabs onto Hunt and pulls him down. The pump needs revenge, however, and cranks itself up to eleven, sucking Hunt’s guts out. The pump explodes with blood, intestines, and a lucky coin just as Nick arrives. 

Janet goes to the coin-op automatic car wash. Something gets a short and the car gets stuck. Suddenly, the sunroof opens, just as a pipe breaks and fills the car with water. She sticks her head in the sunroof to avoid drowning, but then Lori and George arrive to help. 

They saved Janet, so does that break the chain? George knows he should be next. He killed his own family in a drunken traffic accident a few years back, and he’s not against the idea of joining them.  

Lori and Nick go to George’s house and find him hanging but the rope breaks. He’s been trying to kill himself all day. For some reason, he can’t die. They all decide that’s good news, and the cycle has been broken. 

Nick has a premonition– he forgot about one of the victims, who has just died. The cycle is back on. 

Meanwhile, George gets flattened by an ambulance. 

Lori and Janet meet for lunch. We see some construction going on outside, and someone is playing with RC cars. Lori gets her shoestring caught in an escalator, but that doesn’t go anywhere. The two go to a movie in the mall. We see that a fire has started in a room full of flammable liquids right behind the theater screen. Lori starts getting premonitions now, and she wants to leave. She leaves with Nick, and Janet stays behind. Then the film explodes, killing Janet. 

The whole mall starts exploding ,and there’s a mass panic. Lori has another run in with the escalator, and this time it eats her. 

Nick flashes back to the instant after George died. It’s too late to save him, but maybe he can get to Lori and Janet faster this time. He goes to the room with the fire and tries to prevent it, but he doesn’t have much luck at first. Actually, he’s attacked by a nail gun. He manages to set off the sprinklers, which douses the flames. 

Two weeks later, Nick meets Lori and Janet at the coffee shop. Nick wonders “What if we didn’t change anything?” As a giant semi truck blasts through the window, killing them all. 

Brian’s Commentary

The main incident was based on a real racing crash and chain reaction from 1955 – the Le Mans disaster – that killed 84 people and injured over 100, many in the same way as depicted here. This one was filmed in 3D, which is obvious from some of the obviously set-up shots we get. Nick’s visions are all bad CGI, and those shots didn’t hold up well at all. 

It mostly follows the same formula as the previous films. This one adds Nick getting premonitions of how everyone is going to die with the freak accidents, which I think lessened the impact of the weird accidents. This time, Nick also gets yet another chance to rewind, and that lessened the impact even more. 

Kevin’s Commentary

This was my least favorite of the four, a step in the wrong direction. There was too much premonition going on. I suspect they were trying to make it a little different to shake things up, but they shouldn’t have. It’s okay, but not as good.