Parents' Guide to The Final Destination

Even with 3D making for a unique viewing experience, the fact is that The Final Destination is a fairly dull affair. And the gloss of spilled blood can't make up for the dreary tedium of the film's central pitch: If death is coming, and unavoidable, then watching these films mostly involves waiting for people to die, with no hope of their salvation. The actors are all adequate -- although one-time Oscar nominee Mykelti Williamson is far better than this material.

Director David R. Ellis knows what the fans of this series expect, and he doesn't fail to deliver the bloody accidents and deadly blows of the franchise. But he doesn't deliver anything else -- character development that would make us care about the people being killed, for instance, or twists in the narrative other than wondering when the next victim will die and how ... which is intermittently amusing, but not a foundation for a film, especially one we've seen three times before. At the very least, the 3D gimmick makes The Final Destination pop a little more than a conventional part four, but even the guts and gore leaping off the screen can't make up for the way The Final Destination's story just lies there.