Final Destination 3 (2006)

I believe this is what is called "going to the well once too often." This film tries hard to duplicate the nasty black humor of Final Destination 2 (the queasy paranoia that infused the original is all but forgotten), but the writers try too hard to top themselves and the whole enterprise feels overly studied and mechanical. The problems start with the opening sequence, which is a blur of movement lacking either the menace of the first film or the crazed logistics of the second; the subsequent ledger-straightening skips so quickly from victim to victim that there's no time to actually give a shit about any of these people or their deaths. It's a brutish, cynical thing with demises that are absurdly overthought (the engine death? gruesome, but PLEASE) and payoffs that hardly seem worth the trouble. There's one perfect cut early on in the film that deserves to be seen, but otherwise this is a dead zone. If this film were a machine, its only function would be to turn itself on.

Grade: C