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• FINAL DESTINATION, THE 3D (DVD MOVIE)

Death is just as omnipresent as ever, and in Final Destination 5 it strikes again. During the bus ride to a corporate retreat, Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) has a premonition in which he and most of his friends â€" as well as numerous others â€" die in a horrific bridge collapse. When his vision ends, events begin to mirror what he had seen, and he frantically ushers as many of his colleagues â€" including his friend, Peter (Miles Fisher), and girlfriend, Molly (Emma Bell) â€" away from the disaster before Death can claim them. But these unsuspecting souls were never supposed to survive, and in a terrifying race against time, the ill-fated group tries to discover a way to escape Death’s sinister agenda. Moviedom's most fatalistic franchise returns in efficient form in Final Destination 5, an installment that goes for broke in its big opening s! et piece. This time the initial disaster happens on a suspension bridge that turns out to be all too vulnerable to high winds and an over-aggressive repair project. The employees of Presage Plus (ha ha) are in a bus crossing the span when Sam (Nicholas D'Agosto) pre-envisions the bloody disaster to come; panicked, he urges his friends to scamper off the bridge just in time to avoid the collapse. You know what comes next: the survivors face certain death as Fate demands its deferred payment, and a coroner (Tony Todd, thankfully returning to the series) intones dark wisdom about the price that must be paid. Director Steven Quale understands that the audience expects the horrifyingly convoluted deaths of the previous pictures; each new demise is like the result of a crowd at an improv theater shouting out different ideas to weave together (hmm, what can we do with a leaky air conditioner, a loose screw, and a set of uneven parallel bars?). The results--shot for 3-D release, no! less--will not disappoint die-hard fans, and even the actors ! are bear able this time around: D'Agosto, from the underrated Fired Up!, pairs nicely with Emma Bell, P.J. Byrne gets off a few unctuous one-liners, and David Koechner does his clueless jerk routine as the Presage Plus boss from hell. The final sequence, while not making any sense according to the rules we've been watching, does tie up the entire series in a neat bow. Until the next sequel, anyway. --Robert HortonDeath is just as omnipresent as ever, and in Final Destination 5 it strikes again. During the bus ride to a corporate retreat, Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) has a premonition in which he and most of his friends â€" as well as numerous others â€" die in a horrific bridge collapse. When his vision ends, events begin to mirror what he had seen, and he frantically ushers as many of his colleagues â€" including his friend, Peter (Miles Fisher), and girlfriend, Molly (Emma Bell) â€" away from the disaster before Death can claim them. But these unsuspecting souls w! ere never supposed to survive, and in a terrifying race against time, the ill-fated group tries to discover a way to escape Death’s sinister agenda. Moviedom's most fatalistic franchise returns in efficient form in Final Destination 5, an installment that goes for broke in its big opening set piece. This time the initial disaster happens on a suspension bridge that turns out to be all too vulnerable to high winds and an over-aggressive repair project. The employees of Presage Plus (ha ha) are in a bus crossing the span when Sam (Nicholas D'Agosto) pre-envisions the bloody disaster to come; panicked, he urges his friends to scamper off the bridge just in time to avoid the collapse. You know what comes next: the survivors face certain death as Fate demands its deferred payment, and a coroner (Tony Todd, thankfully returning to the series) intones dark wisdom about the price that must be paid. Director Steven Quale understands that the audience expects the horrifyingl! y convoluted deaths of the previous pictures; each new demise ! is like the result of a crowd at an improv theater shouting out different ideas to weave together (hmm, what can we do with a leaky air conditioner, a loose screw, and a set of uneven parallel bars?). The results--shot for 3-D release, no less--will not disappoint die-hard fans, and even the actors are bearable this time around: D'Agosto, from the underrated Fired Up!, pairs nicely with Emma Bell, P.J. Byrne gets off a few unctuous one-liners, and David Koechner does his clueless jerk routine as the Presage Plus boss from hell. The final sequence, while not making any sense according to the rules we've been watching, does tie up the entire series in a neat bow. Until the next sequel, anyway. --Robert HortonDeath is just as omnipresent as ever, and in Final Destination 5 it strikes again. During the bus ride to a corporate retreat, Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) has a premonition in which he and most of his friends â€" as well as numerous others â€" die in a horrific ! bridge collapse. When his vision ends, events begin to mirror what he had seen, and he frantically ushers as many of his colleagues â€" including his friend, Peter (Miles Fisher), and girlfriend, Molly (Emma Bell) â€" away from the disaster before Death can claim them. But these unsuspecting souls were never supposed to survive, and in a terrifying race against time, the ill-fated group tries to discover a way to escape Death’s sinister agenda. Moviedom's most fatalistic franchise returns in efficient form in Final Destination 5, an installment that goes for broke in its big opening set piece. This time the initial disaster happens on a suspension bridge that turns out to be all too vulnerable to high winds and an over-aggressive repair project. The employees of Presage Plus (ha ha) are in a bus crossing the span when Sam (Nicholas D'Agosto) pre-envisions the bloody disaster to come; panicked, he urges his friends to scamper off the bridge just in time to avoid the! collapse. You know what comes next: the survivors face certai! n death as Fate demands its deferred payment, and a coroner (Tony Todd, thankfully returning to the series) intones dark wisdom about the price that must be paid. Director Steven Quale understands that the audience expects the horrifyingly convoluted deaths of the previous pictures; each new demise is like the result of a crowd at an improv theater shouting out different ideas to weave together (hmm, what can we do with a leaky air conditioner, a loose screw, and a set of uneven parallel bars?). The results--shot for 3-D release, no less--will not disappoint die-hard fans, and even the actors are bearable this time around: D'Agosto, from the underrated Fired Up!, pairs nicely with Emma Bell, P.J. Byrne gets off a few unctuous one-liners, and David Koechner does his clueless jerk routine as the Presage Plus boss from hell. The final sequence, while not making any sense according to the rules we've been watching, does tie up the entire series in a neat bow. Until the next seque! l, anyway. --Robert HortonFINAL DESTINATION - DVD MovieInstallment #4 in the premonition-laden Final Destination series (this one called simply The Final Destination) comes on like a poker-faced send-up of the previous episodes, featuring a collection of hilariously over-the-top deaths and the usual array of Rube Goldberg set-ups--except this time the chain reactions rarely result in mayhem. Fate, it seems, is more random than that. We open at a racetrack, where vapid teen Bobby Campo has a vision of slaughter involving cars crashing and bleachers crumbling. When he hustles girlfriend Shantal VanSanten and their friends out of the grandstands before the real conflagration, it doesn't take long to figure out that their time is going to come, and soon. (Which they would have known if they'd watched the first three Final Destination movies.) From there, it's just waiting around for the killings, which this time utilize a car wash, a beauty parlor, a! nd a tow truck run amok. Perhaps the gruesomeness of the death! s this t ime is explained by the cheapjack production (gotta grab 'em with something) and surely the many jabbing, jutting implements are there because the film was released to some theaters in 3-D. As for the death that occurs in a swimming-pool drain, it seems somebody read Chuck Palahniuk's notorious story "Guts," or at least had an ear for urban legends. The bland characters and tin-ear dialogue don't help anything, even if the climactic sequence in a movie theater showing a 3-D film suggests a lurking sense of self-awareness. Moral: there may be three dimensions, but there's only one destination. --Robert Horton