Final Destination 3 and Senseless American Carnage

Death has always had a plan in the Final Destination franchise, but it could be outwitted or, at least, temporarily stymied. The first film made a joke out of Its clumsiness, you could feel the mastermind behind the grand guignol mousetrap design get flustered when his prey eluded a fatal misstep. Final Destination 2 ended with a joke death, nevertheless a grim reminder. Until now, the series’s tone has been ghastly and unrelenting,  in keeping with the nation’s mood after the double-punch of Columbine and 9/11. By 2006, the death malaise had set in. Into the second half of the decade, melancholic meditations on terror and grieving like Munich and 25th Hour, made by Steven Spielberg and Spike Lee, respectively two of the most significant voices in cinema, had done the heavy lifting in trying to move forward from tragedy.  After the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and beheading videos, things got ugly. These real-life horrors gave way to torture porn that found success in the Saw and Hostel franchises, both rich in squalid prison camp ambience. 

Final Destination 3 went in the opposite direction, embracing newfound freedom with an onslaught of viscera. Funny, over-the-top viscera. Death was inevitable, but America was ready to laugh about it. 

By the third film, you know the routine, and Final Destination 3 is in a hurry to get to the bloodshed. Wendy Christensen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) takes digital photos of her friends as they line up for the Devil’s Flight rollercoaster. Bad omens pile up, and after a premonition, Wendy and her friends are pulled out of line. The coaster derails, death starts cleaning up after itself, the first film’s disastrous Flight 180 is namedropped and the pattern begins again. 

Death is more frustrated and vindictive from the outset. Fully in his element three films in, the traps are more brutal and graphic. His first two victims, Ashley and Ashlyn (Chelan Simmons and Crystal Lowe), are indiscernible but for their hair colour. Their stupidity aids Death and he takes full advantage as they ignore the salon owner’s warning not to bring beverages and then carelessly futz with the air conditioning. These are the first fatalities hard to pin entirely on the Grim Reaper.

These are quintessentially 2006 American deaths; deaths that could later wind up as Darwin Award runner-ups. Victims are either too stupid or boastful to notice the signs, all of which are less subtle this time around. Tanning salons were again spiking in popularity at the turn of the century and other victims are dispatched at well-known cultural meccas; fast food drive-throughs, home improvement big-box centres and town tricentennial celebrations. Yet even the goth-coded Ian McKinley (Kris Lemche), who attends McKinley High, named after the assassinated president, can’t make sense of them. 

“Manson made it to 70,” he says at their funeral. “Osama? Still kicking. Pimps, Vice Presidents walking around, all the atrocities they committed, they’re alive and well. These two girls, never done shit to anybody, they don’t get to make it to 18!”

This is the first of several casual Bin Laden namedrops (and a spot-on Dick Cheney attack). Later, Ian refers to his manager as “Osama Bin Supervisor”. Rage and punchlines. Lorne Michaels asked Rudy Guiliani if we could laugh again just a month after the attacks, but it took a while.  And, as always with comedy, context was hugely important.  There’s a reason a 2001 South Park episode entitled “Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants” could air, but Gilbert Gottfried’s throwaway line at Hugh Heffner’s Roast drew ire. 

“I lost an audience bigger than anybody has ever lost an audience,” said the late Gottfried of the 9/11 joke he told 18 days after the attacks. By 2007, though, Uwe Boll’s Postal would open (in limited release) with two 9/11 hijackers arguing about how many virgins they’d get in paradise. 

Now, the victims had it coming. Death is an invisible slasher with a skewed morality attached to his slaughter. Ashley and Ashlyn didn’t do anything, but their minor transgressions at the salon are framed as sins, the camera lingering on their every offence. They’re given no more character than Maxim magazine models and sexualize their self-care as if they’re at a notorious summer camp.

The same can be said of jock Lewis Romero’s death (Texas Battle - real name). Lewis is in a weight room full of other guys, hitting the stuffed bear mascot of their rival team and throwing large dumbbells around. The menacing male energy permeates the room far ranker than death. It was only a matter of time before one of the weights crushed Romero’s head.

The third has the best, most playful kills, tinged with a cruel 2006 detachment. Most victims only have a few minutes of screen time, like Frankie Cheeks (Sam Easton), who refers to himself only in the third person and dresses like an amateur pick-up artist before he gets a radiator fan to the back of the head. 

After his girlfriend is killed with repeated nails to the head at a mock ACE Hardware, Ian frantically tries to escape Death’s plan. A picture from Wendy’s camera implies he’ll be involved in her death, so he tries to get in her proximity, hoping It will pass by him.  Ian, in his black clothes,  hair and chains, poses a threat merely by existing. His affect is enough to put him in the path of a falling Cherry Picker. 

We’ve surpassed 9/11 jitters - and Columbine jitters as Ian slowly morphs into every parent’s nightmare of a school shooter (absent a gun, but he certainly looks like he listens to Marilyn Manson!). A photo of the shadow of an airliner over the Twin Towers is used as an omen, as is the last photo taken of Abraham Lincoln. The first two films did not indicate that signs of Death’s plan were a regular historical anomaly; Final Destination 3 insists it was always an American phenomenon.  

“Fuck you, Ben Franklin,” a character says at the tricentennial when he realizes his fate. 

Final Destination 3 is the funniest of the series, dropping any pretense of self-seriousness. Winstead is very good at carrying the film’s emotional core. But even the franchise’s harbinger Tony Todd, whose presence always connotes a grim tone, only appears in VoiceOver. With no current domestic tragedies to work through, the film is more untethered, free to indulge in unrepentant, often hysterical gore and wildly intricate mousetraps.  Death is unavoidable, as Final Destination 3 confirms with an impressive subway crash that kills off its remaining cast. Might as well have some fun in the interim.