The Final Destination or Final Destination 4: How to Almost End a Franchise

Prepare yourselves horror fans because Final Destination 4 is not a cinematic masterpiece. It’s one of those movies you watch because you’re watching the set. This is no one’s favorite. The opening disaster sequence is hands down the worst and the visual effects are terrible. The movie was originally 3D and every 2-3 minutes it will remind you with some unnecessary flying objects. Tony Todd doesn’t even bother with a little voice acting cameo in this one. Strap in lemons.

Our friend group is hanging out at a local NASCAR race. I went to a bunch of these as a kid (No, I will not be answering questions.) and they are hobbyists rather than career racers. They are much smaller and simpler venues. Hunt (Nick Zano) (I struggled in my voice notes to keep that first letter and H cause God he is the WORST!) is already excited to see some crashes. These movies have a consistent issue with the whole saving the cat aspect of character development.

Lori (Shantel VanSanten) thanks her boyfriend Nick (Bobby Campo) for getting her away from studying for the afternoon. This is the one and only indication that these may be college-age kids. So they may be in college, but they don’t seem very dedicated to it. There’s a mother a few rows ahead shoving tampons in her kids’ ears to reduce the noise, I think? As though ear plugs aren’t already a thing.

A few rows up, we meet a comically racist dude. I’d love to think he is over the top, but I bet I’d be wrong. Since the security guard is black, there’s a little racial tension that I’m sure won’t be relevant later. I’m also sure that Final Destination 4 is entirely up to handling this delicate issue. Just in front we meet a mechanic and his girlfriend when she borrows Hunt’s binoculars…that are actually a flask. She’s in on the scheme, though, and polishes off his whiskey.

The stadium appears to be falling apart. It is in concerning levels of disrepair. This is worrying Nick, who feels the heebie-jeebies that all premonition havers get just before disaster. Lori suggests that the insignificant chain-link fence will protect them all from any flying debris. I admire her optimism. Nick is more on my level of assuming the worst when he notices they are in section 180. I don’t think he knows what that means, but we do.

The death omens pile up with shirts about death and an entire flyer listing all the drivers who have died. That seems like too many for this small race track. The evil death wind has entered the chat.

A car pulls into the pit but doesn’t give his crew the time needed to finish the stop. He pulls out without bothering to signal and with a tool left in the vehicle. I do not know what this tool does, I’m not a car girl, but I assume they are intended to be removed before driving. It falls onto the track, shredding the tire of the car behind. This car flips, sending a tire through that very protective fence and decapitates the mechanic’s girlfriend. All the other cars continue driving like someone didn’t just die.

The busted car bounces around and makes its way through the fence, too. It lands on and flattens several rows of people. Now the stadium is in a panic. Everyone heads for the exit. The racist and his girlfriend are bisected by flying metal before they even exit the row. An entire engine smashed crazy mom. The mechanic falls and gets impaled through the mouth by a bit of wood. It’s around this moment that you will notice there is way too much crap flying out at you and clock this was made in 3D. Prepare for that type of terrible effect all movie long.

Hunt and Janet (Haley Webb) who is Lori’s best friend, run for the exit but the row of seats from above fall on top of them. We are left with just Nick, Lori, and our new friend, the security guard George (Mykelti Williamson). A car in the stands explodes, killing Lori and George, then Nick falls back and is impaled. Again, because that can be done in over the top 3D!

And zoom! Back to before the car crash. Nick predicts things that are about to happen, like tampon earplugs and freaks out about crashes. This instigates a fight as required by the Final Destination gods. A group is forced out of the stadium where they all argue about Nick’s little panic attack. We hear the crash start.

Carter (Justin Welborn) our racist friend, attempts to go back inside because he would not let his wife come out to the argument, but George stops him. The building is in mid collapse and this is a good move, but Carter is pissed. People pour out of the building and we think our group is safe just as a car tire escapes the stadium and decapitates the mechanic’s wife.

Title card! I do like these. They’re x-rays of deaths that have come before. In better movies.

Our group of friends meet up at a coffee shop to discuss their near miss with death. Hunt actually attributes some of their survival to his lucky coin. He may be one of the most insufferable characters ever put to film. The news says that 52 people died at the McKinley (OMG like the high school in the 3rd movie!) Speedway. That’s probably higher than most days.

Nick and Lori go to the memorial for those who didn’t have a psychic in the group. Samantha (Krista Allen) the mom, thanks Nick for saving her family. The security guard stops to talk to them as well. I guess we’re all friends. Well, except for Carter, who takes this opportunity to blame George for his wife’s death. He drops a hard r n-word and calls him chocolate. He is really trying to out do Hunt here. I got he was a racist asshole without all the colorful language.

That night, Nick has a premonition so over the top that it practically assaults the viewer. Flashes of images fly of out the screen with the worst CGI 1995 had to offer. Lori assures him it was all a nightmare, but I see that supernatural wind blowing.

We skip across town to Carter! He’s driving a tow truck. It’s a pretty hefty one. He’s also drinking copious amounts of Hice Pale Ale. He’s on his was to George’s house. For nefarious purposes, I assume. George is sitting quietly in his house, talking to his mom and reading an Alcoholics Anonymous book. Another topic I’m not sure this movie is up to covering.

Carter rolls up and I kid you not, pulls a wooden cross out of the back of the truck. He is here for a cross burning. Some wind rolls in and knocks his mirror decor down and causes the truck to drive all on its own. He chases it, getting hooked by his own truck and dragged down the street. The friction and gas leaking from the truck light him on fire. Honestly, I’m not too cut up. There’s a giant explosion so we can have some things fly out at us and Carter’s head ends up on George’s lawn.

Nick sees the door of George’s house on the news and recognizes it from his dream vision! Just as vision number 2 checks in. Where do these come from? There is so much information in his visions that we have never gotten before. All Alex got was a scrap of porn paper with Tod’s name on it.

Tampon mom and her kids arrive at a salon. She gives her kids like $10 to go to an arcade so she can get her hair done. Unless it was really different back in 2009, that will not last long. Each game is like $2.50 now. The salon does not have time for mom tonight, but she annoys them into taking her. There is a terrible toenail cleaning scene in this one. Just awful. It makes a scraping sound and everything. It had to be worse in 3D, honestly.

A lot of things are going wrong in the salon. The fan is falling out of the ceiling, some hairspray is hanging out with a flat iron, and the chair keeps falling down. We are all prepared for any of these things to kill her. And the hairspray launches into the air, knocking the fan down, but everyone is fine. As they go to leave, the lawnmower across the street runs over a rock and flings it right through her eye. But her hair looked good.

Nick and the crew find out about her death in a newspaper article. A printed one. So this must be at least a day or so later. Nick and Lori handled the Google portion of this movie off screen for us and they are ready to update Janet and Hunt about all the happenings. They tell them about Flight 180 and about the intervening to save a life thing, and about the premonitions. They think if they can save someone, death will move on. We discuss this every time and you’d think somewhere the correct information on that would be Google-able.

Premonition number 3 slaps Nick. And by Nick, I mean the viewer. These are insane. And each one ends with it’s here. I don’t know what or who it is, but they are here. He has no idea who is up next, so they head to the wreckage of the stadium to see if he can remember. He cannot. George catches them trespassing, but instead of throwing them out, he is down to show them all the camera footage of dozens of people’s deaths. I have no idea why he believed them.

Nick figures out that the mechanic, Andy (Andrew Fiscella) is next. They don’t know his name yet, but they know where he works. The most disturbing part of this movie might be that Andy is at work all of 4 days after his wife died. Nick is really blunt about telling Andy he is going to die. There had to be a different approach. George appeals to his grief by sharing that he, too, lost a wife and daughter in a drunk driving accident where he was the drunk driver. What?!

Predictably, Andy’s boss wants these crazies out. They stand on the opposite side of the fence from Andy and try to explain. Nick gets a bad feeling. An impossible series of accidents occur that lead to a propane tank opening and high-speed hurdling toward Andy where he gets pushed, in pieces, through the chain-link fence. It’s not an impressive effect.

Now we don’t know who is next, so Nick goes to look for Hunt and George and Lori look for Janet. Nick passes a sign that says ‘Clear River’s Water’ and has a premonition, but all he gets out of it is water is bad. He passes this along to Lori.

Hunt is at the pool. He’s engaging in some adult activities in a lightweight tent all of 2 inches from children and disappointing a woman. I imagine this is pretty normal for him. He leaves the tent and argues with a child who squirted him with a water gun. The kid refuses to give the gun up, so Hunt gets raving mad, throws him in the water, and busts the poor kid’s floatie. He tosses the water gun behind a fence where it interferes with the pool equipment. I bet that’s fine. And he got his phone wet, so it doesn’t work now.

Janet is on her way to a car wash. She answers Lori’s call just long enough to tell her she is getting her car cleaned and hangs up. Janet doesn’t follow safety instructions and leaves her antenna up in the wash. It breaks off and hits the electrical wiring in the car wash. This stops the tracks and the car from moving forward. She tries to open her door, into one of those spinning rag things, but can’t. She tries to drive out but her car is still engaged in the track. But her sunroof opens on its own. Just in time for the pipe above it to burst and fill the car with water.

She sticks her head out to breathe. Now the tracks start up again, driving her toward another spinning rag thing, but this one goes on top of the car. Now, I think we are supposed to be worried that thing will decapitate her. But. They move higher and lower depending on the height of the car in the wash. I kinda think she would just get an aggressive hair wash. It doesn’t matter though because Lori and George show up and use his car to push Janet’s car back away from harm. She’s saved! Maybe if she was ever in danger.

Hunt drops his lucky coin in the pool. It gets sucked down the most over powered drain ever known to man. I know Hunt turned the drain on high power when he dropped the water gun on it, but wow, is this thing intense. He swims to the bottom and gets his butt stuck on the drain. He cannot get off. Like, exactly, at his butthole. Bad luck dude. Nick shows up looking for Hunt, but he’s underwater and no one sees him. Nick doesn’t see him. Just as Nick thinks all is fine at the pool, all of Hunt’s insides are sucked out of his butthole and spew out of the pool’s drainage system. New fear unlocked.

Nick and Lori head home to death proof their apartment. This has never worked in the history of Final Destination and it will not work today. Wind blows by and knocks over a glass which leaves the words, ’By action they are saved’ untouched. They take this to mean that they have defeated death! Why did this happen? We all know that saving one person does nothing but change the order.

They go to tell George the good news and find him trying to hang himself. Apparently, he spent the day trying to commit suicide. Figured he’d give death a hand. He wasn’t able to, though. This calls for a celebration because it must mean they are all safe forever.

Some time later after death took a little me time, Nick and Lori are packing for vacation! Lori is out to see a movie with Janet. But death has other plans. Nick gets a premonition. He sees on TV that there was another survivor! It was a cowboy that they had asked to move seats in Nick’s premonition but not in real life because they were too busy fighting! Cowboy has been in a coma this whole time and I don’t know if that is a win for him.

Nick calls up George and they meet at the hospital. There’s an elderly and very immobile man, also racist, waiting for a bath. The orderly has to step out and leaves the tub running so water is overflowing everywhere. It’s almost absurd. There are like 4 inches of water in this room, and why has no one seen it in the hallway? Below him is the cowboy. Who is miraculously awoken from his coma by the water dripping from the ceiling. And then tiles falling down and pouring water. He manages to get himself out of the bed. Which is incredible if he’s been in a coma all this time. Nick and George find him crawling across the room when the tub from above collapses through the floor and onto him. I guess they’re too late.

Nick and George are rushing to the mall to find Lori and Janet. They take all of 5 steps out of the hospital when George is hit by an ambulance going 400 miles an hour. Nick makes sure he’s dead but has shit to do, so he heads off. But not before he has a premonition of a fire.

The theater in the mall is under construction. Lori is noticing some strange things at the movie. Things that happened at the racetrack too. She’s getting spooked by Janet is not here for this. Nick arrives to find about 80 showings of this movie. He finally finds Lori, but Janet will not leave. They just get to watch her explode before racing out of the collapsing mall.

They’re on the escalator (Side note: Don’t use these in an emergency if at all possible!) when it falls apart and Lori’s leg gets stuck in the gears and then all of Lori is run through them. Ah. But WAIT! Flash back to just before George was hit by the ambulance and this, again, was all a premonition! We knew they’d reuse the double premonition thing. To way worse effect in this movie.

George is still hit. There was no time, really. This time, Nick doesn’t bother to check on him. Instead of looking for Lori, Nick heads to the construction area. We find they are storing dozens of barrels of explosives, so that explains why the whole damn mall collapsed. There’s already a fire going, but he gets most of that out with the fire extinguisher. He is stamping out the last bit, but incautiously tossed the empty extinguisher and it knocked over a nail gun that sent ashes into the air. They land in a woodpile that instantly lights. I don’t think so, but here we are. The nail gun repeatedly goes off, nailing Nick to a concrete beam. He can’t reach the new fire!

He grabs a long wood piece and holds the flaming end up to the automatic sprinkler system, setting it off and saving the day. I do not know why the copious amounts of smoke didn’t set that baby off, anyway.

Two weeks later, the 3 remaining friends meet at the coffee shop again. Nick is giving out safety tips like candy. People are less annoyed by this than I think is realistic, but maybe I’m just jaded. Everyone is 100% sure they are safe now. But there are some ads in the shop for the mall, and the pool, and the movie. And Nick is feeling the spookies. He says, ‘What if this is where we were supposed to be all along? What if this was death’s plan?’

And then they get hit by a Mac truck. And Nick. That would be the stupidest possible shit ever. Why would death plan to have you cheat him a bunch of time and hit you with a truck inside a coffee shop? This is why everyone hates you FD4. Don’t miss next week’s Final Destination 5 recap. Final Destination Bloodlines is almost here, lemons! I hope you’re all as unreasonably excited as I am.