FD4

The Final Destination. A very loft title for a movie that, if successful, will inevitably spurn another sequel, thus setting off a new title for the series The Next Final Destination. Taking a nod from Friday, then we have The Final Destination After Next.

A lot of people criticize the nature of this series. Yes, I recognize you can't kill death. Yes, this means that you can make an infinite number of these movies. Yes, the acting in this one was especially, especially bad. And, yes, these movies continue to entertain.

After enduring Halloween 2, I went to see FD4 and I had a blast. It's a fun, fun, gory, jump-scary movie. Critics complain that there was nothing new in this one. I disagree. The screenwriter, Eric Bress(The Butterfly Effect), went back to what worked in the first film. He also tossed in a bunch of nods to the first few films and together, it makes for a fun experience! The 3-D aspect adds a lot of fun to it as well. Objects fly out at you, including blood, organs and a dirty Band-Aid. My only complaint is that they should build the death scenes more. Give us more options for how it'll go down. Two great examples are the teacher's death in part one and the Lotto winner's death in part two.

I'm not bothering with plot summary. If you know these movies, it's all the same. If you don't, you'll never see it anyway. Here's the bottom line: if you're looking for mindless gory fun, check this one out, it's a good time. If you focus on acting and story, go see..actually, I don't think there's anything current that falls into either of those categories.

Random Notes: David R. Ellis returned to direct. He's behind the chair for Cellular, Final Destination 2, and of course the all-time classic, Snakes On A Plane. The original FD was based on an aborted X-Files script and you can tell from all the FBI presence in the movie. Glenn Morgan and James Wong worked on the X-Files and took care of FD 1 and 3. Ellis took care of 2 and Final.

Halloween 2

Okay, so I checked out Halloween 2. I'm sure a bunch of you are pretty pissed about the first one. Being a big fanboy myself, I have to admit I was pretty weary of it. Oddly enough, I ended up enjoying it. It's a well done slasher film. I could have done without the backwoods exposition of Michael's childhood, but the kills were great and we finally had a hulking, scary-ass Michael Myers. The only really decent Michael I remember was from Halloween 8. There were definitely other minor problems, but overall Halloween was a decent scare flick. Please note, I will NOT ever compare this movie to the original. It's like comparing The Office America to The Office Britain. They are two separate beings.

Zombie is a decent director. Say what you will about his music or his looks, but the man has a good vision and a good sense of what works(for the most part). I'm a huge fan of House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects: two very different halves of one story. In fact, I would go as far to say that Devil's is more of a road movie and House more of a horror movie. Zombie recognized that he couldn't mimic the first movie, so he created a totally different vibe and feel for Devil's. Ultimately, I think the film failed in the mainstream, but as a director, he succeeded.

So, cut to Halloween 2. Man, he really missed the boat this time around. As awesome as stabbings and face stompings are, there comes a point where they aren't fun anymore and it becomes difficult to watch. I would say 3-4 stabs is just about right. 21-24 stabbings is way, way over the line. Not to mention, one woman has her face smashed into a mirror about 17 times and they even cut the smashings to move it along more quickly. Here's a thought guys: only four smashings and you don't even need to speed up the process!

Characters are killed for absolutely no reason. A white horse, Michael's mother and Young Michael appear constantly to egg Present Michael on. A tough, nice survivor from the first film is killed(that's a major no-no in my horror book). So many things were wrong with this movie, there's too many to list here.

Let's stick to what worked. Zombie's eye once again shined. Great camera composition, lighting, etc. He really knows how to frame and light a scene. Roddy McDowell as Loomis was fantastic, and the turn his character took for this film was also very clever. Loomis has become a fame obsessed whore and will do anything for publicity. Unfortunately, they didn't know where to go with it and Loomis makes a quick and violent exit right near the end.

All in all, a sad, by-the-numbers follow-up to a decent re-imagining of the series.

Random Notes: Brad Douriff puts in a nice performance as the Sheriff. The kid from the ATT commercials(Matt Bush) that's always throwing away those rollover minutes has a few minutes onscreen in a mask before being dispatched, watch him in Adventureland, he's hilarious in that. Halloween 3-D has been greenlit with Patrick Lussier attached to direct and Todd Farmer to write. Lussier is best known recently for My Bloody Valentine 3-D and Todd Farmer is best known for writing Jason X and MBV3D.