David Farnor | On 22, May 2025

Director: James Wong
Cast: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Ryan Merriman, Chelan Simmons, Crystal Lowe, Texas Battle, Kris Lemche, Alexz Johnson, Sam Easton
Certificate: 15

First came a plane disaster, then came a road collision – and now, if vehicles aren’t scary enough for you, Final Destination 3 serves up a whole other form of horror on wheels: a rollercoaster gone wrong. The third entry in the death-stalks-victims franchise starts off loud and gets louder from there, dialling up the spectacle, if it isn’t doesn’t always do the same with the suspense.

We begin with Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) having a meltdown at an amusement park, as she and her classmates celebrate their graduation – and what better way to do it than board a ride called “Devil’s Flight”? The resulting premonition of the ride falling to pieces around their carriage is one of the most terrifying sequences in the entire Final Destination franchise, as it marries gruesome, relentless deaths with the unsettling awareness that the ride literally can’t be stopped. That feeling of control – or loss of it – makes for a disturbing and traumatic introduction. The film doesn’t quite recapture that level of horror over the ensuing 90 minutes.

Wendy’s panicked departure from the ride brings with her a familiar group of lucky escapees: her boyfriend, Kevin (a likeable Ryan Merriman), two shallow popular girls Ashley (Chelan Simmons) and Ashlyn (Crystal Lowe), athlete Lewis (Texas Battle), goth couple Ian (Kris Lemche) and Erin (Alexz Johnson), and the sleazy, sexist Frankie (Sam Easton, doing little to suggest the film condemns his character’s behaviour). Sure enough, they begin to be bumped off one by one, but not before Wendy gets a glimpse of what’s in store from them – this time, not through dreams or visions but through the photographs taken on a camera that night.

It’s a neat development of the franchise’s format, as it leans into the detective nature of attempting to prevent the future – and a young Mary Elizabeth Winstead delivers a superb lead turn that anchors the escalating chaos. The rest of the characters are less memorable than in the first two instalments – creator Jeffrey Reddick is notably absent from scripting duties – which gives little to hold on to other than the death sequences themselves.

James Wong, returning to the franchise after helming the first film, clearly relishes the opportunity to embrace the nastiness of a second sequel. There’s plenty of red stuff splashing about – and one particularly grim scene involving a tanning bed – but the more the film tries to build on the franchise’s scale rather than its substance, the more it veers away from the grounded, everyday fears that made the first two outings so disturbing. What began as a Rube Goldberg-fuelled nightmare here descends into death traps that are either too contrived for their own good, or feel cartoonishly implausible. Its opening sequence alone lingers after the end credits, even if the rest of the film ironically goes off the rails.

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