224) Final Destination 2 (2003) and 225) Final Destination 3 (2006)

224) Final Destination 2 (2003) Dir: David R. Ellis Date Released: January 2003 Date Seen: July 25th, 2009 Rating: 3.5/5 

225) Final Destination 3 (2006) Dir: James Wong Date Released: February 2006 Date Seen: July 25th, 2009 Rating: 2.25/5

It's interesting to note that the Final Destination films have thus far bounced back-and-forth between two filmmakers. 1 & 3 were directed by James Wong and 2 & the soon-to-be-released 4 by David R. Ellis. The franchise's first sequels signal an ongoing tug-of-war going on between Ellis and Wong's respective approaches to this deliriously silly horror franchise about killing egotistical teens in exciting and new ways. It's also a rare instance where the progenitor of a horror franchise has been A) willing but also B) unable to successfully reclaim his own baby.

Ellis' sequel took the concept of Wong's original film and made it more fast, loose and intentionally comic. The deaths were more Raimi-ian than in the first film and consistently more elaborate. Wong's second entry in the franchise however tried to reinvent the series, insisting that it be taken more seriously than Ellis' film and falling flat on its face for it. By tweaking the concept of how the characters can anticipate and then cheat  "Death's design" is even more silly in 3 than it is in 1--something about photos as opposed to looking at the flight manifest for where the teen should-be victims would have sat--and the best death scenes are lumped together at the beginning and end. 

I'm eager to see what Ellis has in store with 4 (like 3, it will be in 3D!). The fact that he's returning, with a sequel definitively titled The Final Destination no less, suggests that some higher-up trusts him more than Wong to take the series out in zany style and with good reason.

RV!: Final Destination (2000)

RV!: Final Destination (2000) Dir: James Wong Date Released: March 2000 Date Seen: June 18th, 2009 Rating: 3.25/5

In some parallel universe, where being deadly afraid of everything and nothing is how children are instructed on how to live their lives, James Wong's Final Destination is being taught in Driver's Ed. As a cautionary tale for adolescents that think they're going to live forever, the characters in it are so delightfully paranoid that watching them get picked off one-by-one becomes weirdly transfixing even in the face of laughably horrid dialogue and gaping plot holes.

 The kids in Final Destination are wound so tight that they're not even punished because they want to have fun but rather because they think they're invincible, a thought straight out of a corny video about how just a couple of beers can lead to MURDER. There's zero parental supervision for the film's teenage protagonists, all of whom cheat Death after they miss their flight to Paris. Still, because they all jumped ship in a panic after Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) warns them that the plane will explode, they must be punished. 

All of them have an unmistakably cocky air about them, even Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), the most introverted of wallflowers--"Gives me a rush. Doing something I'm not supposed to," she says as she breaks into the morgue. As they dodge faulty household appliances and stray buses, the one thought buzzing about in their heads is, to quote Alex, "I don't have a narcissistic deity complex;" I'm just a teen. Death to all high schoolers!

Note: Kudos to the casting director that chose Tony Todd to deliver a charmingly hammy soliloquy about "death's sadistic design." His Vincent Price-esque over-acting is unmistakable and in the case of this film, indispensable. That scene almost makes me forgive the decision to cast Sawa, whose ineffectual squirming in this film just makes me want to slap him.

101) Dragonball Evolution (2009)

101) Dragonball Evolution (2009) Dir: James Wong Date Released: April 2009 Date Seen: April 10th, 2009 Rating: 2.5/5

At one point in the film, Chow Yun-Fat's character is healing the main character and when he jolts upright with a wince, Chow chortles: "Pain is good." Tru dat. See my forthcoming review for the New York Press.