Final Destination 3

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Week in and week out, horror movies cheat us, so it's wonderfully cathartic to watch a bunch of kids cheat death in what turns out to be the best installment yet in the "Final Destination" franchise.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

A welcome antidote to the depressing, feel-bad sadism of recent horror hits like Hostel and Saw II, Final Destination 3 puts the fun back in watching stupid people die Rube Goldberg-elaborate, ridiculously gory deaths.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Except for the rock soundtrack, these movies could be silent - and probably should be.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

With each new outing, the Final Destination movies are getting better.

Empire Kim Newman

Sequelcraft 101 – if you liked the others, this is more of the same. Extra points for using a nailgun on pigeons.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

The plot's pretty lame, the dialogue is downright hokey, and the characters are a bore, but somehow Final Destination 3 (an oxymoron if there ever was one) still delivers a certain degree of over-the-top amusement.

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

Director James Wong and co-writer Glen Morgan seem, in this film's creaky first third, to be working on automatic pilot, but they gradually cut loose, staging one imaginative and gleefully gruesome death after another.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

What makes all of this ''fun,'' instead of dark or threatening, is that the victim was an idiot who leered at the class teases with horny glee.

Variety Justin Chang

In the story's one major stroke of invention, the usual premonitions of death have been replaced with a set of photos.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

It makes it clearer than ever before that these films are comedy. Granted, the sick kind of comedy that involves laughing at stupid people being ripped in half, but we know there are plenty of you out there.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The problem with "FD3" is since it is clear to everyone who must die and in what order, the drama is reduced to a formula in which ominous events accumulate while the teenagers remain oblivious.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

A horror film (or, more accurately, a shocker film) that takes such exuberant, gleeful delight in the unspeakably gory dispatch of assorted teenagers that it may well be the most fun you'll have at the movies all week.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

After a fiendish start, filmmakers James Wong and Glen Morgan approach their task with all the subtlety of a hammer to the head (or a knife to the gut, or an ax to the back). They do, at least, find a mordant humor in the formula.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

If you've seen any of these, you know that the hero is always killed for her trouble, a final stroke of mordant wit.

Philadelphia Inquirer David Hiltbrand

Fortunately for us, they number these Final Destination scarefests. Otherwise, it would be impossible to tell them apart.

USA Today Mike Clark

Movies of this genre don't often engage fresh concepts, but you have to give Wong major points for dreaming up "tan-line flambé."

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Yes, Final Destination 3 is a roller-coaster ride of a movie from start to -- well, only about 10 minutes later. The fun part is over and we settle down to watch a sadistic assembly line of characters making premature exits.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

A ridiculous teen horror movie that piles on more than enough dry humor and freshly moistened gore to satisfy its lowbrow audience.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Signs of fatigue are all over the film itself.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

There's every reason to believe the creators stopped taking it seriously a long time ago. What's bothersome is that they don't take the audience seriously enough to deliver an actual movie.

Film Threat Michael Ferraro

We are here for the gore – which this film has plenty of. Too bad it doesn't have much else.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Final Destination 3 is a gorefest that should either slake your worst appetites or drive you to the exits.

TV Guide Ken Fox

The downtime between deaths has never been duller, and the Rube Goldberg-type death scenes are so poorly staged that it's difficult to figure out what's about to happen and to whom.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

With a premise as cavalier as this, perhaps director and co-writer James Wong could have found a tone more original than post-Wes Craven cynicism. Instead, he panders to viewers, allowing them to take gleeful comfort in the destruction of the stupid and doomed.

The New York Times Nathan Lee

The third installment lacks the novelty of the first, the panache of the second and the twisted sense of humor that gives the series its participatory sense of fun.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Fans of the genre might appreciate the decidedly R-rated violence and nudity, but that's really all the film has to offer.

Village Voice Mark Holcomb

Rote sequel that surely no one was waiting for: Like the serially thwarted Death (the only "character" to return from the first two Final Destination movies), audiences are required to endure banal exposition and junior-high-level foreshadowing before being treated to the nauseatingly detailed scenes of CGI slaughter.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

There's nothing fresh or off-beat in Final Destination 3, no talent that is struggling to get out. The only thing struggling to get out was me from the theater.