Final Destination 3 (2006)

February 2, 2006 (Grauman's Chinese Theatre)February 10, 2006 (United States)

February 2, 2006 (Grauman's Chinese Theatre)
February 10, 2006 (United States)

Final Destination 3 is a 2006 American supernatural horror film produced and directed by James Wong, who co-wrote it with Glen Morgan. It is a standalone sequel to Final Destination 2 (2003) and the third installment in the Final Destination film series. It stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ryan Merriman, and takes place six years after the first film. Winstead plays Wendy Christensen, a high school graduate who has a premonition that a roller coaster she and her classmates are riding will derail. Although she saves some of them, Death begins hunting the survivors. Wendy realizes that photographs she took at the attraction contain clues about the deaths. With survivor and friend Kevin Fischer (Merriman), Wendy tries to use this knowledge to save the rest of the survivors and stop Death's scheme.

The film's development began shortly after the release of Final Destination 2; Jeffrey Reddick, creator of the franchise and a co-writer of the first two films, did not return. Unlike the second film, which was a direct sequel to the first, the producers envisioned Final Destination 3 as a standalone film. The idea of featuring a roller coaster derailment as the opening-scene disaster came from New Line Cinema executive Richard Bryner. From the beginning, Wong and Morgan saw control as a major theme in the film. Casting began in March 2005 and concluded in April. Like the previous two installments, it was filmed in Vancouver, Canada. The first two weeks of the three-month shoot were spent filming the scenes involving the roller coaster derailing.

Following its premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on February 2, 2006, the film was released in cinemas in the United States on February 10, 2006. The DVD, released on July 25, 2006, includes commentaries, documentaries, a deleted scene and an animated video. A special-edition DVD called "Thrill Ride Edition" includes a feature called "Choose Their Fate", which acts as an interactive film, allowing viewers to make decisions at specific points in the film that alter the course of the story.

Final Destination 3 received mixed reviews from critics. The film was a financial success and, with box office receipts of nearly $118 million, the highest-grossing installment in the franchise at the time. A fourth film, The Final Destination, was released in August 2009.

Storyline

High school student Wendy Christensen visits an amusement park in Pennsylvania with her boyfriend Jason Wise, Jason's best friend Kevin Fischer, his girlfriend Carrie Dreyer, and their classmates to celebrate their graduation. As they board the Devil's Flight roller coaster, Wendy has a premonition of a chain reaction causing the roller coaster to derail, killing everyone. She convinces Kevin, along with best friends Ashley Freund and Ashlyn Halperin, alumnus Frankie Cheeks, athlete Lewis Romero, and goth couple Ian McKinley and Erin Ulmer, to leave but fails to save Jason and Carrie, who are killed by the subsequent derailment.

Weeks later, Kevin tells Wendy of his discovery of a visionary, Alex Browning, and six other people from Browning's high school who escaped the Flight 180 explosion, and as a result, Death came after them in the order they would have died in the blast. After Ashley and Ashlyn are killed when they burned alive in their tanning beds and having been sensing Death's presence since the derailment, Wendy conducts her own research relating to premonition, including learning about the U.S. Route 23 pile-up and its survivor, Kimberly Corman, another visionary like her and Browning. After learning of the parallel disasters, Wendy and Kevin set off to save the other survivors using clues about their fated deaths present in the photographs Wendy took of them at the amusement park. While Wendy and Kevin attempt to determine how Frankie dies, his head is sliced by an engine fan from Kevin's truck, in which they were trapped. The next day, Lewis is killed when a weight machine crushes his head at the school gym. As they attempt to save Ian and Erin, who are working at a hardware store, Wendy manages to save Ian from falling stakes, but Death then skips to Erin, who falls on a nail gun, which shoots nails into her head.

While identifying the next two survivors from the photographs, Wendy realizes they are her sister Julie and one of her friends, prompting Wendy and Kevin to rush to the local tricentennial fair to save them. Kevin saves Julie from being impaled on a harrow, but when Wendy tries to question her sister about the next person in line to die, an airborne flagpole fatally impales Julie's friend Perry Malinowski. After Wendy saves Kevin from an exploding propane canister, the trio is confronted by a grief-stricken Ian, who blames Wendy for Erin's death. An unstable cart of fireworks blasts in Wendy's direction, which she, Kevin, and Julie barely evade. It later hits a cherry picker, causing it to collapse on Ian, bisecting him.

Five months later, Wendy experiences more omens while riding a subway train with her roommate Laura and her friend Sean. As Wendy is about to disembark, she suddenly reunites with Julie and Kevin, who had also boarded the train. Wendy receives another premonition that the train will crash, killing everyone on board. Panicked, the remaining survivors attempt to stop the train as it crashes off-screen.

Also See

Movie Trailer

  • Final Destination 3 (2006) (Trailers)

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