Final Destination 3

Before you ask, the story is as you expect, a virtual carbon copy of the previous films - an elaborate showpiece scene, where a premonition saves half a dozen teenagers to the chagrin of a pissed off Grim Reaper, followed by even more cheerfully gruesome and well staged shocks.

Yes, Final Destination 3 fits the bill as a sequel and a send up. Two cheers!

A rollercoaster ride, literally and figuratively, opens proceedings. After the plot-required premonition, Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is spooked enough to abort before take off, along with a handful of her friends, and watches in horror as the ride leaves the rails, resulting in a convulsive mess of blood and steel, with no survivors.

Like the previous films, it's not just that we enjoy the ever-more-disgusting means to an end that these poor idiots succumb to, we also go for the well timed and delivered misdirection. Co-writer/director James Wong, who survived the original Final Destination, doesn't skimp on the pleasantly nasty tongue-locked-firmly-in-cheek B-movie pleasures.

In spite of the film's failings, a languid pace holds events up for nearly half an hour, prior to the sadistic fatalities, which include those of Ashley (Chelan Simmons) and Ashlyn (Crystal Lowe), whose crispy demise on a short-circuiting sun bed fits their names. Other implements of death include seemingly possessed gym equipment and that old chestnut, the rapid-fire nail gun.

The film is unnecessary, crude and unrefined, but takes its place in the entertainment black hole that is Friday night, as the cinematic equivalent of a fried Mars bar. Hopefully without the guilt, or early coronary.