The Final Destination [Blu-Ray]

The Final Destination has the second best fiery movie theatre climax of 2009. It is also at least the year's 11th or 12th best 3-D movie, and the best movie ever made to have been based on that one Calvin and Hobbes comic where Calvin imagines a runaway train, plane and earthquake all converging on Farmer Brown's house. In addition to these modest distinctions, the film's excessively padded 82-minute running time also gave me ample opportunity to meditate on its spiritual and philosophical implications. So, two bland, interchangeable 20ish couples are at an auto race, and one of our young heroes foresees a horrific accident that destroys the stadium and kills hundreds, right? A few minutes later, he hurriedly escorts his friends to the parking lot as the stadium is demolished behind them, okay? And the few who managed to escape the blaze are systematically killed in a predetermined order, one by one, through elaborate accidental atrocities that one of our protagonists foresees. Got that? And because everything is predestined, there's no escaping death. So, if nothing else, The Final Destination movies deserve credit for having the nerve to make God their villain. A Serious Man ain't got nothin' on this! Theology aside, The Final Destination is tedium punctuated by occasional moments of creative ultra-violence. It definitely delivers the gore, but is it too much to ask for some interesting characters or smart dialogue in between? The 3-D image on Blu-Ray is the sharpest I've seen on home video, but is still burdened by those damn murky red-and-blue glasses (can we get James Cameron on the case?). DVD extras include deleted scenes, alternate endings (spoiler alert: everyone still dies) and a documentary called "Body Count: The Deaths of The Final Destination," which should indicate that this is not a Criterion release.