Final Destination 3 Movie Review: Long-Running Series Stays Strong

Produced, directed, and co-written (with Glen Morgan) by James Wong, Final Destination 3 continues the winning streak of entries in the Final Destination franchise. To date, there are six films, including 2025’s Final Destination: Bloodlines, ten novels, a one-shot comic, and a comic series. If you are new to Final Destination, don’t worry, while there are minor plot points that cross over from film to film, nothing would be lost if you begin your journey with the third installment.

Each Final Destination movie follows a very specific pattern. First, at the start of each film, a group of young adults are either on their way or just arrived at a “dangerous” situation. For instance, in Final Destination, a group of high school students are embarking on Flight 180 headed to Paris for a class trip. In Final Destination 2, a group of students are headed onto a busy highway so they can drive to Florida for Spring Break. Final Destination 3 opens at an amusement park where a group of high-school seniors are celebrating their upcoming graduation, and where they are all moving toward the ominous, very large roller coaster at the back of the park.

Second, one of the young adults will have a premonition of a complicated series of events that will lead to all their deaths. Flight 180 will come crashing down over the city; there will be a major pile-up on the highway; and in Final Destination 3, Wendy Christensen (Elizabeth Winstead), a senior who works on the yearbook and takes pictures all night, has a pretty exciting premonition of the death of her high-school friends when the roller coaster breaks into pieces around them.

Third, those having the premonitions understandably freak out and want off the plane, the freeway, the roller coaster. There is a conflict in which some might believe the prophet while others become extremely aggressive. There is a fight, or an official tells people they have to get off the plane or roller coaster, and in each film, around seven or eight potential victims survive what happens next: the jet explodes, cars crash with bodies all over the highway, and the roller coaster turns into a mountain of twisted metal. The premonitions are always real. Instead of gratitude, the prophet becomes a pariah.

In Final Destination 3, as in the films before, the survivors begin to be killed in bizarre, grotesque, complex ways, in the order they would have been killed in the disasters. It turns out that Death has a plan and doesn’t like living interlopers. We know that Death himself is behind the relentless killings; we are not given any clues as to what entity is behind the premonitions.

Lack of knowledge aside, Final Destination 3 follows the pattern of these movies perfectly. You will be rooting for these poor students at the same time as hoping they turn into a version of wet dog food. There are ways to stop the carnage, but good luck getting those to work in a Final Destination film. Keep rooting for the good guys, but expect the worst. That is what Final Destination 3 does, makes you hope for the best while watching the horror unfold.