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5 Reasons You Should Give Final Destination 3 Another Chance 10 Years After Its Release

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I’ve always been a fan of the Final Destination franchise, and it’s one of the few that I’d actually like to see continue indefinitely. Much like my favorite franchise – Friday the 13th – it has a basic formula that allows new characters to be easily plugged in for various creative death sequences with satisfactory results. While even the best franchises miss the mark from time to time, I feel that Final Destination 3 has been unfairly maligned. The film tends to be brushed off as a blemish on the franchise, but if you ask me, it holds its own among the more highly regarded entries. I’d even go so far as to say that in some ways it tops the much more popular second installment.

This year marked ten years since its theatrical release, and here are five reasons to consider watching it again (spoilers included).

1. Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Final Destination 3

Above all else, Final Destination 3 has one thing sorely lacking from the rest of the franchise: Mary Elizabeth Winstead. The movie was my first experience with Ms. Winstead though it was far from her first acting role. While she had also appeared in the previous year’s The Ring Two, she quickly established herself as a presence in our beloved genre – a presence that continues today. If you like her work in 10 Cloverfield Lane, Swiss Army Man, Faults, Death Proof, or anything else, it’s worth revisiting one of her earlier films.

2. Tony Todd and the Mystique of William Bludworth

Tony Todd as the devil in Final Destination 3

I admit that it would have been nice to see Tony Todd back for a third round in the flesh, but we do get his voice as the devil on the ill-fated rollercoaster and as the subway station announcer at the end of the film. In fact, the more I think about this, the more I like the approach here. He could have just popped up in a forced-in scene to talk to the lead characters about death, but we already saw that twice. His voicework in FD3 adds another layer to the mystique of his character and his connection to death itself.

3. The Return of Morgan and Wong

Final Destination 3

Let me be clear. I love Final Destination 2. It has an amazing opening disaster sequence and some great kills. It’s a lot of fun. That said, the writing leaves a great deal to be desired, particularly in the dialogue department, and the acting often suffers as a result. This kind of adds to the charm and fun of watching it (another connection to the Friday franchise), but there is a noticeable improvement in quality here with FD3 if you ask me. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing award-worthy here either, and there is still the occasional cringe-worthy line, but overall, it’s a step up. This may have something to do with Glenn Morgan and James Wong, the famous X-Files duo who collaborated on the first film, returning for round 3.

I also appreciate that they tried to add another layer to death’s mythology, which was basically scrapped in the following films. In FD3, Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character discovers clues about death’s design in photographs, which I find kind of interesting. At the very least, it was an attempt to do something a little different without straying too far from the “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” formula of the franchise.

4. The Kills

Final Destination 3 Nailgun

If there’s one thing Final Destination 2 did right it was the kills (including the epic highway pile-up premonition scene), and I’m not sure any of the subsequent films have topped 2 in this department. It’s understandable that some would be let down by FD3 after that, but if you look at FD3 by itself, it has its share of memorable kills.

The stand-outs include: the famous tanning bed sequence; Frankie’s head getting its comeuppance thanks to an engine fan from a truck that runs into his car in a fast food drive-in; Lewis getting his head crushed by weights; and my personal favorite, Erin getting a number of nails shot through her face.

5. It’s On Netflix

Tanning Bed Final Destination 3

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, which I believe most of you probably are, you don’t have to go out of your way to find a copy of the movie or hunt it down. It’s right there waiting for you. In fact, it’s the only film in the franchise currently available to stream on Netflix.

Look, I’m not going to sit here and try to tell you that Final Destination 3 is the pinnacle of the franchise. I’m just saying it’s an entertaining entry and doesn’t deserve black sheep status. I’ve seen it quite a few times over the past decade and I can honestly say I’ve never failed to have a good time watching it.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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