Three times is definitely not the charm for the Final Destination series. Final Destination 3 is the same as Final Destination and Final Destination 2, except it has different no-name stars and different gruesome ways to die. The story is the same, which presents a big problem - everybody who saw the first two movies will know exactly what happens. A group of teens cheat death, surviving some accident. In the months after, each person who survived will die in some bizarre and horrific accident, in the order they would have died initially.

Yes, it does take some imagination to come up with such elaborate death traps, but after two prequels as well as two Saw movies, one really wishes there was more of a plot to these films than extended scenes of death. The irony is that the opening sequence is extremely strong. Graduation is coming, and the senior class gets to go to some eerie looking carnival. Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Sky High, The Ring Two) is already feeling creeped out when she has a premonition of a violent end to her roller coaster ride. A series of accidents causes the coaster to derail, resulting in various teens, falling, getting impaled or dying in some other manner. Wendy freaks out, and gets off the coaster, taking some other people with her. The scene works because everybody has been on roller coasters, and the way in which the coaster derails plays out like a nightmare scenario. Nevertheless, like Final Destination 2, it's all downhill from there.

Wendy feels guilty about the lives she could not save, and soon, she and Kevin (Ryan Merriman, The Ring Two, Spin) figure out what is happening. She was snapping pictures on her digital camera the night of the accident, and deduces that clues to each death lie within the pictures. The two try to warn the others about their impending deaths, but nobody listens. Instead, director James Wong (The One, Final Destination), who co-wrote the screenplay with Glen Morgan (Willard, The One) fill the script with increasingly lame deaths for bimbo cheerleaders, alpha male football players, and Goth kids. The R rating is a good choice because it allows Wong and Morgan a higher level of freedom in showing things like assorted severed body parts and lots of blood. But there is a drawn-out feeling to many of the death scenes, and there are too many scenes of Wendy getting a 'weird' feeling. Final Destination 3 would work with a bit more substance to it. As it stands, it is surprisingly boring.