village voice > film > Tracking Shots: Death Takes No Holidays: Another Sequel, More Carnage by Mark Holcomb

Latino Poets Society
Enter for your chance to win tickets to The Latino Poet’s Society Spoken Word Tour at The Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village!

Jammin' with Jazz at Lincoln Center
Win admission for two to one performance at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, New York’s hottest jazz club, plus a collection of jazz CDs and more!

Bash'd
Enter to win tickets to a performance of Bash'd: A Gay Rap Opera!

Film

write to the editor | email a friend | email alerts | print article | comment

Tracking Shots

Death Takes No Holidays: Another Sequel, More Carnage

by Mark Holcomb

January 31st, 2006 12:00 AM

Tears for fears: Winstead
photo: Shane Harvey/New Line Production

Final Destination 3
Directed by James Wong
New Line, opens February 10

Kabluey
Tracking Shots by Jim Ridley

Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic
by McCann, Ruth

Diminished Capacity
Tracking Shots by Nick Pinkerton

Holding Trevor
Tracking Shots by Julia Wallace

We Are Together
Tracking Shots by Ella Taylor

Trash Talking With Harvey Weinstein
by Tony Ortega

Coming and Then Licking It Up. Is This a Gay Thing?
Savage Love by Dan Savage

At Home With Competitive Swallowers Crazy Legs and Eater X
by Andy Kropa

Gene Simmons and the Whores He Admires
La Dolce Musto by Michael Musto

Columbia's Knotty Noose Problem
by Graham Rayman

The 'W.' Stands for 'War Criminal' (17)
Nat Hentoff

Scientology's Crushing Defeat (14)
Tony Ortega

Runnin' Scared: From Brooklyn, a Rap Campaign Against Tight Clothes (9)
Runnin' Scared: Arcynta Ali Childs

Runnin' Scared: The City Pitted Kids Against Artists in the East Village (6)
Runnin' Scared: Chloé A. Hilliard

Savage Love: My Boyfriend Almost Fathered a Lesbian Couple's Baby?!? (5)
Savage Love: Dan Savage

Form mimics narrative in this rote sequel that surely no one was waiting for: Like the serially thwarted Death (the only "character" to return from the first two Final Destination movies), audiences are required to endure banal exposition and junior-high-level foreshadowing before being treated to the nauseatingly detailed scenes of CGI slaughter that are the series' bread and butter. No wonder the grim reaper is so pissed off in these things. Like its predecessors, this latest examination of the perils of Thanatos interruptus features a gaggle of uni-dimensional teens—led here by Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead)—who cheat death and pay the price via a variety of inventive means. The notion of butchery as a spectator event notwithstanding, there's an almost admirably workmanlike quality to the way co- scenarists Glen Morgan and James Wong set up their characters for carnage like so many fleshy bowling pins; that viewers will forget the various squashings, decapitations, nail gunnings, and gorings before the credits even roll is beside the point. Hell, these guys could have a future in network news, if not politics.

More Tracking Shots