Synopsis: After a teen's premonition of a deadly race-car crash helps saves the lives of his peers, Death sets out to collect those who evaded their end.I've been a fan of this series since the first movie as I thought it was a very creative and unpredictable premise. This, the 4th installment, is a sad shadow of the series former self. Gone is the unpredictability and creativeness. This one seemed to be more concerned with making things fly out of the screen (it was in 3D) than on the plot or the kills. There was just none of the ironic kills or wit of the others.
The characters are about as cardboard as they can all possibly be. The rich, horny, arrogant jock is here. The racist NASCAR fan is here. The token black man. Sexy girlfriend. Sexy girlfriend's BFF. Shallow hot soccer mom. Obnoxious kids. Do we care about any of these people or feel connected? No. I didn't. Part of me feels they use these generic characters as sort of a wink to killing off people in horror movies, but I'm not sure if this film is that smart or not.
Back to what people who do love these films comes to see... the deaths. These are pretty uncreative and the CGI is way over-used, which led to them not being really gory or awesome but just sort of fake for the most part. They didn't do a very good job at building tension before a death as has been done in the past. That may be what is most missing from this film over the others, the tension.
In summary, I didn't just hate this movie, but I sure didn't love it. The acting is terrible. The story is formulaic and they added no new interesting concepts from the first films. The people are good to look at (Shantel VanSanten, Haley Webb and Krista Allen is a triple shot of hotness) and there are more kills than the previous films (11 deaths). Also, it's only 80 minutes of your life (actually, I think adding 10 or 20 minutes and fleshing out the characters and plots would have really helped). I did love the opening sequences though, with Shinedown's Devour playing with some racing scenes and the opening credits running over a "greatest hits" of the kills in earlier installments, presented as 3D CGI X-rays. Very cool.
5/10
