Candyman 3: Day of the Dead

Year 18, Day 303 - 10/30/26 - Movie #5,470

BEFORE: I didn't do this intentionally, but the way this last part of the horror chain had to be organized, in order to maintain the chain's linking AND end on a film that gives me some linking options, I had to watch: THREE "Final Destination" films, then TWO "Candyman" films, then TWO more "Final Destination", ONE more "Candyman", and you know, it kind of feels like we're counting down to something, getting closer to some kind of holiday, but this is only because we are. 

Out working a Brooklyn Nets game tonight, it was a relatively easy shift, and I don't say that very often. I was just working a Grab 'N Go station, one sponsored by American Express. No beer, just drinks and snacks, and with the AMEX staff allowing people in and explaining how the station worked, I had a lot less to do. And because there was no beer, that meant I didn't have to check IDs, just answer people's questions, re-stock the shelves at the end of the night, sweep up and go home. I couldn't believe my luck, I wasn't completely exhausted afterwards, though my feet of course did hurt, and my co-workers were friendly and I got to see some new snacks that were available only at that station, OK, the Nets lost but that's normal, and most everything seemed to be going my way. But now I'm paranoid after watching all those "Final Destination" films, where the lucky survivors are all doomed to die in horrible ways - so I felt that my bus was likely to explode on my way home. But no, I only missed the bus and had to take the subway home - WELL, the subway was full of people in wild costumes going to (or maybe coming back from) Halloween parties. And I made it home alive, to work another day tomorrow and then three days next week. 

Tony Todd carries over again from "Final Destination 5"

THE PLOT: A nightmare-plagued artist discovers that she is the descendent of the hook-handed killer. 

AFTER: Well, the word that seems to be used most often in describing this film is "unnecessary". Maybe it's because the plot of the third film is SO MUCH like the plot of the second film, aka the first sequel. Why make a THIRD film that covers, essentially, the same ground as the SECOND? 

There's nothing new really added to the origin of Candyman, aka Daniel Robataille. In fact, once the origin story was established, how the mob chopping off his hand and then smearing him with honey and killing (?) him with bees, they just tend to repeat that, over and over, without adding anything. It doesn't even make sense anymore if his "crime" of loving a white woman and the mob justice took place in New Orleans and then he died in Chicago somehow, on the site of the future Cabrini-Green projects, so, umm, how long did he live in-between? The facts of the first film seem to have been rejected in favor of the "better" story created for the second film. 

And in both the second and third films, Candyman is called in the mirror by one of his descendants, and in addition to wanting to kill those descendants, he also wants to frame them for murdering all their friends, perhaps then giving them nowhere else to turn but to long for the sweet release of death. "Be my victim..." he tells them - umm, sorry, no thanks? Why does he even ask when he kills so many others at the drop of a hat? They have to AGREE to be his victim, is this some kind of loophole created because they're his family? Great grand-daughter or great-great granddaughter? Also he seems to come to them at night and it sure feels like he wants to be intimate with them, eww, dude, that's your FAMILY, you sicko. 

The little girl, Caroline, seen at the end of the second film ("Farewell to the Flesh") is all grown up now, (about 25 years have passed in the story, but only 4 years IRL between the movies) and she wants the truth about her ancestor to be known, so she brings his paintings to a gallery in Los Angeles and arranges a showing - however, Miguel, the gallery owner, wants to really play up the "Candyman" horror angle, so he hired an actor to crash the gallery opening and protest the controversial show. Also, during the show, Caroline is put on the spot and made to say Candyman's name five times in a mirror, you know, to prove that there's no truth to the legend. Only OF COURSE there is and he shows up and starts killing her friends with his hook hand. People never seem to learn - even though they KNOW the legend and what Candyman is all about, they keep calling him, anyway. 

Once again (as in the first and second film) the police believe that this young woman, she couldn't possibly way more than 100 pounds, would be capable of somehow lifting a very large person, and impaling them on a big hook, nearly splitting them in two. Well, either the police are very stupid everywhere or they believe that she works out or something. Caroline here is too dumb to even get herself out of a locked police car, and the cops somehow think she's capable of murder AND hiding the evidence from her murders? Sorry, I can't believe that they believe this, that would make them stupider than she is, and she's pretty dumb. 

The only thing remotely new about this film is the "gang" that stole the paintings from the gallery - actually, they're more like a cult that worships Candyman, and they can't wait for the chance to hang the paintings in their secret temple and then, you guessed it, call up Candyman to show him what big fans they are. Yeah, they're killed pretty quickly by Candyman once he shows up, hope it was worth it, cult members. Caroline starts forming a friendship with David, the man Miguel hired to cause a ruckus at the gallery, but of course Candyman captures David (jealous much?) and hangs him up in a building by some hooks in his back, and uses him as more leverage to get Caroline to surrender and become his victim. If Caroline agrees to be killed by Candyman (he apparently can't kill her himself, which she's too dumb to realize) then he'll let David go free. OK, fine, she's trusting her serial killing ghost/demon ancestor to keep his promises - let me know how that works out.

The weird advice from David's abuela (who's got some psychic ability, or contact with the spirit world or something, maybe she's just a fortune teller though) is that "Evil can not exist without good." So this means that Caroline has to find the GOOD part of Candyman and destroy it, because then the evil part will cease to exist. Umm, why not just destroy the evil part, too, wouldn't that be easier? Just me? The good part turns out to be the paintings, or Daniel's artistic ability, not quite sure, but sure, let's roll with it. After Caroline destroys Candyman's paintings, by cutting them and burning them she's able to do the same damage to the Candyman ghost/demon himself. Good to know. 

What's great here is the tie-in with the Mexican "Day of the Dead" celebration, which takes place right AFTER Halloween, so technically I'm a couple days early here, but you know, it's close and I'll take what I can get. It's a big deal in Mexican culture, but it's really downplayed here - "Oh, you just go have a picnic in a cemetery with your deceased family." That's it? I thought there was more cultural significance to it than that. Well, sure, a picnic, count me in - I hope you brought enough. 

Directed by Turi Meyer

Also starring Donna D'Errico (last seen in "Comic Book: The Movie"), Nick Corri (aka Jsu Garcia) (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Ernie Hudson Jr., Wade Williams (last seen in "Draft Day"), Robert O'Reilly (last seen in "The Mask"), Lombardo Boyar (last seen in "The Accountant 2"), Lupe Ontiveros (last seen in "Chuck & Buck"), Elizabeth Guber (last seen in "The Bachelor"), Lillian Hurst (last seen in "Orange County"), Mark Adair-Rios (last seen in "Fools Rush In"), Nicole Contreras, Rena Riffel (last seen in "Mulholland Drive"), Mike Moroff (last seen in "The Crew"), Chris Van Dahl, Alexia Robinson (last seen in "Total Recall"), Elizabeth Hayes, Laura Mazur, Jud Meyers, Leonardo Guerra, John Quijada (last seen in "Hooper"), Kathleen McMartin (last seen in "Mr. Church")

RATING: 3 out of 10 times the phrase "Sweets for the Sweet" is seen in graffiti - it's not really the flex you think it is, though. 

Final Destination 5

Year 18, Day 302 - 10/29/26 - Movie #5,469

BEFORE: I have to really cram now if I'm going to finish the horror chain in time for Halloween. I didn't realize I was going to be so busy here at the end of the month, I'm working four days in a row when you put the two jobs together, and I'm working ON Halloween itself, so I'm going to try my best to get to the rest of the films, but I may be late with the postings. So please bear with me, I need these shifts, I can't call out because I don't want to get behind in my movie watching, that's not a valid excuse

Stephanie Honoré carries over from "The Final Destination" - there's apparently a "greatest kills" montage that plays at the end of tonight's film, over the credits like a sick blooper reel. Whatever, if it gets a couple people another movie for the year, but it's more work for me, keeping track of all that. But hey, at least Tony Todd is back in this franchise, where he belongs. 

And we have the one Birthday SHOUT-out from this franchise, it seems - Chelan Simmons, whose character died in the tanning beds in "Final Destination 3", was born on October 29, 1982. It's a rare case where somebody appeared in more than one "Final Destination" film, but it's all thanks to archive footage. 

THE PLOT: Death returns to claim the lucky survivors of a deadly bridge collapse in this fifth frightening installment. 

AFTER: Yeah, so if you've seen every "Final Destination" film up until this point, it's, umm, the same effing thing. Don't mess with a formula if it works, I guess, but as I said last night as the franchise wore on, the death sequences became more and more ridiculous, and they were a bit unbelievable to start with. But as the films got "worse" as the years passed by, they also became more popular and made more money - I guess the first few films became "cult classics" and had a second life on DVD, remember this was pre-streaming, so that had to be the cause, people rented the DVDs again and again and showed them to their friends, then people ran to the theaters when they heard there was a NEW third, fourth or fifth installment. 

So let's update the tote board for things we should all NOT do to avoid horrible deaths. First and foremost, never take a bus to a company retreat. Call in sick if you have to, but even if you're not thinking about the potential bus accident, really, you don't want to be on that company retreat in the first place. It's going to be a bunch of junk about brainstorming solutions to future problems, then there will a ropes course, trustfalls and probably a very crappy box lunch. Fake an injury, say you've got a contagious STD, whatever you have to do to get out of it. 

While we're at it, don't compete in gymnastics, don't steal gift certificates from your dead co-workers to get a free massage, and do NOT get laser eye surgery, it's still new technology and they just haven't worked out all the kinks yet. Also, don't go down to the factory floor, there are all kinds of machines there that can kill you, especially if you work for a... paper company? Also, don't work in a restaurant, because in addition to grease fires and knives that deli slicer looks rather menacing, even if it didn't come into play in this film, heck the potential danger was still there. 

There's a codicil to the "rules" of Death's plan here, the semi-recurring mortician character (played by Tony Todd) suggests to the survivors of the bridge collapse that they can maybe avoid being targeted by Death if they each kill somebody, it's possible that if Death gets another soul early he could possibly look the other way and not try to collect theirs. Then again, the mortician may not know what he's talking about, he could just be making this up to cause chaos and turn one friend against another or turn a bunch of decent people into killers of random people. There's just no way to know. Under this new strategy, if you kill somebody who's got 30 years scheduled until Death comes calling, then you as the doomed killer will get their 30 years added on to however many days (weeks?) you have left. Oh, if only it were that simple, but then we'd have a whole country full of serial killers if that were how it worked. 

There's one final twist near the end, before the credits roll with that "greatest hits" montage, but I'm not going to give it away here. Given the list of people seen in archive footage maybe you can figure it out. According to the IMDB, this fifth film ended up using a bunch of ideas that were rejected from previous films in the series, while recycling one of the bigger scenarios, you'll see what I mean. 

NITPICK POINT: What stupid construction crew cuts a giant hole in a BRIDGE without shutting it down to traffic? I mean, what did they THINK was going to happen? Close the bridge at 3 am and then do that kind of repairs then, damn it!

Directed by Steven Quale (assistant director of "The Haunted Mansion" (2003) and "Avatar")

Also starring Nicholas D'Agosto (last seen in "Rocket Science"), Emma Bell, Miles Fisher (last seen in "Playdate"), Ellen Wroe, Jacqueline MacInnes Wood, P.J. Byrne (last seen in "Riff Raff"), Arlen Escarpeta (last seen in "We Are Marshall"), David Koechner (last seen in "Then Came You"), Courtney B. Vance (last seen in "The Photograph"), Tony Todd (last seen in "Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh"), Brent Stait (last seen in "Tron: Legacy"), Roman Podhora (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Jasmin Dring (last seen in "The Eye"), Barclay Hope (last seen in "The Age of Adaline"), Chasty Ballesteros (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Mike Dopud (last seen in "Violent Night"), Tanya Hubbard (last seen in "The Shack"), Frank Topol (last seen in "Marmaduke"), Tim Fellingham, Blaine Anderson (last seen in "Hot Tub Time Machine"), Dawn Chubai (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Ryan Hesp, Ian Thompson (last seen in "Shooter"), Andy Nez (last seen in "Game Over, Man!"), Jodi Balfour, June B. Wilde (last seen in "Hope Springs" (2003)), Brittany Rogers, Diana Pavlovska, Michael Adamthwaite (last seen in "Woman of the Hour"), Grace Baek, 

with archive footage of Forbes Angus (last seen in "Final Destination"), Kristen Cloke (ditto), Amanda Detmer (ditto), Mark Holden (ditto), Devon Sawa (ditto), Kerr Smith (ditto), Yan-Kay Crystal Lowe (last seen in "Final Destination 3"), Chelan Simmons (ditto)

RATING: 5 out of 10 acupuncture needles

The Final Destination

Year 18, Day 301 - 10/28/26 - Movie #5,468

BEFORE: Right, franchise numbering - clearly there's a debate among studio executives, some who feel that you should NOT number sequels, because it will turn off casual viewers who didn't see the previous installments. Then other execs raise the counter argument which states that if you DON'T number the sequels, you can't develop a loyal fan base who want to watch all of the films in order. So somebody got rid of the numbering with this sequel, which should have been "Final Destination 4" and then somebody else restored it. We've seen this happen before.  

Anthony Michael Frederick carries over from "Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh" where he played (wait, this can't be right) "Naked Man". Hmm, I must have missed him, maybe he was in the Mardi Gras parade. Well, since Tony Todd is NOT in tonight's movie, but Anthony is, I have to do what I have to do - he appears tonight as the nameless "painter". 

THE PLOT: A horrifying premonition saves a young man and his friends from death during a racetrack accident but terrible fates await them nonetheless. 

AFTER: Another numbering problem, this film was clearly made to be shown in 3-D and everyone knows that the THIRD film in your franchise should be in that format. "Final Destination 3-D", get it? But they're right about having the fourth film in the franchise be the one where it starts making fun of itself, because the premise has become so unbelievable that it's not sustainable. They're just messing with the audience here, like a bunch of the time. You just have to watch the sequence in the middle where the woman goes to the hair salon and EVERYTHING in the salon is trying to kill her - the ceiling fan, the hair gel on the floor, the can of hair spray that gets accidentally heated by the curling iron, and the barber's chair that won't stay up and keeps dropping her down while the stylist is cutting her hair with the (assumedly) very sharp scissors. The pedicurist using sharp tools on her toes is kind of a medium risk, but who knows? Maybe... But then she seems to make it all the way through her appointment without dying and then, on the way out...the most unlikely, outrageous, coincidental accident of all.  

Right before this, the guy outside with the lawnmower was refilling it with a container of gasoline WHILE SMOKING a cigarette, and sure, nothing happens to him. But remember that the woman's kids were throwing rocks at a stop sign in the previous scene, and one rock landed right where the guy with the mower was going to cut the grass - but I've said too much, I think. 

Can we talk about how, within this 3-D movie with people getting killed in horrible ways, there's a crowd of people watching a 3-D movie WITHIN a 3-D movie, in which people are getting killed in horrible ways? Sure, it's very far-fetched, because the movie has a bomb about to go off, with a timer counting down, and the movie theater, which is filled with dangerous toxic substances due to a construction project, is ALSO about to explode and kill nearly everyone in the crowd?  And since Death apparently has a very sick and ironic sense of humor, you just know the real explosion is going to take place at the exact same time as explosion in the movie-within-the-movie, right? It's not funny, Death, to anybody but YOU, you sick non-corporeal being. 

This is also a sign that the franchise is kind of feeding on itself, much like the "Scream" movies when they hit the sixth or seventh film - remember "Stab", the "Scream"-like movie franchise that was being made inside the Scream-verse? This is a bit like that. It seems that since they saved Janet from the ridiculous car wash accident, Death is now willing to take out an entire movie theater's crowd JUST to kill Janet. Death's not even following the same rules any more, because back in the good old days, it used to be that if you saved someone from being killed, you broke the chain and Death would skip them. Now Death is coming back to kill the people again and again, and that's just not fair.  Unless of course Janet got saved from the racetrack accident AND the car wash accident and then just stumbled into a THIRD dangerous situation at the movie theater, which was another mass killing event. There's a case to be made for this, because Nick has another premonition about the movie theater, and the first 2 films only had ONE premonition and the targeted people figured out the future deaths from photos and signs and stuff. 

We're four movies in, and we still don't know what force is causing the premonition, which is just lazy storytelling, I think. If there's a force that's killing people in mass extinction events and then targeting the people who escaped from it, then nature and logic dictates that there must be a force in the universe which is trying to save people, and can only do it by sending warning images and premonition reels into their dreams and daydreams. Right? So, umm, what is it?  And this is apparently what people were using Google for, way back in 2009, learning if there had been any earlier cases where people had premonitions that saved lives, only to have the survivors killed off one by one in ever-increasingly unlikely or ridiculous accidents. Well, you know, it was a different time, we didn't have ChatGPT or Google AI just yet. 

But really, this is just the original "Final Destination", only set at a racetrack - but you knew that going in, right? Nobody's going to change this formula if it continues to work, you can kill off the entire cast if you want, kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out. But we have an updated list of all the things you shouldn't do because they're deadly - the first film taught us to never go anywhere on a plane, never stop your car on train tracks and never relax around buses, not even in Paris. According to the second film, never drive to spring break on a highway, never cook anything in your apartment, never ride in an elevator or spend time in a hospital. Oh, never cook anything on a propane grill, either, almost forgot that one. 

Do I even have to say it? Never ride on a roller coaster, duh. While you're at it, don't go through the drive through at the burger place, and don't work out on exercise machines, I think I can manage that last one. Don't work in a hardware store, and definitely don't go to watch the fireworks at the town celebration. And for sure don't ever take the subway if you live in NYC. Tonight we can add to the list, don't ever go to the racetrack, it's WAY to dangerous, and also don't ride through a car wash and don't swim in a public pool and don't ever get your hair cut in a salon. And man, this last one pains me, because I love movies so much, don't go to the movie theater? COME ON NOW, the movie theater is just about the safest place you can be, it's dark, crowded, there are annoying loud people all around you and there's a lot of food that's bad for you. Oh, I guess I can see it now. 

There was a day back when I was working at the commercial movie theater (the name rhymed with AMC) and I think it was even my last day there as an usher, there was a lot of rain and severe flooding in Manhattan, and the power went out in the building. I suddenly realized we had 7 cinemas of people who were suddenly plunged into darkness, with no idea of what the cause was or when the film would start playing again. I mean, sure, they had lights on their phones, but I started going around to all 7 cinemas to tell everyone to stay put and stay calm, the power was out but we were working to restore it as soon as possible, and we'd try to start the films from wherever they were when the power went out. No, the theater did not explode, but technically it was a form of emergency. At my current job we have a fire safety lecture once a year, which goes over what we should do as house managers if there is a fire or active shooter or other emergency. I had to take a NYC fire guard test in 2021, I think I last had one of those in 1989, it's weird sometimes when things come full circle in your life. 

But yeah, don't go to the movies and see a 3-D film about people dying by being blown up, or you could end up blown up yourself. This message is brought to you by the filmmakers of "The Final Destination", which is itself a film about people going to the movies to see a 3-D film about people dying by being blown up, so really, they should know better than most. How very meta and also counter-productive. Just stay home and stare at the walls I guess, because everything else out there can and will kill you. But what kind of a life is that? Maybe you should go out and do all those things, because if you're only killing time, it will kill you right back. 

Directed by David R. Ellis (director of "Final Destination 2")

Also starring Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano (last seen in "10 Years"), Haley Webb (last seen in "Bandit"), Mykelti Williamson (last seen in "Unstoppable"), Krista Allen (last seen in "Paycheck"), Andrew Fiscella (last seen in "A Nightmare on Elm Street"), Justin Welborn (last seen in "The Crazies"), Stephanie Honoré (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Lara Grice (last seen in "Bad Moms"), Jackson Walker (last seen in "The Great Debaters"), Harold Evans (ditto), Phil Austin (last seen in "The Host"), William Aguillard, Brendan Aguillard, Juan Kincaid, Monique Detraz, Chris Fry, Tina Parker (last seen in "The Tale"), Cecile Monteyne, Stacey Dizon, Dane Rhodes (last seen in "Just My Luck"), Gabrielle Chapin, Camille Bourgeois, Curtis E. Akin, Eric Paulsen (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Belford Carver, Damien Dao, Jedda Jones (last seen in "Ray"), Joseph T. Ridolfo, Chris Langlois, Trey Burvant (last seen in "Get Out"), Larry E. Lundy Jr. (last seen in "Terminator Genisys"), Courtney James, Jenna Craig (last seen in "Green Lantern"), Rolexis Delaney, Ricky Diaz (last seen in "The Beach Bum"), Joshua Hinson, Jolene Perez (last seen in "Recount"), Billy Slaughter (also last seen in "Bad Moms")

with archive footage of Ali Larter (last seen in "Final Destination 2")

RATING: 4 out of 10 pairs of 3-D glasses

Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh

Year 18, Day 300 - 10/27/26 - Movie #5,467

BEFORE: All right, 300 days of this weird horrible year are gone, just 65 to go. I've got four more horror films before I seal up the crypt for another 11 months, don't worry there are air holes, not that you'll be needing them, mwah ha ha ha... Then I've just got to watch 29 more films in those final 61 days, it should be easy, even with two jobs and a Thanksgiving trip out of town. 

Tony Todd, of course, carries over again from "Candyman" (1992).  He'll be back for three more movies, but first I have to link back to the "Final Destination" movies via another actor. 

THE PLOT: The Candyman arrives in New Orleans and sets his sights on a young woman whose family was ruined by the immortal killer years before. 

AFTER: Well, if you thought that the Candyman was done for after being burned up in a bonfire in Chicago, think again. All that did was drive him back home to New Orleans, where he could regroup and visit his family. If you forgot his origin story, don't worry, this sequel will remind you about it, again and again. In order to make the outlandish story presented in the first film work, they had to kind of bend it over backwards, the Candyman was the son of a slave who fell in love with a white woman near New Orleans, and for that a mob of white people cut off his right hand and then made sure he was attacked by bees, but then he still kind of had to survive that in order to get his hook hand and become a semi-famous graffiti artist in the early 1900's and die in Chicago. I know, it still doesn't make much sense, does it? 

They had one character (besides Candyman) carry over from the previous film, but unfortunately it's the pompous professor from the University of Illinois-Chicago that absolutely nobody liked. Well, don't worry, he's not going to be around long, because the audience at his book signing dares him to say "Candyman" five times into the mirrored reflection from his new book on the topic, and what do you know, the Candyman shows up and guts him in the men's room with his hook hand. I have to say that the murders-by-ghost in the first film were a lot more clever, because Candyman always managed to frame somebody for them, I mean it was always Helen, or at least he made sure to put the murder weapon in her HANDS, which meant that either she was a deranged serial killer, or she was being framed by a ghost, and which of those seems more unlikely?  Here in the sequel, it's just one killing after another, there's no clever artistry to it. 

Which leads to the question, WHY do people keep saying Candyman's name five times in the mirror when such an activity is so likely to lead to their own deaths? Well, you might as well ask why do people get on planes or roller coasters, right? It's that element of danger, plus the pride in thinking you've got some control, you've got a handle on things and this time, things are going to be different. Umm, no they're not. But the author, well, the audience dared him, was he NOT going to say the Candyman's name and therefore look like a big wuss? Here we follow Annie Tarrant, an art teacher in New Orleans who comes to the police with her mother, Caroline, when her brother is accused of killing the professor and author that nobody liked. The police think he's good for the murder because their father, Coleman Tarrant, was killed in a similar fashion, stabbed so bad he was nearly split in two. Almost like someone with a hook hand lifted him up and let gravity do the work...

In the meantime, one of Annie's young students claims to have seen the Candyman, and everyone in her class seems to know the legend. Annie therefore invokes his name in the mirror JUST to discredit the myth. Umm, yeah, bad idea, and it costs Annie the life of her husband, Paul. When will people learn? Now the Candyman is stalking Annie, but not to kill her, he's aware that she's pregnant with Paul's daughter, and the Candyman is claiming that the child is somehow his. Well, he's not wrong because Annie starts doing some detective work and she finds out that Daniel "Candyman" Robitaille was born in the same house as her, which is also the same house where her father died. Her mother apparently bought the house at some point, which means that Annie is descended from the child of Daniel Robitaille and Caroline Sullivan. 

Sure, there's some inconsistency here, because the woman who loved the future Candyman sure looked a lot like Virginia Madsen in the first film, but she looks different here. Maybe Candyman was just messing with Helen's mind in the first film, who can say? Anyway, as more details become known about Annie's father, it seems he called the Candyman because he thought he had found a way to defeat him, by capturing a part of his soul in Caroline's old hand mirror. I mean, how did he know that was a thing? But it didn't do him much good, because the Candyman killed him too, and the police thought Annie's brother was good for that murder, too. FINALLY near the end the New Orleans police look at video of Officer Levesque's killing and they see him levitating while the Candyman ghost is un-aliving him, and therefore they're forced to admit that ghosts can kill people with their hook hands, and really, that explains a lot. 

Sure, it's pretty confusing, there's a lot added to the mythos here in order to explain the goofs from the first film, and now we probably need another sequel to explain away all the things about THIS film that don't really add up. But we've got to put a pin in this for now and I'll circle back here, let's say Friday, is Friday good for you? That film is called "Candyman: Day of the Dead" and I'm hoping there's a Halloween connection, based on the title. Today's film's title "Farewell to the Flesh" is a reference to Mardi Gras (aka Carnival), because the radio DJ here, Kingfish, tells us that "Carnival" means exactly that, "farewell to the flesh" but that's not really accurate, more correct would be "farewell to meat", since Mardi Gras takes place just before Lent, 40 days where you're not supposed to eat meat, which then got downgraded over the years to just not eating meat on Fridays. Very few people still observe this, but McDonald's does sell a lot more Filet O'Fish sandwiches during Lent, just saying. 

I've never been in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but the time we visited in 2018, it was the week before Halloween, and we took the Spooky Ghost tour of the French Quarter and saw a bunch of skeletal tableaus outside people's houses on Bourbon St. I have to imagine that the New Orleans Halloween parade probably looks a LOT like their Mardi Gras parade, maybe just a little less colorful and a lot spookier. This film mentions something about "all the flooding" in New Orleans, but this was released 10 years before Hurricane Katrina, so they couldn't possibly be referring to that - probably just regular non-Katrina flooding, remember that a lot of New Orleans exists at sea level or below.

Directed by Bill Condon (director of "Kiss of the Spider Woman" (2025) and "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn")

Also starring Kelly Rowan (last seen in "Assassins"), Bill Nunn (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), William O'Leary (last seen in "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines"), Veronica Cartwright (last seen in "The Children's Hour"), Matt Clark (last seen in "The Outlaw Josey Wales"), Randy Oglesby (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Glen Gomez, Joshua Gibran Mayweather, David Gianopoulos (last seen in "Air Force One"), Timothy Carhart (last seen in "Desperately Seeking Susan"), Michael Bergeron, Fay Hauser, Caroline Barclay (last seen in "Species"), Brianna Blanchard, Clotiel Bordeltier, Michael Culkin (also carrying over from "Candyman" (1992)), George Lemore, Ralph Joseph, Margaret Howell (last seen in "Tightrope"), Nate Bynum (last seen in "The Rainmaker"), Carl Ciarfalio, Erin Labranche, Carl Leblanc, Maria Mason, Eric Pierson, Terence Rosemore (last seen in "Haunted Mansion" (2023)), Amy Ryder (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), Patricia Sansone, Hunt Scarritt, Carol Sutton (also last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Anthony Michael Frederick (last seen in "Hit Man"), Codie Scott (last seen in "Just My Luck") and the voice of Russell Buchanan. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 squatters in the abandoned house (with a pet crow?)

Candyman (1992)

Year 18, Day 299 - 10/26/26 - Movie #5,466

BEFORE: Well, I'm sorry if you came here today looking for "Final Destination 4", but it turns out that there IS no movie with that title - there is a fourth movie in the series, but it's not called that. (IYKYK). Surprisingly there is NO possible chain through all the Final Destination movies, so I had to improvise and mix two franchises together if I want to watch all the movies in both of them. 

Tony Todd carries over from "Final Destination 3" but they did NOT cast him in "The Final Destination", which was probably a mistake. I mean, somebody has to carry over from one movie to the next, right? RIGHT? He does return later in the series, I mean, the films take place in different cities so in the "FD" universe, one guy can't be everywhere, I get it. Or maybe Mr. Todd just wasn't available for a couple years because he was very busy or had health problems or something. Maybe they used archive footage later on, I just don't know yet. But I'm taking a detour into the "Candyman" movies to keep the chain alive, and this way I don't have to circle back here in a later year, unless they happen to make another "FD" movie. 

Either way, I'm all turned around here - but maybe it's for the best, I was getting burned out on the "Hey, it's just Final Destination again but on a different vehicle" pattern. Why, it's almost like killing off every character in your franchise's latest film is a bad idea, because then we can't come to care about those characters over time, but hey, what do I know? 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Candyman" (2021) (Movie #4,275)

THE PLOT: The Candyman, a murderous soul with a hook for a hand, is accidentally summoned to reality by a skeptic grad student researching the monster's myth. 

AFTER: The 2021 sequel film was my film to watch ON HALLOWEEN just four years ago, I had seen parts of it during the late summer of 2021 as it was playing in an AMC theater where I was working as an usher. But by the time I watched the film, I'd already quit that job and I'd been working at the theater run by the college for, well, over a year. Still, I'm going to put this one on the "Screenings I Worked At" list, it counts. That means it took four years from me saying, "Hey, maybe I should watch the original film, one of these days..." to me actually doing that. Well, it takes as long as it takes. 

So now I've gained some understanding beyond what was related in the 2021 film - Candyman was the son of a slave who became a prominent painter in the late 1800's, who fell in love with a white woman and impregnated her, leading to his death by lynch mob, although before killing him the mob amputated his hand and gave him a hook in its place - then they smeared him with honey and allowed him to be attacked by angry bees. Then they lynched him and burned his corpse in a funeral pyre, which took place on the future location of a housing project in Chicago. Now, there are a few things that don't make sense there, like if the mob was going to kill him, why did they bother to give him a hook hand? That would only be useful if he had lost his hand and was going to be around a while and needed a way to grab things. And the bee thing seems rather like a lot of work too, why not just kill the man? And then burning on top of the lynching, it all seems a bit much. I'm not saying it couldn't happen that way, the mob mentality being what it is, maybe the while people disagreed over his punishment so they just decided to hit him all with it at once, you know, to satisfy everyone. 

Helen Lyle is a graduate student of anthropology at UI Chicago, and she and her friend Bernadette are writing their thesis about the Candyman myth, and have interviewed several people who believe in the urban legend about the ghost that appears when you look in a mirror and say his name five times. It's kind of a "Beetlejuice" situation, except it's more work and the same questions apply, like how long can you pause between saying the name, like what happens if you say his name FOUR times today and then one more time tomorrow, does he show up? Or does the counter reset at midnight, like what are the rules on this? More importantly, WHY would anyone who believes the story actually say his name that many times, if they think the spirit is going to show up and kill them? Do they have a death wish, or have they just not thought this through all the way?  

NITPICK POINT: Some of the people who they've interviewed don't even have the story straight, like some people have mixed it up with the urban legend about the stoned couple that put the turkey in the crib and the baby in the oven. WTF? And you know that just never happened, so it sheds doubt on the whole "Candyman" thing from the get-go. We also see some razor blades inside Halloween candy later in the film, and BTW, that never happened either. Sure, there were people who were trying to poison kids, at one point, but specific (probably terrible) kids and they weren't just handing out dangerous candy to random kids. Still, the legend survives despite the facts not supporting it, and as a result some neighborhoods still do not participate in "trick or treat" out of an abundance of caution. While in North Carolina I saw segments on morning TV for "Trunk or Treat" events, which is when a church group or school has a closed-off party and people distribute candy from their car trunks, so kids aren't going to random houses where evil strangers are doing bad nasty things. Umm, it's fine, but if somebody was interested in handing out bad candy at a "Trunk or Treat" event they could just do that, and also the name doesn't make any sense now, because it should be "Trunk AND Treat", not OR. I thought, what the heck does somebody have against tricks, are the kids so fragile now that they can't be triggered by a little pranking, or not inventive enough to come up with a trick if they don't get a treat? What a world we live in...

Anyway, Helen starts researching the "Candyman" story as it relates to the Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago, and since she lives in a condo building that was originally designed to be affordable housing, she happens to know that there's a hole in every apartment, behind the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, if you pull out the medicine cabinet you can push on the other apartments medicine cabinet and gain access to the other apartment. Regarding the murder of a woman named Ruthie Jean, Helen believes she knows how the killer got into her apartment, via the medicine cabinet hole. NITPICK POINT #2: This doesn't make much sense either, because it seems like it would be extra work to leave a medicine-cabinet-shaped hole in the bathroom walls, it wouldn't make the cost of construction much less, in fact it might even be MORE expensive to leave this hole between apartments, building a totally solid wall would (I think) be cheaper and faster and make the building stronger, but what do I know? 

But Helen and Bernadette visit the murder site and sure enough, there's a hole behind the medicine cabinet that leads to a secret vacant apartment. NITPICK POINT #3: And in both buildings, the other apartment just happens to be vacant? That strains credulity just a little more, like are the condos not selling well in her building? Do they not need every single apartment in the Cabrini-Green project to be full?  While there, they also meet a resident there, Anne-Marie, who is not a junkie, not a prostitute, she's just trying to raise her baby boy in safety. 

After learning the full Candyman story from a very pompous professor, Helen comes back to the projects and meets Jake, a young boy, who tells her that "Candyman" assaulted a young boy in a nearby public bathroom, and everyone knows not to go in there, or Candyman will get them. So, naturally Helen checks it out - remember this is a woman who was told the consequences of saying "Candyman" in the mirror five times, and she did it anyway. Inside the very disgusting men's room she meets a local thug who slashes her with a hook, but it's not the REAL ghost Candyman, just a local dealer who probably sells his drugs there and doesn't like strange white women coming around. When she recovers, Helen is able to identify the thug for the police and then she's free to continue her odd quest to meet the ghost Candyman, for some reason. 

When she is visited in a parking garage by the ghostly one, he says things like "Be my victim" and he sort of hypnotizes or enthralls her, and she blacks out. When she comes to, she's covered in blood and she's in Anne-Marie's apartment, along with the head of Anne-Marie's dog. She (for some reason) picks up the cleaver and gets her fingerprints on it, and then has to fight a hysterical Anne-Marie to escape - but the police arrive and find her holding the weapon and covered in blood. Anne-Marie's infant son is missing, taken away by the Candyman, but Helen is charged with several crimes. She can't say where the baby is, because she doesn't know, and honestly it's not clear if she killed the dog or Candyman did. 

Her husband and lawyer get her released on bail (thanks to white privilege) and she desperately wants proof that the Candyman exists and did the bad thing - so, yup, you guessed it, she says his name in the mirror five times AGAIN. Very, very stupid, because he shows up again and this time he kills Bernadette, who was just coming by to check on Helen. Once again, Helen is covered in blood and is found holding the murder weapon. Like, OK, one time is maybe an accident, twice is not an accident - so it's possible that Helen is a serial killer and has imagined the Candyman coming to her and making her black out. She is committed to a psychiatric hospital and when the doctor asks her to tell him what happened in her apartment, she decides it's best to summon Candyman YET AGAIN so the doctor can see first-hand. Yeah, well, that's it for the doctor, another mysterious stabbing death but Helen escapes again and is on the run. By all means, keep digging that hole deeper and deeper...

She shows up at her apartment and surprise, surprise, her husband Trevor is now living with one of his grad students, and they're re-painting the apartment to be Pepto-Bismol pink. Yuch. What's it been, Trevor, a whole month? There's just no way he wasn't already sleeping with the student and cheating on Helen, he absolutely was. What a piece of garbage, but honestly Helen should have known, because she started sleeping with him when SHE was one of his students, right? He did it once, he'll do it again. Helen returns to the projects and gains access to the secret apartment again, but this time she follows the holes in the walls through more secret apartments and she discovers Candyman's lair, also there's a mural on the walls that shows Candyman's origin story, and the woman he was in love with looks an awful lot like her. So, is she the reincarnated lost love of the slave's son? It's unclear, but the mural does seem to point that way. 

The residents of the project have been building a big bonfire outside, you know, for Halloween night, as you do. Candyman decides to hide the baby in the woodpile to turn that into another funeral pyre, but it's also unclear what he's trying to accomplish by doing that. He puts Helen in the pile as well, does he think that killing Helen will reunite them in the afterlife? Best guess? But Helen uses her last bit of strength to try and save the baby, even if she doesn't survive. The ending would seem to suggest that she became a vengeful spirit much like Candyman did, and this way maybe Trevor gets what's coming to him. I mean, sure, but we kind of got there the really hard way, didn't we? 

It's a horror story, it's a film about racial inequality and class warfare, cheating husbands and professors who sleep with their students, and then of course you've got the evil spirit who is also somehow a bunch of bees walking around in a human costume. So yeah, it's about a lot of things that don't really coalesce into one coherent storyline, that's for sure. But it's so far out there you kind of have to reward it for getting somewhere and also kind of everywhere. There's also a bunch of Philip Glass music, which, sure, was very popular at the time for reasons. 

The doctor at the psychiatric hospital was played by Stanley DeSantis, who I never met but I did have some business dealings with. He had a side-hustle which was a graphic design company that made t-shirts and the animator I worked for hired him to make two of his cartoon strips into t-shirt designs, and we ordered, I don't know, 30 or 40 of each one in various sizes and sold them at Comic-Cons and online. But when we needed to make more t-shirts, we could not get in touch with him because he had died in 2005 and we never got the masters back from him in order to make more t-shirts from another company. 

Directed by Bernard Rose (writer of "Candyman" (2021))

Also starring Virginia Madsen (last seen in "Her Smell"), Xander Berkeley (last seen in "The Divergent Series: Allegiant"), Vanessa E. Williams (last seen in "Imagine That"), Kasi Lemmons (last seen in "Vampire's Kiss"), DeJuan Guy, Marianna Elliott, Ted Raimi (last heard in "18 1/2"), Ria Pavla, Lisa Ann Poggi (last seen in "Honeymoon in Vegas"), Adam Philipson, Eric Edwards (last seen in "Blade"), Carolyn Lowery, Barbara Alston, Sarina C. Grant (last seen in "Coma"), Michael Culkin (last seen in "Boogie Woogie"), Bernard Rose, Terrence Riggins (last seen in "What's Love Got to Do with It"), Gilbert Lewis (last seen in "Don Juan DeMarco"), Rusty Schwimmer (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Baxter Harris (last seen in "Species II"), John Rensenhouse, Mika, Stanley DeSantis (last seen in "Fools Rush In"), Diane Peterson (last seen in "Arlington Road"), Michael Laren (last seen in "Trust Me"), Michelle Blackwell

RATING: 6 out of 10 non-functioning toilets (seems about right)

Final Destination 3

Year 18, Day 298 - 10/25/26 - Movie #5,465

BEFORE: OK, I am back from vacation in North Carolina - not-so-funny story, I was very paranoid about watching "Final Destination 2", a film that starts with a horrible highway accident, just before going on a long drive on several highways. I mean, if you believe in premonitions and superstitions, you might just want to avoid the first film in this series before traveling on an airplane, or, as we established, also avoid listening to John Denver music before a flight. By extension, maybe don't watch the second film just before a long-distance drive. 

Anyway, there was an accident on I-95, just north of Petersburg, VA, but fortunately it was on the other side of the highway, northbound, and two cars flipped over, but nobody was hurt. Well, I figured that was the end of the "curse" until we continued a little further and found ourselves driving behind a truck with a bunch of logs on it - and that's what caused the accident in "Final Destination 2". I hadn't told my wife about watching that movie, but I did tell her I was a bit uncomfortable driving behind the truck, and she felt the same way. I said, "Do whatever you have to do, slow down, speed up, pull over, but this is not where I want to be." And I think we pulled into a rest stop at a Wawa or something, but we for sure got out from behind the logging truck. 

The rest of the trip went well (see below, though) and I celebrated a birthday down in North Carolina, we went out for Chinese Buffet the day before and my sister ordered in a nice meal on the day itself, plus chocolate cake and some chocolate stout I had just bought. And I got to hang out with my father for a few days, we worked on some jigsaw puzzles, I'm much faster than him but I slow my roll when we're working on a puzzle together. My sister said my visit lifted his spirits, he hasn't been doing so well since my mother passed, but he perked up a bit while we were there. 

Anyway, Tony Todd (or at least the voice of Tony Todd) carries over from "Final Destination 2". 

THE PLOT: Wendy Christensen and a group of teens who escaped a fatal roller-coaster accident face a bloody date with Death. 

AFTER: No lie, the other big thing we did down in North Carolina was to attend the N.C. State Fair, it's a really big deal down there, my sister lives near Raleigh, and that's where the fair grounds are. So I was JUST at a big fair, four days ago, and now this "Final Destination 3" movie starts off at a fair with a defective roller coaster? Well, the saving grace here is that I didn't go on any of the rides at the fair, like many other people, I was there for the food. I saw at least a hundred posts on Instagram about "Here's Everything I Ate at the NC State Fair", sure, like anybody else would care about what YOU ate, who gives a crap, why are you wasting everyone's time with a list, in the end it's not important at all, hardly worth talking about. 

So, here's a list of what I ate at the NC State Fair: a crab rangoon egg roll, a "Yam & Ham" sweet potato biscuit with country ham, a couple of my wife's nachos, an order of loaded "Mega Tater Tots" with ham, cheese, chives inside and hot honey and bacon on top, a deep-fried Scotch egg, and a deep-fried apple hand pie with cinnamon ice cream, then we got giant donuts to go, mine was a PB&J, with peanuts and peanut butter outside and raspberry jelly inside. I took a pass on a few items when the lines were too long, most notably I skipped the crab empanadas and the "Boss Hog", which was pork belly burnt ends served over fries with white BBQ sauce. We didn't end up eating the donuts until yesterday morning, when we had our first pit stop on the 2-day drive home. All the food was great, and a lot of planning went into deciding WHAT to eat, and the night before working out a path through the fair to get all of those things, with a minimal amount of excess walking. This was a "surgical strike" on the fair, sure we spent some time indoors at the arena checking out the sampling stations (Cheerwine and ice cream) but after four hours, we'd eaten our fill and we were headed OUT of the fair, and since it was late afternoon there was a big crowd coming in after work or school, so we avoided all of that. It was still fairly busy on a Wednesday afternoon, but I'd rather go then instead of a Friday or Saturday or the day when everyone can bring in 6 cans of food in exchange for a ticket, those days would be like wall-to-wall people. 

Again, we did NOT go on any rides - my wife's not into roller coasters but she has stood by while I've gone on the Cyclone or the one at the New York New York casino in Las Vegas. Well, tonight's film would seem to justify her distaste for thrill rides - because if you never go on one, then you'll never be involved in an accident on a fairground ride. Well, we love that North Carolina State Fair, but there were 5 people injured on a ride there back in 2013, and then there was a malfunction on a ride last year, some people got stuck up in the air for a while but nobody was injured. It's really the same reason I don't go swimming at the beach, as long as I don't I've got like a zero percent chance of being eaten by a shark. And I think I'd be a tasty snack for one, considering how much BBQ and fair foods I eat. 

So this film ends up about the wisdom of NOT going on a roller coaster, as high-schooler Wendy has a premonition of an accident, and she watches all of her friends die and then herself, in much the same way Alex saw the plane explosion in the first film and Kimberly saw the giant highway pile-up in the second film. They have these visions of the future for a reason, because after they get over being scared shitless they can take action, get off the plane or don't get on the highway, or, yeah, umm, get off the roller coaster in a panicked state, I'm sure the amusement park staff just LOVE it when that happens. Once Wendy realizes that her premonition isn't just regular fear leaving her body, it's definitely coming true, she tries to tell everyone that the track is broken and the electronics of the ride have not been maintained, and for her effort she is merely thrown out of the ride. But she did manage to convince a few other people, and Kevin, her seatmate, started a fight with Lewis, the football star, and then a bunch of other people were made to leave the ride as well. Those people were mad at first about not getting to ride the coaster, but their feelings turned to relief when pieces of their friends started to rain down from the coaster. 

I'm sorry, but the real loser here is Jason, Wendy's boyfriend, who just HAD to sit up in front on the coaster, and even before Wendy's premonition, when she expressed that she was nervous about the ride and wanted to sit in the back, Jason still took the front seat and sent Kevin back to look after Wendy. This is terrible boyfriend behavior, if your girlfriend is anxious or nervous, you ride with her, duh, not just because it's the chivalrous thing to do, but if she's scared she's going to want to grab on to somebody, and Jason really should have made sure that was HIM and not Kevin. Just saying. Wendy, you're better off without him, because he didn't really care about you. Oh, sure, he asked to be let off the ride but only AFTER Wendy was removed and the ride had already started moving, and that's some really weak sauce, bro. 

I'm just three movies into this franchise, and already the pattern is nearly exactly the same, the survivors research accounts of premonitions and they learn about Flight 180 from the first movie (which was six years ago at this point, in both movie time and IRL) and it doesn't take long for them to figure out that Death is stalking them even if they can't see it coming, but it's coming for them. So it's JUST the first movie again, but on a roller coaster this time, just like the second movie was just the first movie, but on a highway instead of a plane. There's a bit at the end of tonight's film that takes place on the NYC subway, so we're knocking off both trains and roller coasters tonight, where will the NEXT film take place, on a boat?

Wendy also took a lot of pictures for the school yearbook, which seems a bit weird because usually the yearbook is supposed to be full of the kids AT SCHOOL, OK maybe in the high-school play or on the football field, but why would the yearbook print photos of the students going to a fair or amusement park? They would do that on their own time, unless this was some kind of organized class trip, but I don't think that it is. It's important to the plot that Wendy got pictures of all the people who were being stalked after the accident, because that gave her clues about how each one might die - but it's still hard to believe she would take photos of them at the fair for the yearbook. Sorry, screenwriter, this makes no sense, please try again. Also, it really strains credulity to say that the photos "predicted" their cause of death. Like the thinnest of clues are used here to predict the future, like if the photo was over-exposed somehow that means the person is going to burn up or die in an explosion. You know, sometimes a bad photo is just a bad photo. 

Also, NITPICK POINT, who's to say who would have died in what order aboard the roller coaster accident, especially for the people who were kicked off the ride? Since they didn't die, what evidence is there to suggest the order in which they WOULD HAVE DIED if they stayed on board the ride? And now Death is making sure to kill them in exactly that order, because the Grim Reaper has OCD or something? It's hard to believe these people would get so caught up in finding the logical order in a very illogical thing, which is being stalked by Death and killed because somehow surviving an accident is a thing that needs to be rectified ASAP. Somewhere there are people who have brushes with death or they survive accidents and then they live for 20, 30, 50 more years, it's been known to happen. Now we're being told that if you survive an accident or you miss that doomed flight or you overslept on 9/11, well, that's it, the clock is ticking for you because Death is right around the corner, he's got a new plan for you. 

The fear that emanates from this franchise is all about the lack of control, finding out that your death could come at any time, and even knowing about it coming may not allow you to prevent it. It's going to be a random signpost falling on you, or a nail gun at work that falls on you (or you fall on it) and you'll have no say in the matter. BUT that's real life, every day, at any point you could trip and fall in the shower or your house could have an electrical short or you could die in a bizarre gardening accident, and if you're a thrill-seeker it's even worse, your parachute might not open or you could realize too late that your bungee cord is not connected on the other end. Well, sometimes Death doesn't even need to try that hard.  

We celebrate the attempts to defeat Death here, even if they end up being fruitless. Well, we all have to go sometime, and you can't just sit around in your house all day and go nowhere. That's my plan for the next couple of days, after cheating death by surviving all that deep-fried food at the fair AND a bunch of Carolina BBQ a few days later. However, I will have to go back to work this week, and I'm scheduled to fly back down to NC a few days before Thanksgiving to watch my father for a few days while my sister's family works at the Macy's parade. I don't really feel comfortable being in charge of another person for 4 days, but there will be home health aides to assist me, so there's that. And I get a free turkey dinner (or something) out of it - I cashed in a bunch of SkyMiles so it won't really be costing me a lot to make that trip. But first I've got to get there, finish my October films and then a reduced number of November ones. 

Directed by James Wong (director of "Final Destination")

Also starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead (last seen in "Black Christmas"), Crystal Lowe (ditto), Ryan Merriman (last seen in "The Ring Two"), Kris Lemche (last seen in "In Time"), Alexz Johnson, Sam Easton, Jesse Moss (last seen in "Tucker and Dale vs Evil"), Gina Holden (last seen in "The Butterfly Effect 2"), Texas Battle (last seen in "Coach Carter"), Chelan Simmons (last seen in "Good Luck Chuck"), Amanda Crew (last seen in "She's the Man"), Maggie Ma, Ecstasia Sanders (last seen in "Hot Tub Time Machine"), Jody Racicot (also last seen in "Black Christmas"), Patrick Gallagher (last heard in "The Tiger's Apprentice"), Dylan Basu, Alberto Ghisi (also last seen in "She's the Man"), Stuart Cowan (ditto), Harris Allan, Alexander Kalugin (last seen in "Miracle"), Nels Lennarson (last seen in "Horns"), Jacob Rupp, R. David Stephens, Andrew Francis (last seen in "Agent Cody Banks"), Cory Monteith, Grahame Andrews (last seen in "The 6th Day"), Tony Morelli, Nesta Chapman, Dustin Milligan (also last seen in "The Butterfly Effect 2"), Jim Shield (last seen in "Seventh Son"), Lou Bollo, Colby Johannson, Keith Dallas (last seen in "Say It Isn't So"), Michael Stewart, Victor Ayala, Agam Darshi (last seen in "Colossal"), Dylan Basile, Matt Ellis (last seen in "Rememory"), Che Aimee Dorval, Jackie Jenkins Jr. (last seen in "The Lovebirds"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 charms on Julie's "good luck" bracelet

Final Destination 2

Year 18, Day 290 - 10/17/26 - Movie #5,464

BEFORE: It's very sneaky, they made a bunch of movies out of a common fear that nearly everyone shares, the fear of dying. The movies play out like horror movies, but it's the horror of knowing that we're all mortal and at some point, our bodies are going to fail us, even if that failure is caused by an outside circumstance, it's still the fault in ourselves, not in the stars. Umm, or is it? Is Death caused by a feeling, thinking, outside force or is it just caused by accidents, disease and/or stupidity or recklessness? Discuss. 

The "killer" is stalking these people, but the killer is also unseen, there's no person wearing a mask or holding a chainsaw or a gun or anything, they don't even feel the need to SHOW some character like Boogie or the Grim Reaper, because the presence is all implied. Those knives didn't just drop off the counter randomly, Death did it. The car doors didn't just stop opening when the car got stuck on the train tracks, Death did it. Allegedly. Your spouse didn't replace your parachute with a fitted bedsheet, Death did it. Sure, if that makes it easier for you. 

Ali Larter carries over from "Final Destination", which itself is a bit of a spoiler, but one other actor carries over as well, he's going to dominate this last week-and-a-half of my October horror chain. For my purposes, I'm going to file these movies under "body horror" because that's really what we're talking about, that we all walk around in this fragile bag of blood and organs that's way too vulnerable to heat, cold, projectiles, punctures, fatigue and just plain old wear-and-tear, so that clock is ticking for all of us - it's just a matter of time, isn't it? 

THE PLOT: Death is stalking Kimberly Corman and multiple survivors of a deadly highway accident. 

AFTER: So there's a bit of a pattern here, every sequel maybe has one or two people who carry over from the last film, despite most of the characters being killed off in very unlikely and darn near ridiculous ways. With a little more comedy, this could have been called "Darwin Awards 2" maybe. But somebody needs to carry over, if for no other reason than to remember what happened to the people who got kicked off Flight 180, and then maybe it won't take so long for the next group of people to realize that Death is stalking them because they SHOULD have died. 

So, umm, if Death is real does that mean it's the Angel of Death, and therefore angels are real and therefore God is real? And if God is real, does God have a plan in place for all of us or not, and if he has a plan for us, isn't death part of that plan? And if we mess with the plan or we change the plan, doesn't that make God fallible, and thus a little less god-like? Am I way over-thinking this or have I just found a plothole that nobody has thought of before? While I'm at it, are our fates already determined for us, or can we change them? This film would suggest that we CAN change our fates, provided we never leave the house and never go swimming with sharks or driving fast in a car or prepare a meal using sharp knives, we should be OK, and we'll live as long as we can but then die anyway from disease or old age or just plain boredom. Wow, you really can NOT win at the Game of Life, can you? 

While I'm at it, if there is a force that is somehow the personification of "Death" that is stalking the people who were supposed to have died, what is the force that is giving the premonitions to the people before-hand, who now have the power to save lives - a few, anyway? Will the franchise be explaining this opposite force at any point, or am I just going to be left hanging here? Is this God or some more minor deity that is granting certain people the power of foresight or are they just born with this talent, it's some human skill built in to the brain that doesn't work until it needs to? I mean, we all have dream software that's hard-wired in, or perhaps our brains just need to process old information while the body rests, I'm not 100% sure that's what dreams are, but that's what we've been told over the years, right? If the brain switched off while we slept, then we'd be dead, that brain needs to keep working all the time I think, or we'd be comatose and never wake up. Right? So maybe the premonition power is an extension of our brain's ability to dream, that's a bit unclear though. 

I haven't talked much about my mother, since she passed away in May at least, on the last trip we made to North Carolina. She'd had heart trouble for years, and she'd get fluid build-up in her lungs, so maybe in her last five years she'd be in the hospital every six months or so, and then spend a few months in rehab before getting to go home - and her dementia was getting progressively worse for maybe the last three years, she could remember family trips from years ago but she had no memories of living in a nursing home for two years, or the trip down to live in my sister's house. So I never officially said goodbye, but with each trip to visit her there was maybe more of a feeling that it might be the last time I'd see her. Last October she was talking about needing to get back to her mother's house in time for dinner, and I had to remind her that her mother passed away years ago and hadn't owned that house for some time before that. 

On our last visit in May, she was mostly unresponsive, mumbling a lot and clearly in some kind of pain, then on our third night there I was up late (as usual) watching TV (of course) and my phone rang, my sister was calling. Not texting, calling - well I knew before answering that my mother was gone, that's not really a premonition, it was just reading the room. Some things you just don't put in a text. Of course I had dreams about her after, and maybe I might have had a dream about her dying before that trip, but I don't think you could count that as a premonition either, because it was fairly certain that it would happen at some point, the doctors had given her a prognosis of WEEKS at that point, instead of months. I'm just grateful I was in the same zip code when it happened, and not back in New York, my family could go directly into the memorial planning phase. 

These "Final Destination" films don't seem to ever get into the funeral phase, I mean there was a mass funeral for the students and teachers killed on Flight 180, but after that, things happened so quickly there just wasn't any time. Same goes for the sequel, we don't see a funeral for the people who died in the highway crash because they're just NPCs, the focus is on the people who did NOT get on the highway, because Kimberly had a premonition of the whole accident, in which she and her friends would all die, plus Officer Burke, plus a dozen or so other people, all in very gruesome and horrible ways. Like screaming AND on fire. Who the hell lets a truck hauling giant logs on the same highway as passenger cars, anyway? I mean, was Death so busy trying to manage the hundreds of thousands of people who die every day that he had to start killing them off in bunches? Does he have a quota or something, maybe 50 people have to die on Long Island every day and he finds that it's much more efficient to sabotage a lumber truck than to come up with 50 separate accidents, one for each person. 

Well, this is where the logic of the franchise's premise really starts to break down, because we're back where we started, aren't we? If Death has a plan that means that there IS some form of order to the universe, people are born, they live X number of years and then, well, they've just got to go, so dropping giant logs on to the highway and causing fiery crashes, mayhem and bloodshed is part of the natural order. But then one person subverted that order, and used her car to block the on-ramp, thereby saving the lives of a few dozen people, but we really only need to focus on 8 or 9 of them. There were also Kimberly's three friends in her car, but they died in a SEPARATE crash a few minutes after the first one, again it's like a punchline to a sick joke. Oh, my friends are alive! No, wait, they're dead too. 

The police officer pulls Kimberly out of the way of the second crash, so he's also interfered with Death's plan. The sequel then reverts to the plot of the first film, where Death now wants to track down those 8 or 9 people who should have died in the accident and take them out, one-by-one. And one of them JUST won the lottery, too - wait, that's kind of like that Alanis Morrissette song, right? Evan Lewis, lottery winner, has one of those weird chain reaction kitchen-based deaths, where he accidentally starts a grease fire and also accidentally microwaves something metal just BEFORE he gets his hand stuck in the drain trying to retrieve a piece of jewelry. Oh, sure, he could just take his diamond watch OFF, but why would he do that? Instead he has to watch helplessly as the grease fire spreads through the whole kitchen, and by the time he gets his hand loose, it's too late to put it out, plus the fire extinguisher malfunctions, so he's forced to flee, only his windows JUST slammed shut and locked, so he has to break the glass. Anyway, he goes down the fire escape as his kitchen explodes, so he's safe - no, wait, the ladder on the fire escape is stuck, until it isn't. So much drama (and comedy) over one death, it ends up feeling like you're watching Buster Keaton in a snuff film. 

Next to go is Tim Carpenter, he and his mother survived the highway crash because Kimberly blocked the on-ramp. He's got a dentist appointment and what could possibly go wrong there? Sharp tools, drills, tanks of high-pressure anesthetic gas, it's a minefield really. Also there are pigeons who keep crashing into the dentist office windows and dying, and still Tim manages to die in a very ridiculous way that's semi-connected to all of these random things. 

At this point Kimberly decides to visit Clear Rivers, the fakely named person who survived the first film, but only because she checked herself into a mental hospital and she hasn't left since. It's a rational choice, as long as she's locked up in a padded room then Death can't get to her, and she's got one of those crazy-person vision boards about the accidents that took place one year before, pushpins connected with red yarn, which is the preferred choice of crazy people trying to prove conspiracies, for sure. Clear's advice is that Death might not be killing people in the correct order any more, but he's still going to kill everyone, eventually. I mean, she's not wrong, it may take 10 or 20 or 50 years, but Death's going to get to you eventually. Death thanks you for your patience, and someone will be with you shortly to kill you.

Eventually Clear does leave the looney bin and she takes Kimberly to see the mortician (from the first film) who tells them that "only new life can defeat Death". Umm, great, what does THAT mean? It leads them to remember the pregnant woman who was in the traffic that avoided the crash, however nobody's been in touch with her, she hasn't come to any of the survivor group meetings. Somehow they determine that the birth of her baby will create a loophole that will ruin Death's design. How? Not sure, but I think they're desperate enough to try anything at this point. 

Ugh, NITPICK POINTS abound after Officer Burke tries to find the pregnant lady with the white van seen in the footage from the day of the crash. He SHOULD be able to just look up her information based on her license plate, and he does, but he also puts out an APB on her, which is not correct procedure. The woman is arrested and held in custody, but also she is very pregnant and needs to get to the hospital, so the whole thing devolves into a giant car chase, err, van chase, and meanwhile Kimberly has another premonition of somebody driving into a lake and drowning. Does the pregnant lady drive into the lake? Does somebody else? Who is this doctor in the vision, is she a helpful doctor or is she trying to kill the baby? Everybody ends up on the same farm, where some more people are horribly injured, and for some reason I got vibes from "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" here. 

By the end, nobody has driven a van into a lake, so a desperate Kimberly decides to do it herself. This is not only dumb and foolhardy, but it subverts the entire formula that the film started with, the whole idea was that somebody gets shown a vision in order to PREVENT that thing from happening, and then suddenly the rules are different and Kimberly decides that the vision is there to show her what SHOULD happen, that's cuckoo bananas in addition to being incredibly inconsistent. I mean, if you really think that's going to hide you from Death, sure, go ahead, knock yourself out, drive a van into a lake, but I want nothing to do with it. 

We're left with a complete distillation of the rules that we started with - we're left with just one rule, and that is that everybody dies. And if somebody SAVES somebody from dying, well, that just means they've got a target on their back now, and their death is going to happen ASAP, and it will be as horrible and/or ironic as possible. Now does that warrant another sequel? Yes, apparently so. Hollywood never met a premise that it couldn't beat right into the ground. 

And with that, I'm on vacation - back in a week.

Directed by David R. Ellis (director of "Cellular" and "Snakes on a Plane")

Also starring A.J. Cook, Michael Landes, David Paetkau, James Kirk, Lynda Boyd, Keegan Connor Tracy, Jonathan Cherry, T.C. Carson, Justina Machado, Tony Todd (also carrying over from "Final Destination"), Sarah Carter, Alejandro Rae, Shaun Sipos, Andrew Airlie, Christina Jastrzembska, Eileen Pedde, Jill Krop, Marrett Green, Don Bell, Odessa Munroe, Noel Fisher, Benita Ha, Aaron Douglas, Eric Keenleyside, Enid-Raye Adams, Fred Henderson, Veena Sood, Darcy Laurie, John R. Taylor, Alfred E. Humphreys, Chilton Crane, Klodyne Rodney, Michael S. Bolton

RATING: 4 out of 10 hook hands in a box