Written by Eric Bress (Final Destination 2) and directed by David R. Ellis (who also worked on that film, as well as Snakes On a Plane), this was both the best performing and worst-reviewed of all the Final Destination films. Instead of being called Final Destination 4, they were with a name that made it seem like it may not be a sequel, which it isn’t.

Eight years after the disasters of Flight 180, the Route 23 pileup and the Devil’s Flight, a group of teens are at the McKinley Speedway when one of them has a premonition. You may have a similar one if you’ve seen even one of these films.

This one adds 3D to the equation, which really would have made more sense in the third movie. Tony Todd’s absence in this movie really takes things down. At least the opening credits replaying all of the kills from the last three movies is pretty cool.

Like all of the films in the series, there are references to horror actors and directors. The first movie used Lon Chaney, George Waggner, Tod Browning, F.W. Murnau, Max Schreck, Val Lewton, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Don Siegel and Alfred Hitchcock. The second had names that paid tribute to Roger Corman, John Carpenter and Robert Dix. And in the third, Benjamin Christensen, Edgar G. Ulmer, Herschell Gordon Lewis, George A. Romero, Robert Wise, Karl Freund and Victor Halperin. Seeing as how they used up nearly everyone across three previous films, this one pays tribute to Dan O’Bannon, Sean S. Cunningham, Andy Milligan and Jim Wynorski.

I can also tell you that the movie in this movie, Love Lies Dying, is really the end of The Long Kiss Goodnight with music from Dark City.

I realize that I watch a lot of movies. However, this point was hammered home when I realized that I saw three movies where people were killed by a tanning bed in one week. For anyone else, they’d see this as a moment to step back. Not me. I glared into the gaping maw of early 2000’s teen-friendly horror sequels and looked back before diving in, sternly speaking right to the camera, stating “I’ll see you in Hell.”

Directed by the returning James Wong (series creator Jeffrey Reddick did not come back), this film starts with a rollercoaster accident scene that will, much like flying in the first movie and driving in the second, make you never want to go to a theme park again.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as Wendy Christensen, whose premonition of the disaster keeps her friends from getting on the coaster, which leads to…look, if you’ve seen any of these movies, you understand how they work. You show up for the insane death sequences and wait for Tony Todd to show up and remind you exactly how much you love him. This time, all you get is his voice as the Devil before a ride and as the announcer on the subway.

Winstead teamed up again with Ryan Merriman, who she also appeared in The Ring Two as the teens that try — as always, in vain — to rescue the people that Death is killing. The funny thing is, this movie makes it obvious that you shouldn’t fight fate, because then you end up baked to a crisp while just trying to get a good summer glow on.

My DVD of this movie also features a Choose Their Fate option, which gives you some control over the movie, mainly changing some of the death scenes. My favorite part is that if you decide to keep the characters from even boarding the roller coaster, the movie goes directly to the credits. Like I always say, when people ask, “Why do people do such dumb things in horror movies?” I say, “Well, we wouldn’t have this movie otherwise.”

One year after the explosion of Flight 180, Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook, The Virgin Suicides), Shaina McKlank (Sarah Carter), Dano Estevez (Alex Rae) and Frankie Whitman (Shaun Sipos) are saved from a multiple car pile-up when her vision keeps all the cars behind her from entering the freeway. As a cop interrogates her, her friends are killed in the eventual pileup. Now, Death is after everyone. Again.

Kimberly finds Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), the last survivor of Flight 180, who is hiding from death inside a psychiatric ward (it’s the same location that was Smith’s Grove in Halloween: Resurrection) after Alex Browning’s (Devon Sawa, who doesn’t even show up) off-screen death. She introduces her to William Bludworth (Tony Todd), who informs her that only new life can stop what Death wants.

Soon, everyone is dying in reverse of the order they were originally to croak and the gore has been upped considerably from the last movie. The car crash at the open of the film is enough to keep anyone from getting behind the wheel.

It was directed by David R. Ellis, who also did the last film in this series and Snakes on a Plane. He was also a child actor with Kurt Russell in several Disney films before becoming a stuntman and second unit director.

In this installment of the Saw series, director Darren Lynn Bousman and screenwriter  Leigh Whannell would return to make another story by Whannell and James Wan.

This time, Jigsaw is trying to get a man named Jeff to let go of his need for revenge after he loses his son to a drunk driver. Meanwhile, Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) kidnaps Dr. Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh) who must keep Jigsaw alive for one last test.

Spoiler mode on, but this time Jigsaw is clearing up the loose ends, killing off Dina Meyer’s Detective Allison Kerry character while the opening reveals that Donnie Wahlberg’s Detective Eric Matthews has survived…well, for now at least.

The game here is that Jeff must resist the urge to kill the man who has taken everything from him while Amanda works to become the next version of Jigsaw once John Kramer (Tobin Bell) dies.

How gory is this movie? Well, several of the original posters were actually made with Tobin Bell’s blood in it, imitating the way that Kiss gave Marvel comics their blood to print the cover of Marvel Comics Super Special #1. Seriously, though, that trap with the pigs spraying blood everywhere? That was pretty rough.

Two cops just want to watch the big game, but when the Kubrick Killer ends up inside their station. Maybe. They think he’s Alex, a black suspect who they regale with racism as they try to break him down and get him to confess.

What follows is a non-linear narrative filled with no small amount of profanity, murder and mayhem. Whether you have the stomach for this or not is probably all part of the filmmaker’s intentions. I’ve seen comparisons to the Guinea Pig films, so know what you’re getting into here.

I mean, I’ve made it through some really rough giallo like Giallo In Venice, The New York Ripper, The Killer Is Still Among Us and Arabella the Black Angel, which are all amongst the roughest and scummiest in the genre. So my mileage may vary from yours.

Or you may be someone who wants to see areolas sliced off and female sex organs destroyed. Is that you? Perhaps you’re on a watchlist or you have to introduce yourself to the neighbors and show your papers when you move in? Then you may have an interest in this, too.

Then again, I’m selling this to you.

That said, I liked the idea of juxtaposing moments in the killer’s life — often when he felt like he was playing a role — with what is probably his true self — when he’s actually killing people.

That said, you can probably sell that point to the audience without some of the anatomy lesson-level gore on display here. Look at me, telling a film it may have gone too far. Well, I wrote that sentence before the scene where the killer sliced a woman’s insides out, pulled out a fetus, put it back inside her, then sailed the seas of mayonnaise and used his manbatter to paint her internal organs. He even brought a bowl and a brush, which seems like a case for premeditated murder.

Tony Moran — yes, the very same Tony Moran from Halloween — is in this as Pike, newspaper photographer. Lloyd Kaufman also somehow ended up being the top credit on IMDB, thanks to his voiceover work as a football announcer.

This will be released by Ungovernable Films and Wild Eye Exteme. Thanks to Wild Eye for sending us the DVD. You can also visit the film’s official Facebook page.

DISCLAIMER: This was sent to us by its PR company. That has no bearing on our review.

Originally written as an episode of The X-Files, Jeffrey Reddick ended up turning his script into a movie that became five films, two comic books, and nine novels. Not bad for a guy who sent in his first script to New Line at age fourteen, which led to a phone and mail friendship with studio head Robert Shaye.

It was directed by James Wong, who also made The One and the 2006 version of Black Christmas. He would say, “One thing we were all in agreement on from the start is that we didn’t want to do a slasher movie. We didn’t want a guy in a dark cloak or some kind of monster chasing after these kids. That’s been done again and again.”

On May 13, 2000, Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) and his classmates are supposed to take a senior trip to France. Before the plane takes off, he has a vision of the plane crashing and panics until Carter Horton (Kerr Smith) fights him. This gets both of them kicked off the place, as well as Tod Waggner (Chad E. Donella), Terry Chaney (Amanda Detmer), Billy Hitchcock (Seann Willam Scott), Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) and teacher Valerie Lewton (Kristen Cloke, named for famous horror producer Val Lewton). The plane crashes and everyone dies, but Death won’t give up.

It pays them back in exaggerated set pieces — stay tuned on those, they get even crazier — as Death must take them off the board. They learn exactly what they’re in store for from William Bludworth (Tony Todd), who is pretty much the personification of life being snuffed out.

In case you wonder, “Hey, where have I seen this before?” The answer is 1983’s Sole Survivor and The Twilight Zone episode “Twenty-Two.”

Alternate titles in other countries included Destination in South Korea, The Death God Comes in China, Last Station in Turkey and it was almost called Flight 180.

For the second Saw film, Darren Lynn Bousman (he also directed Saw III, Saw IV and Repo! The Genetic Opera) joined Leigh Whannell to create the further story of Jigsaw. Bousman had been trying to sell a similar story called The Desperate that became the initial script for this film (Wan was making the underrated Dead Silence).

This time, the traps got bigger and more horrifying, the result of the increased budget. The puppet Billy had been made by Wan out of papier-mâché, but now he was a high tech creation able to deliver all of Jigsaw’s instructions.

Detective Allison Kerry (the returning Dina Meyer) finds a message for her old partner Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) at one of Jigsaw’s crime scenes. There, they find John Kramer (Tobin Bell), who has eight people trapped in a house, including Eric’s son Daniel and the only person to survive one of Jigsaw’s games, Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith). The other six are all connected because Eric has framed them for crimes.

All John Kramer asks of Eric is to talk to him and he’ll make sure that his son survives. But come on. If it was that easy, why would we have a film?

None of the actors were given the last 25 pages of the script and five different endings were shot. That’s how crazy everyone was about keeping the plot a secret.

David Wechter (The Malibu Bikini Shop, Midnight Madness) and Bruce Kimmel (The Creature Wasn’t Nice) wrote their first draft of this film eight years before it was made. The success of Scream led to Miramax bringing Kevin Williamson on board to rewrite the dialogue and Robert Rodriguez to direct.

The result is a very hip for the 90’s remix of Invasion of the Body Snatchers that stars plenty of gorgeous teen actors like Elijah Wood, Usher, Josh Hartnett, Clea Duvall and Jordana Brewster.

The teachers are all taken over by the time the movie begins. Coach Joe (Robert Patrick), Miss Burke (Famke Janssen), Principal Drake (Bebe Neuwirth), Mrs. Olson (Piper Laurie), Mr. Fulong (Jon Stewart) and even Nurse Harper (Salma Hayek) are all soon transformed into the carriers of a “cephalopod-specific parasite called a mesozoan.”

Becca remembers that when this movie came out that it was part of a Tommy Hilfinger promotion, even featuring a character named Venus who was only in the commercials and the clothing promos. Whatever it takes to get your movie made.

There’s also a scene that’s a homage to Carpenter’s The Thing, but this time involving doing drugs. Another interesting thing is that each of the teens has a counterpart in The Breakfast Club. Stan (Shawn Hatosy) is Emilio Estevez’s jock character Andrew Clark, Delilah (Brewster) is Molly Ringwald’s Claire Standish, Zeke (Hartnett) is Judd Nelson’s John Bender, Stokes (DuVall) is Ally Sheedy’s Allison Reynolds and Casey is obviously Anthony Michael Hall’s Brian Johnson. So who is Marybeth (Laura Harris)? Do you want me to spoil the movie for you?

After film school, Australians James Wan and Leigh Whannell wanted to make their own movie. Inspired by The Blair Witch Project and Pi, they wanted to make a low budget movie that took place with two characters in a room, unsure of how they got there, with a dead body between them that turns out to be alive.

While the title of the film came quickly, Jigsaw was not created until months later. Whannel had developed migraines from job-related anxiety, but worried that it was a brain tumor. This led him to think of a villain that knew he was dying soon and who would force others to quickly choose their fates.

They shot a seven-minute version of the bear trap on the face opening and shopped it around to studios as a team, with Wan as director, Whannell as an actor and both writing the movie.

While other entries became more “torture porn,” the first is more of a puzzle box. However, seeing as how the movie is on its upcoming ninth entry in sixteen years, you can see how it easily found a formula and stuck with it after this.

This first entry had a $1.2 million dollar budget and made $103.9 million at the box office, so you can see why they keep going back to this very bloody well. Not bad for a movie that was originally going straight-to-video.

Photographer Adam Stanheight (Whannel) and Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) wake up with their ankles chained to pipes and a dead body between them. They each have a tape in their pockets which tells Adam to escape and Lawrence to kill Adam or his wife Alison (Dina Meyer) and daughter Diana (Makenzie Vega) will die. That’s when the doctor realizes two things: the hacksaw in the room is meant for them to cut their own feet off to escape. And they’re dealing with the Jigsaw Killer.

Dr. Lawrence had been involved in the case of brain cancer patient John Kramer (Tobin Bell), who he helped clear of all charges. Detectives David Tapp (Danny Glover) and Steven Sing (Ken Leung) follow the path of Jigaw’s only survivor, former heroin addict Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) right into one of the killer’s traps.

It all leads back to the struggle of the two men, the corpse, an obsessed Detective Tapp, a man in a pig mask and a puppet.

As much as I was loath to watch these films, the first one isn’t all that bad. It certainly has style and it tells its story in a very tense, quick way. And hey, how you can fully dislike a film that has a puppet — much like Deep Red — and a killer with black gloves on? Wan would say, “A lot of people have said that Saw is similar in tone to Seven. But the biggest influence wasn’t a recent Hollywood thriller at all — it was the work of Dario Argento from the seventies.”