Final Destination 3: Return of the Lazy Screenwriting

I'm beginning to get sick of the internet.

Before you point out the hilarious irony of me voicing this online, let me assure you this is not a blanket hatred of all the internet stands for - I, as much as anyone, fully appreciate that it brings people closer together, provides a means of picking up cheap consumer goods and of course gives us the means to see all the naked people we could ever want to see. My rant, you'll not be surprised to learn, is purely film-related.

A few days ago I saw FINAL DESTINATION 3, which (with the exception of one World Trade Centre reference that I found to be in poor taste) I enjoyed a lot. Sure, it sticks rigidly to an established formula but that's not a problem to me - after all, I love watching Italian westerns from the 60s and 70s despite the fact that in over 500 films they only came up with about three different storylines. Basically, if you didn't like the first two, you'll not like this one; if you did like the first two then you've already seen this one (it really is that similar) but at least you can go along and have a laugh at all the OTT gruesome deaths. A very enjoyable hour and half despite its flaws.

The reason the worldwide web is feeling my wrath is down to teen horror films like this. After the opening scenes in which our hapless youngsters escape a terror crash on a rollercoaster, one young chap has barely watched the dust settle before he's telling another youngster that he looked up the internet and found out about similar incidents before, in which youngsters escaped death only to be picked off one by one, blah blah blah, recap of the first two films, etc. This is before any of the survivors have even been killed.

Am I the only one who thinks this is odd? Imagine for a second you're a teenager and you've just witnessed several of your friends die in a hideous rollercoaster accident. Answer me this: how do you react?

(A) Get very upset but eventually accept that it was a horrible tragedy.
(B) Go home and look up the internet for any other incidents where groups of schoolkids have died just in case the Grim Reaper is going to take revenge.

If you answered (A), well done, you're quite normal and are probably as baffled as me by this character's actions. If you answered (B) you're a complete mental-case and I question how you've gained access to a computer since you should clearly be living in a room made of rubber.

That little outburst aside, my real justification for WWW-bashing is this. Have you ever tried searching the web for some obscure piece of information? You'll find a few pages of advertisers selling something vaguely related; probably several dodgy "adult" sites; a bunch of links that are long out of date and don't work anymore; and maybe a page that might help you, but probably not.

This law of surfing doesn't apply in the land of the modern horror film though. Now, apparently, you can type in two words and the very first link you receive will immediately take you to a site that tells you every single detail you need to know about whatever you're investigating. If this is taking place in a horror movie sequel, you've probably just found a site that conveniently recaps the previous movies - "Hey, it says here that ten years ago this very night a serial killer escaped from blah blah blah, only one survivor and they're in an institution, etc."

This just seems like laziness on the part of the screenwriter and robs us of any need for the characters to actually do any work, or for us to receive any dramatic revelations from that dodgy old guy who's been lurking around in the background for most of the film waiting to take centre stage.

And that's why I'm getting sick of the internet. I'm just thankful that not every horror film takes this approach or we'd get some movies that would fall on their arse very quickly. Presenting, for example, THE SIXTH SENSE as a "teen horror" screenwriter would present it:

THE SIXTH SENSE

DR CROWE: "Hey Cole, what's wrong?"

COLE: "I see dead people."

COLE'S MUM: "Hey, I just looked you up on the internet and apparently you got shot and killed ages ago."

DR CROWE: "Oh, bollocks." [disappears]

THE END