YMMV / Final Destination 3

• Awesome Music: The end credits are set to Tommy Lee's cover of "Love Train"
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Ian McKinley's death is quite brutal. However, the very last thing his body does is give Wendy the finger.
  • Lewis Romero screaming that Death fears him and that all he does is win right before his head gets crushed between a pair of weights.
    Lewis: What'd I tell you, Kevin, huh? Fuck death! I just win! That's all I know to do, Kevin! Baby, I just win!
• Esoteric Happy Ending: In the alternate beginning scene, Wendy receives the premonition before they go on the ride and is able to save herself, Kevin, Jason, and Carrie. This version is mostly Played for Laughs due to the “Where Are They Now?” segment at the end, but it becomes harsher when you realize that everyone else still dies in the rollercoaster crash, and this time, her sister Julie is one of the victims. Basically, no matter what route you choose, Wendy still has to deal with the trauma of losing a loved one. It’s really no wonder she’s considered The Woobie of the franchise; give the poor girl a break already!
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: The alternate ending (that is also present in the novelization) has a nice air of The End... Or Is It? instead of a grim Bolivian Army Ending. Quite a few people like that ending, and many people who don't still feel that the theatrical ending is less enjoyable.
• Fridge Horror: Most criticisms of the film lament the film's improbable causes of death. But one of the most frightening things about freak accidents is that, despite the microscopic chances, they still occur. Death seems to use this to highlight the idea that Wendy can't escape it, and twist the knife by toying with her.
• He's Just Hiding: Wendy, Kevin and Julie, according to some fans. It helps that all three of them survived in many alternative endings and in the novel adaptation of the movie.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A dark example, but still humorous. The alternate version of the tanning bed scene has Ashley and Ashlyn getting electrocuted instead. Chelan Simmons, who plays Ashley, had died by electrocution in another horror movie - the 2002 remake of Carrie - also right before her graduation.
  • While trying to prove her point to Kevin about how pictures can predict future deaths, Wendy brings up Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who plays Wendy, would go on to play Abraham Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
  • Lewis' death involves a Base-Breaking Character in a popular 2000s-era horror franchise getting their head smashed between two weights. Looks familiar?
  • Crystal Lowe is a Lovable Alpha Bitch that tries to befriend her less popular classmate, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. That same year, they star in Black Christmas (2006), where now Mary Elizabeth is the Alpha Bitch at odds with Crystal's character. For added fun, that film stars Kristen Cloke, who played Ms Lewton in the first Final Destination.
• Jerkass Woobie: To some extent Ian. He's a self-righteous, pretentious and abrasive prick who goes off the deep end and tries to kill Wendy for a completely illogical and stupid reason. But he's also a deeply broken man after he sees his beloved girlfriend get impaled by multiple nails, making it somewhat understandable that he went insane.
• Moe:
  • Wendy. She's endearing enough while happily acting in her capacity as school photographer during the first fifteen minutes of the film. Then, after the accident that kills her boyfriend and best friend, she's in a broken state with barely anyone to turn to as she tries to prevent more deaths and finds out that her sister is also being targeted by Death. There's barely a moment in the film where the average viewer won't want to hug her.
  • Valley Girls Ashley and Ashlyn surprisingly inspire a lot of sympathy and warm feelings due to their attempt to provide Wendy some emotional support while she’s depressed and the horrific way that Death chooses to target them.
  • Julie’s friend Perry (on a minor scale) due to her constantly changing hairstyle and how she sometimes has a sunny smile but often looks appropriately sad and frightened.
• Moral Event Horizon: Ian decides to kill Wendy because he believes that somehow, she's responsible for Erin's death (all she did was show up and warn them. And she DID save Ian's life!). He has absolutely nothing to gain from this either, unlike Peter. It's all an illogical revenge scheme.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • The Rube Goldberg style of the death scenes provoked this response from Film Brain:
  "Ok, this isn't scary at all. Why? Because the best Final Destination deaths are simple, like someone getting hit by a bus. Not THIS, which is so implausible and so far-fetched that it's just not scary at all!"
  • Erin's death is this when you realize that nail guns in Real Life do not work that way: firing only once with no auto firing mode.
    • Possibly justified however in that Ian was shown using the nail gun similarly earlier, and it wouldn't be out of the question if he or Erin modified it due to both fulfilling The Smart Guy role of the cast.
  • Same goes for Ashley and Ashlyn's deaths in the tanning beds. The circuitry would've fried first before reaching the necessary temperature needed to kill either of them (let alone the question of why the temperature would be able to go higher than 250 degrees, either on purpose of by accident, if it's so dangerous) and they simply can't burst into flames. UV is radiation, not heat, and lacks the necessary fuel to cause a fire.
• One-Scene Wonder: Chelan Simmons and Crystal Lowe don't have much screen time as Ashley and Ashlyn, but their Hidden Depths and memorable death scene stick one's mind.
• Retroactive Recognition: In her first lead role, Mary Elizabeth Winstead would become very well known, initially thanks to Death Proof and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, but later thanks to an extensive career in film and television.
• Ron the Death Eater: Carrie gets treated as The Scrappy for planning to dump Kevin when he wanted to propose to her. While Kevin certainly deserves a lot of sympathy, his general behavior doesn't give Carrie any indications that he is interested in a permanent relationship, and she does have a right to get mad at Kevin when he covertly takes an upskirt picture of another girl (albeit not one he actually meant to look at) without permission.
• Signature Scene: The tanning bed deaths are some of the most memorable in the franchise. Even critics who didn't like the movie praised that sequence.
• So Okay, It's Average: Among the sequels, this one seems to attract the least discussion. Virtually no-one will claim it's up there with the first, second or fifth films, but at the same time, it doesn't attract anywhere near the vitriol that the next sequel does.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: While it apparently was an accident that no one was intending for, the fact that Carrie Dreyer might be related to one of the victims from the first movie (they look kind of alike and have the same surname) could have been an interesting plot point.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Despite this being viewed as a step down compared to the first two, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ryan Merriman were noted as standouts in the cast - showing a lot of promise. Winstead especially has delivered on this, having a very strong acting career going years later and some highly acclaimed performances. It also has the effect of their characters being fan favorites and considered saving graces for an otherwise step down from the previous movies.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The film's central plot device - Wendy taking pictures for the yearbook on a digital camera and finding the clues once she loads them onto her computer - places the movie in the 2000s (specifically May 2005). Ten years later, Wendy could do all that on a smartphone. Frankie's camcorder also looks quite primitive, and he likewise would probably use a phone. Ashley and Ashlyn's clothes in the opening sequence are the Juicy Couture tracksuits that were the height of fashion - and their obsession with tanning is firmly rooted in the beauty standards of the day (as well as listening to iPods while in the beds). Ian mentions that Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden are still alive, which while true at the time of the film's release is no longer so (bin Laden was killed in May 2011 and Manson died in prison in November 2017. Although he doesn't mention him by name, it's heavily implied that Dick Cheney was the target of Ian's dig at "vice presidents" being still alive, and Cheney is still very much not dead thanks to a heart transplant, so that part has aged well at least.). There are also a lot of swooping fringe haircuts on the characters.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: It's hard to feel sad about Carrie's death in the accident at the start. She callously tells Wendy that she's planning to dump Kevin, and it's later revealed that he was planning to propose to her. Even Wendy can't bring herself to tell Kevin the truth.
• Unpopular Popular Character: A lot of fans adore Ian McKinley, despite him being a complete Jerkass thanks to Kris Lemche's genuinely charismatic performance and Ian's witty lines, providing a lot of entertainment in an otherwise rather bland cast.
• The Woobie:
  • Wendy is probably the biggest Woobie in the franchise. She lost both her boyfriend and best friend in the rollercoaster accident, she blames herself for their deaths and spends the entire film afterwards completely crumbling at the thought that she's next, she's personally connected to one of the survivors (her younger sister Julie), she's competent and nice enough that viewers can easily sympathize with her, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead gave a wonderful performance.
  • Kevin as well. Jason was his best friend, and Carrie was his girlfriend, so he lost just as much as Wendy that night. And even worse? He later reveals that he was going to propose to Carrie after graduation. But this becomes even more gut-wrenching when you remember the fact that before she died, Carrie had confided in Wendy that she was going to break up with him. No wonder Wendy didn't have the heart to tell Kevin the truth. He had already been through enough in such a short amount of time, and if this had been added on top of it, it would've destroyed him.

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