Cinematical

If ever a horror series depended less on character and more on the ingenuity of the writers in conjuring up death scenes, it's this one. Love 'em or hate 'em, horror sequels almost always have a reliably evil villain we can depend upon, whether it's Jason in Friday the 13th, Freddy in Nightmare on Elm Street, Pinhead in Hellraiser, or Jigsaw in Saw. But in the original Final Destination, the big bad antagonist was ... Death!

Yup, Death gets cheated out of killing a group of teenagers when one of them has a premonition that their plane is about to crash. In a terror-ific set piece -- a hallmark of the series -- we see the fiery explosion, and the kids spend the rest of the picture trying to escape their fate, not easy to do when Death appears to be such good buddies with Rube Goldberg. That tradition is set to continue with Final Destination 4; principal photography begins this month in New Orleans, according to Variety.

Shantel VanSanten (pictured - yay for Texas!), Bobby Campo and Haley Webb have been cast in the starring roles, with Nick Zano, Krista Allen (yay for sexy horror mothers!) and Andy Fiscella providing support. As Monika previously reported, David Richard Ellis (Cellular, Snakes on a Plane) returns to direct; he helmed Final Destination 2, which featured that amazing, out of control, highway log-truck pile-up; FD4 scripter Eric Bress was also credited as co-writer on that installment. This time, the premonition is about a deadly race car crash. Oh, did I mention that the whole picture is going to be shot in 3-D?!!! If you have the stomach for it, this could be a very memorable thrill ride. No word yet on when New Line plans to unleash this sick puppy.