Given that the Summer of Death ends in a few days, it's only fitting that Death's own star vehicle-well, technically, the fourth in a franchise-dominated the box office, and seems poised to better its (better) forerunners. What better escape from Kennedy funerals and nonstop MJ histrionics than watching a redneck's internal organs ooze through a chain link fence (in 3-D!)?

What the horror lover has to face, though, is that the film's not really horror. In fact, none of the Final Destination movies are scary. There's no Descent-style predators, no superhuman psychopath, no psychological mindfuck, not even a satisfying Roth-esque torture scene.

For those who haven't been subjected to any of the first three FDs, the setup is this: A group of camera-ready teens gathers in a banal spot, like an amusement park or a NASCAR race. Get it? Everyday life can kill you; it's not always buckets of pills or anal cancer. One of the principal characters has a vision of an impending disaster, and saves his crew.

Then Death spends the rest of the film sauntering through the survivors, in the form of twisted and drawn-out accidents that often lead to detached body parts or inverted entrails. That's it.

So what's the appeal? Little more than the guilty pleasure of seeing death glammed up and doled out free of traditional movie confines. The whole cadre of camera-ready cuties with perfect skin and zero body fat totally buy it in grisly ways-that's satisfying. But there's little suspense, and no final Friday-the 13th/Halloween-style girl to root for-nothing but a morbid interest in seeing how the next G-list actor will croak.

Unfortunately, this latest installment manages to suck beyond all understanding (a fact that never precludes a summer movie from becoming #1 in America). The deaths are beyond drab-nothing even close to the tanning bed broilings or barbed-wire executions in Nos. 2 and 3. The characters, always little more than vessels for blood and innards, lack even the teeniest hint of likeableness that would make us care when they get decapitated or scorched. (Apart from the obligatory douchey guy, who we're not supposed to like: it's maybe mildly satisfying when he gets his comeuppance. Also, at some point in recent horror movie history, the jerky guy biting it became the new version of the slutty girl biting it.)

These accidents are almost entirely reliant on random uncapped liquids and projectile objects. (Canisters are helpfully labeled "spontaneously combustible.") This makes "acute propofol intoxication" look fascinating. Granted, 3-D ups the squish and splatter quotient-a nail gun shooting into the audience is a nice trick-and the unsubtle dig at suburbia-car washes, tow trucks, and country club pools become instruments of Hades-is good for a urban-superiority chuckle. The only thing that makes TFD remotely interesting is the fact that a nonstop summer of celebrity deaths can transform a phoned-in crapshow into meta-horror: Death is coming for us all, famous or no. Let's just hope it isn't by anal cancer.

Melissa Lafsky really likes horror movies.