As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Taking the phrase Girl on Fire to a whole new level.
Final Destination 3 is the first movie in the series not to be a direct sequel, instead a stand-alone. Despite that fact, this movie proves that the producers still have what it takes to frigheten you with Death's pursuit of the survivors of the Devil's Flight tragedy.
- The opening scene shows much park scenery, and the screams of the people and the warm colors provide a sense of dread that something horrible will happen.
- The Devil's Flight accident, but especially the premonition and all the deaths. Though see Artistic License – Physics as to why such an accident would simply never happen in Real Life.
- However, consider some of the deaths like the razor sharp swords at the school and other pointless deaths that seem implausible. It seems that the Final Destination universe has No OSHA Compliance. It's very probable that the Roller Coaster really would realistically use a horrible, horrible safety system like that. Death is less of a dick than trying to point out all the mechanical flaws like only he knows... and the Voodoo Shark is gone.
- It's even worse than that: the whole amusement park doesn't seem to be well maintained (e.g., the bell flying off the hammer game when Lewis hits it that third time), and the employees don't seem to be properly trained on what to do in case of emergencies. This begs the question of whether Death chose that park specifically because it had a history of random accidents happening there... or if something like that happened before.
- Wendy's freak out after the premonition. In the first two films (and the last two), the visionary protagonists were either really angry or numb. Wendy is numb... for about five seconds. She then breaks down and starts crying and trying to shake free of the restraints while yelling about how the roller coaster is going to crash. It should be Narm, but it isn't.
- The photos taken all provide subtle but accurate Foreshadowing about how the survivors will die.
- Ashley and Ashlyn's photo is them receiving a blow-up palm tree, they're cheering for the camera, but there's a red blur below. A potted plant is involved in a chain reaction of locking the two in the tanning bed, their cheering faces look like screams, and the red blur resembles fire.
- Kevin's upskirt photo shows Frankie with a covered fan behind him, cluing in how he dies.
- Busted or not, the tanning bed death is still horrific. It is especially uncomfortable with Soundtrack Dissonance being in full effect as "Love Rollercoaster" plays in the background of said scene.
- Before they enter the beds, you see the camera pan from the slush drink down to a heat control box, and the words WARNING: This device should never be set above 250 VAC. That's Foreshadowing outside the photos that will tell you how they will die.
- The tanning bed scene has come to achieve pop culture notoriety for being the most painful death in the entire franchise. Given that the girls are trapped naked in a confined space, where they are sprayed with broken glass and burned across their entire bodies, for a period of time which could be upwards of ten minutes, it's hard to think of a Final Destination death that tops this in sheer agony.
- If one looks closely, Brunette Ashley's tanning goggles are melting onto her face before the machines burst into flames.
- Erin's death. She falls against a nail gun, which proceeds to fire nails directly into the back of her head. Her body jerks as each nail penetrates her skull and bursts out her face. After the nail gun stops firing, she whimpers, then her body slowly goes limp as she dies. Sure, some artistic license was taken with the death (Real Life nail guns only fire once, and have to be reloaded), but for Rule of Scary.
- The nailgun's repeated firing appears to be justified in-Verse actually, as we see Ian loading a whole strip of nails into it earlier, suggesting he'd deliberately modified it so he could rapid-fire at the pigeons.
- Her boyfriend Ian's response is to blame Wendy for Erin's death and try to murder her, even though she saved him from dying before Erin.
- Not to mention the scream Ian lets out after Erin dies is just bloodcurdling.
- Frankie's death. His head is destroyed by the rotary blades of a car engine's fan.
- Lewis' death is also rather bad. Said death involves Lewis' head being violently crushed by weights.
- Kevin's death in the train incident premonition. He is thrown against a damaged window before it breaks and he is sent out of the train screaming. Oh, and it doesn't stop there, as he is thrown outside he is THEN GROUND DOWN BETWEEN THE TUNNEL WALL AND THE TRAIN!
- Well, the top half of him anyway. The rest gets crushed when the train leans to one side then back to the other hitting the tunnel wall creating a lovely "pop." For extra nausea you can see one of his hands fly off when he hits the wall the first time.
- Kevin seeing the horrified look on Wendy's face after she comes out of the above premonition and realises what's about to happen.
- Julie's death in the train premonition. A wheel flies off the subway, through the compartment she's standing in, and splatters her into nothing. All while her sister Wendy can do nothing but watch.
- Julie's averted death at the tri-centennial fair is also all kinds of horrifying. First, she's violently dragged by her neck behind a frenzied horse for several feet. Then, when bystanders briefly manage to stop it, she is unable to free herself from the rope before the horse takes off again. She can only scream as she's almost dragged into a harrow, with Kevin saving her at the last second. And finally, while she's still crawling away gasping for air, she immediately watches her best friend die right in front of her. Note that all this takes place in front of a crowd of people that are powerless to help her.
- The scariest thing about this film? This time Death is actively being malicious. As Final Destination 5 reveals, the events of 5, 1 and 2 were merely clean up to restore balance; everyone in Final Destination 2 should already have been dead - Death was just fixing the balance. This time... there's no link to past disasters. Death is just actively hunting.
- To add to that, the fourth movie reveals that Death is behind the premonitions. Wendy's subway premonition comes far too late for anything to be done to avoid the crash; Death was just toying with her (and Kevin and Julie) by making sure she knew exactly how they would each die just moments before it happened.
