EXCLUSIVE: Craig Perry, David R. Ellis, Eric Bress and Haley Webb talk THE FINAL DESTINATION

Good ole' death, that inevitable force of nature we all must face eventually. In the case of the FINAL DESTINATION franchise, cheating death is a tempting possibility, but in the end, it only prolongs the inevitable. It also turns death into a kid in a candy shop, forever trying to top itself with increasingly clever, Rube Goldberg-esque techniques to stop hearts from pumping and claim its victims once and for all.

After plane crashes, multi-car highway pile ups and a roller-coaster running off the rails, THE FINAL DESTINATION opens with a Nascar race in which Nick O' Bannon (Bobby Campo) has a premonition about a crash that will send car parts flying into the audience killing members of the crowd. He persuades his girlfriend Lori (Shantel VanSanten) along with friends Janet (Haley Webb) and Hunt (Nick Zano) to skip the race, the group departing moments before Nick's vision comes to life. Of course, as fans of the FINAL DESTINATION franchise know all too well, death won't be taking no for an answer. Best of all, death will get to do its work in glorious 3-D this time out.

David R. Ellis, who directed FINAL DESTINATION 2, returns to direct part four along with FD2 co-writer Eric Bress, who returns to pen the latest solo. As always, series mastermind Craig Perry returns as producer.

Bloody-Disgusting spoke exclusively with Ellis, Bress, Perry and star-on-the-rise Haley Webb about THE FINAL DESTINATION'S creative kills, what 3-D meant to the project and if, in spite of the conclusive-sounding title, there might be an FD5 on the horizon.

Craig Perry's enthusiasm for the franchise is boundless and undeniably infectious. We asked whether the 3-D made part four the ultimate FINAL DESTINATION flick. "For me, it is the most visceral of the franchise because it's in 3-D," Perry tells Bloody-Disgusting. "It makes it feel fresh again... It makes the kills themselves have that much more impact."

Likewise, stunt maestro David R. Ellis says the 3-D aspect was what drew him to FD4. "The determining factor to come on board was to have an opportunity to do a full live action 3-D movie," says Ellis. "Knowing that it was the wave of the future, that was something I wanted to be involved in."

"The gimmicky 3-D stuff that will make this a fan favorite for the genre is all the stuff you're throwing into the audience," Ellis tells BD. "But for me just the depth you get is amazing. Even during a dialogue sequence, you actually feel like you're in the room with them talking. In the 3-D world, you can actually keep what we experience in real life right there on the screen."

3-D meant new opportunities for the entire creative team behind this fourth entry, including writer Eric Bress, who admits he was determined to find ways to top the deaths of the other DESTINATION movies. "Certain things I wanted to do were incredibly 3-D related," says Bress. "A sign would fall through somebody's head separating the head into two hemispheres and the head would naturally split apart, tilting to the ground and we would cut to somebody's POV and people would hopefully throw their glasses off or vomit. But ultimately, you can't make your audience sick." Sadly, the bounds of good taste made scenes like the one Bress describes impossible, but the writer admits he might file the idea away for the future.

Most of the gore filmed on set made it into the final cut, but a few scenes were shaved because Ellis and co. just felt they might take things a little south of fun. "There was a scene that we cut that wasn't even gratuitous violence, just gratuitous nastiness," tells Perry. "A guy slowly pulls nine inches of spit-covered stuff out of his throat. There's an old joke I think Lucas said, ‘If you wanted to get a reaction out of an audience, you'd strangle a kitten.' But that very same audience will reject you as a human."

Newcomer Haley Webb, who plays Janet, was already a fan of the franchise when she first heard about the audition and got even more excited once she read the script. "I'd had a couple different horror auditions," says Webb. "I got this and I was like, ‘Are you serious? I have to get this!' I love the story, I love the idea. I love that Craig Perry knows exactly what the fans want."

Flipping through the script, Webb resisted the temptation to flip ahead and see if and when her characters gets it. "It was really like Christmas where I really wanted to open my present, but I didn't want to ruin the surprise of how I might die."

When you're worked on a FINAL DESTINATION movie, it's hard not to think about the death possibilities we each encounter in daily life. Though Webb isn't sure about premonitions, she does believe in intuition, especially since her own may have saved her skin one day off after shooting. "One of the scenes I filmed was me walking through traffic to test my fate. She sort of says ‘Fuck you' to death. And later that day I was walking through New Orleans and stepping out into the street and I had this feeling that I should look to see if someone's running a red light and they totally were. I looked to the left and this car [passed] right in front of me."

It's hard to deny the fact that FINAL DESTINATION movies are about getting to the money shots more than character development. Ellis is amused at the comparison. "Final Destination compared to porn," he laughs. "We do have our money shots in the movie, which are people being killed, but I think if you don't develop the characters well enough you aren't going to care or route for them well enough hoping that they don't get killed. I think there's a little bit more to it than just porn, but I could be wrong. (Laughs)"

Bress on the FINAL DESTINATION compared to porn: "Hitchcock had a famous quote, ‘There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.' I believe the kill shots in these movies are like great climaxes, they are the money shots. But we have the best foreplay in town."

"It's all about anticipation," Bress adds. "We not only tell you that people are gonna die, we go ahead and say there are no escapes and, guess what, he's next. Yes, you will get the big money shot in your face, but hopefully our foreplay and sexual endeavors are just as exciting as the climax."

Despite the finality of the title and the talk from Perry of this being the final FINAL DESTINATION, a successful box office take makes sequel talk difficult to avoid. So what would it take to bring death back for a fifth go ‘round? "The movie would have to be extraordinarily successful," answers Perry. "But I also think that we would need to have a really clever idea. We'd have to find a different door into that same door that the formula lives in."

"There were a series of books published in England based on the franchise," adds Perry. "One of the stories takes place in modern day England where a woman realizes that her Great Great Grandmother had a vision and escaped being killed by Jack the Ripper and now 140 years later death is coming back to get the granddaughter. It intercuts between past and present to see how death was working. That, I thought, was a really interesting notion."

"That's the kind of nimble creative energy that we would have to tap into to even begin justify a fifth regardless of how much money this makes."

THE FINAL DESTINATION opens in theaters nationwide this Friday, August 28th.