10 Genius Movie Moments That Came Out Of Nowhere
2. The Tanning Bed Match Cut - Final Destination 3
As enjoyable as the Final Destination movies are, few expect much in the way of genuine artistry-with-a-capital-A from them, and yet, the third film in the series served up one of the most brilliantly delicious match cuts of the last 20 years.
Nobody who's seen the film will surely forget the traumatic sequence where poor Ashley (Chelan Simmons) and Ashlyn (Crystal Lowe) are burned to death inside their tanning beds.
The scene ends on an overhead shot of the two aflame tanning beds as Ashley and Ashlyn continue to scream in agony, before director James Wong suddenly cuts to an overhead shot of the pair's coffins at their funerals with the exact same framing, all while their screams continue to ring out.
Match cuts are often deployed by filmmakers to generate an instant audience association between two moments, and cutting from two tanning beds to two coffins was an unexpectedly smart and darkly humourous piece of visual storytelling in a franchise that isn't exactly known for being intellectually stimulating.
Though many have dismissed the franchise as artless gore porn, this brilliant little flourish shows that thoughtful imagery can abound in unexpected places.