Erin Ulmer

**Erin Ulmer** was a survivor of the Devil's Flight roller coaster derailment in Final Destination 3. She was a school Goth and the girlfriend of Ian McKinley.

Erin was the fifth survivor of Devil's Flight to die.

## Biography

Erin lived in McKinley, Pennsylvania, and attended McKinley High School. Like Ian, she is shown to be very intelligent and very sarcastic. They also worked together at the Build It hardware store. Erin is of German descent.

## *Final Destination 3*

She and Ian visited the carnival for their senior class field trip, and decide to ride the Devil's Flight roller coaster. Before the ride starts fellow classmate Wendy Christensen has a premonition that the ride will crash, killing everyone on board. When she panics a fight breaks out between Kevin Fischer and Lewis Romero. When Lewis accidentally slaps Erin across the face Ian gets involved as well, and they are all thrown off the ride. Erin follows Ian out, shortly before the roller coaster crashes as Wendy predicted, killing the remaining passengers on board. Weeks later, she and Ian are at their school signing yearbooks when they see a somber Wendy walking alone in the rain.

Ian and Erin laugh a little when they see Ashley and Ashlyn try to invite Wendy to the tanning salon. She and Ian later attend their funeral after they are incinerated in the tanning beds. Erin tries to calm Ian down when he causes a scene, and follows him back to his car when Kevin and Lewis walk him out. After Frankie and Lewis's death, Wendy and Kevin visit Ian and Erin at the hardware store to warn them that Death is still after them, and they are next on Death's list, but Ian and Erin are extremely skeptical and continue to mock them.

### Death

As they talk, Ian accidentally causes a box to fall off a shelf and onto a forklift's gear shift. Unbeknownst to them, the forklift slowly begins to follow them throughout the store, and impales a large shelf. A hammer falls off the shelf and hits the controls, causing the forklift to raise the shelf. It slowly begins to rise into the air, and presses against a set of ladders. After much force the ladders finally snap, knocking down several planks of wood.

Wendy pushes Ian out of the way at the last second. Soon after, all of the other items on the shelf begin to fall as well, and a wooden board lands on top of the end of a plank and it is sent flying through the air and punctures a bag of sawdust, which sprays Erin in the eyes. She stumbles back against a nail gun that Ian had left on a set of boxes, and it activates, rapidly discharging several nails into her head and hand. She dies from massive internal brain hemorrhaging and bleeding, gasping her last breath. Her death infuriates Ian, believing Wendy was responsible for Erin's death.

#### Signs/Clues

* Wendy sees several fans while entering the store, reminiscing Frankie's death.
* In the opening credits, a woman has been painted onto a banner with nails coming out of her nose and ears.
* A soft gust of wind welcomes Wendy when she enters the store.
* The lights in the store flicker for a brief moment.
	+ Although this was Ian's doing, it could be noted that because Wendy saved Ian, she was unable to save Erin.
* Wendy took a picture of Ian and Erin at the theme park, on the night of the derailment. In the photo, Ian recoils from the flash while holding the toy gun, aiming it at Erin

's face while Erin flipped off the camera.

* The double meaning of the word "nail" plays a part in Erin's death:
	+ She mocks Wendy's theory by saying that she would "overdose on **nail** polish".

* + Said nail polish can also be seen in the photo, as Erin shows her middle finger to the camera with her **nail** visible.
* Erin gives the middle finger in the photograph, a repeated gesture in the movie.
* Erin is seen picking up nails with a magnet while doing her work.
* Ian makes reference to Princess Diana's death and Paris when Erin picks up the nails.
* The forklift that assists in Erin's death is called Unit 081, which may be a reference to Flight 180 and the diner Miro 81.
* Also in the photograph, the letter "S" in the small flags saying "SKILL" is obscured, leaving the word "KILL".
* The way Erin held up her hand to her face when the nails penetrated her head is the same as the way she held her hand up in the photo while covering her face from the flash.
* The nail gun discharged a total of thirteen nails into Erin's head.
* The nail gun that killed Erin was the same gun Ian used not long before she died.
* In the opening credits, a female mannequin with nails through her skull is shown.
* Erin referred to the customers as **pinheads**.
* Ian's nickname to Erin is "Pip", a possible onomatopoeia to the nail gun shooting her skull.
* In her alternate death, pigeons scare her and she slips into the nail gun.

## Appearances

* Final Destination 3 (portrayed by Alexz Johnson)
* Final Destination 3 (novel)
* The Final Destination (archive footage in opening credits) (portrayed by Alexz Johnson)
* Final Destination 5 (archive footage in ending credits) (portrayed by Alexz Johnson)

## Trivia

* The credits montage of *The Final Destination*, showing deaths from the previous films as x-rays, Erin's death was seen again as archive footage. However, the shots after the nail gun fires cuts to her as a skull with the nails piercing through her head.
	+ Fittingly enough, her death was shown right before Ian's.
* Erin Ulmer is referenced in the opening credits of *Final Destination 5* by**bloody nails**flying into the screen.

* Ironically, both of the opening credits showed references of Erin's death during the credit of Brian Tyler, who was the new composer for the franchise since *The Final Destination*, as Shirley Walker, the previous composer, passed away in 2006.

* In the Choose Your Fate scene, Erin didn't die due to sand. A pigeon (the one that Ian didn't kill in that version) flew up in her face, and as she swatted at it, she slipped on sawdust on the floor. However, she was still shot with nails in the same fashion.

* Ashley Tisdale originally auditioned for the role of Erin.
* She is the only fifth survivor to die, that's female. The other fifth survivors (Carter Horton, Rory Peters, Hunt Wynorski, Peter Friedkin) were male.
* Amanda Crew originally auditioned for Erin and Alexz Johnson originally auditioned for Julie, but the actresses ended up switching parts.
* In *The Final Destination, Nick is almost killed, at a construction site behind a movie screen, by a nail gun as at started launching nails at him, pinning his arm to a concrete wall.*
* Erin's death is similar to the U.S. Movie poster for *Final Destination 5*, though the poster is of a skull with screws going through the eyes and mouth hole.
* Erin is similar to Billy Hitchcock, and Tim Carpenter. Billy and Erin got killed right after the previous survivor who was meant to die in the order was saved by the protagonist and Tim and Erin died by the fault of pigeons (in the alternate death.)
* In the novel, her death was more graphic. Her head and hand were riddled with dozen nails, instead of five. One nail stuck out of her open eye.
* In the script of *Final Destination 3*, she and Ian (Logan, as mentioned in the draft) are described as: *They appear more like brother and sister than boyfriend and girlfriend. Intelligent and quietly intense, Logan wears a Bad Religion t-shirt while Erin has a pair of eyebrow rings. Loners, even together, it is not really by choice.*
* In a making-of the film, it is revealed that they built an entire anamotronic just for her death scene.
* Her death won the Golden Chainsaw award in Dead Meat's Final Destination 3 Kill count.