Final Destination 2 (2003) Review

“You have to follow the signs, Kimberly”

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

In a way, Final Destination was a needed culture shock for filmmaking in the horror genre due to a compelling narrative that can go anywhere. And with enough of a box office success, you can get enough ideas to embrace it


PLOT


2003’s Final Destination 2 takes place one year after the events of the first film. The new lead character Kimberly Conan tends to go to Daytona Beach for spring break with her group of friends: Shaina McKlank, Dano Estevez, & Frankie Whitman (Sarah Carter, Alex Rae & Shaun Sipos). That doesn’t happen however when she has a premonition of a catastrophic car accident to be caused by a logging truck. Once she sees it, she intentionally holds up the entrance ramp up to Route 23 hoping to save everyone behind her. When state trooper Thomas Burke questions her actions, the accident still happens, but her questions get slain by a car carrier. Others who died in the vision are able to survive: Businesswoman Kat Jennings, lottery winner Evan Lewis, pregnant woman Isabella Hudson (Justina Machado), school teacher Eugene Dix, stoner Rory Peters and the mother-son pair of widowed Nora & Tim Carpenter (Lynda Boyd & James Kirk). Only after being questioned at the police station do the survivors at the entrance ramp start getting killed off. The first of which goes to Evan who gets impaled in the face by a fire escape ladder after trying to escape of a fire he accidentally caused in his apartment. Starting to sense the presence of Death itself, Kimberly reaches out to the remaining survivor of Flight 180, Clear Rivers, who checked herself into a psych ward for her own protection, after Alex Browning died from a falling brick. Because her friends died first unlike in the vision, it is suspected from both women that the deaths will go in reverse order. When Burke checks in with her, he admits he believes in her vision and they got to look for signs of Death. The first one Kimberly sees involves pigeons, which only leads to Tim being crushed by a windowpane after a dentist appointment. Clear checks out of the ward to help Kimberly and the remaining group survive the new layout planned by Death. She take Kimberly and Burke to mortician William Bludworth who claims only a newborn life can defeat Death. Remembering that Isabella is pregnant, Kimberly suspects the birth of her child could disrupt the whole plan Death has for the Route 23 survivors. As Burke regroups all that are left in his apartment, fellow marshal Steve Adams is assigned to take Isabella into custody. When Nora tries to leave on her own due to her loss clouding her judgement, she gets herself decapitated when her head gets trapped in an elevator and a man’s basket of hook hands. With Eugene left in shock, he tries to shoot himself to die on his terms, but the gun doesn’t go off due to being jammed. When they all go to the hospital upon hearing Isabella’s water broke and Adams is taking her to the hospital, the group realizes their survival at the pile up and their lives have also been connected to the Flight 180 accident, which inverted the times they were supposed to die. Kat evaded a gas leak that took many lives of a bed and breakfast, but the bus she rode ran over Terry Chaney, Rory was at Paris one day and bought tickets to a theater but ended up not going after a sign struck Carter Horton and caused a building collapse, Eugene was transferred to another school and replaced Val Lewton after a whole other incident involving a school stabbing, and Burke was called to pick up the remains of Billy Hitchcock alone whereas his partner died in a shootout. As for Kimberly, she lost her mom in a carjacking accident after being caught up with the news report of Tod’s death. As they continue driving though, the suv suffers a blowout and Eugene gets injured when crashing into a stack of PVC pipes. An ambulance does show up to save Kat from being pinned to the driver’s seat by a log, but the use of the jaws of life cause her airbag to be activated and impales her on the pipe from behind. Her cigarette would then fall into a gas leak that causes a news van to explode and launches a barb wire fence to dismember Rory. At the hospital, Kimberly has another vision about a nurse named Doctor Karlajian and worries she’ll kill Isabella. That doesn’t end up happening due to the birth of her baby boy, but she then remembers she wasn’t even in the pileup from her original vision. When Eugene & Clear both die of an oxygen leak explosion, Kimberly deduces the hospital vision being for her all along. Wanting to protect Burke, she drives into the lake to strangle herself, but the trooper saves her when he pulls her out of the water and Karlajian revives her. Some time after, Kimberly and Burke have a picnic with her dad Michael (Andrew Airlie) and the farm owners that had the PVC pipes, teenage Brian (Noel Fisher) and his parents (Alf Humphreys & Chilton Crane). However, the film ends with Brian dying from an explosion of a malfunctioning gas grill due to Rory previously saving him from being hit by the news van the day Isabella’s baby was born.


THOUGHTS


With the first film being an instant hit, expectations were made on how epic a sequel would be and boy did this exceed. With David R Ellis helming the director’s chair, he takes the chance in raising the stakes of all the shock value you’re expecting. That is pulled off due to all the practical effects that are blended in exceptionally well with the expected visual effects for each over the top death scene. The opening vision of the pile up is the series’ best due to how many viewers like myself have now gained a new fear of being afraid of logging trucks as if we’re not already on guard with a car accident happening at any given moment on the freeway/highway. The following deaths that happen would also maintain that level of surprise as the story unfolds to the point you get scared of everything else around us. I’m now scared of garbage disposals, elevators, grills and airbags as well. In this case, you get the sense that this journey is saying again that things like death can’t be avoided no matter how hard you try and how long you can avoid it. Tony Todd sure was the emphasis in this lesson, when returning as the series’ mediator as the cryptic Bludworth who is much willing to still share new rules, knowing he’d want a chance to cheat Death too. The message is truly slammed in the face when Ali Larter got to return as Clear because even though she was as helpful as she could, it didn’t save her from dying like Alex would. However, this is still a case where it wasn’t in vein because despite the casualties, at least two got to avoid the structure Death had in mind. AJ Cook is a solid final girl as Kimberly because she’s one who has her own inner regret in things not going her way in general. She hates herself that one distraction cost her her mom and now losing all her friends in one sweep, she needed to figure out how to find content and cheating Death for good was her goal. It wasn’t easy for her compared to Alex because the layer is details she’d get from the following visions weren’t clear to her and it became harder for her to decide how to save herself & continue saving others. Everyone else that succumbed to Death’s plan was a bummer each time it all seemed that they earned their second chance in life and didn’t deserve to be part of another blueprint meant to end them. It was definitely not easy to like Evan since David Paetkau made him so dim witted that he caused his own demise but because he won the lottery, you couldn’t help wondering how much he would turn his life around if he had more time. Then both Carpenters dying separately was a rough patch because it all seemed like since they lost their patriarch, they seemed like they were building a new form of optimism until the chance of happiness was taken from them. Hell, we didn’t even get to know Brian yet we feel bad seeing him go because we saw firsthand he was so humble in his youth. Getting to know how there were still people connected to Flight 180 proved some things are bound to come back to you. You can relate to Eugene due to the skepticism TC Carson embraced, we’ve had our troubled days the way Jonathan Cherry depicts Rory, and we can be cynical much like Keegan Connor Tracy is as Kat because the setbacks we’ve gone through have rattled us so much we don’t know how to think it through sometimes until things happen the way they do. That’s what makes their deaths as surprising because them losing their second chances was so unfair the way some would call life itself. The only other one to have Kimberly’s back apart from Clear was Burke because as Michael Pandes portrays him, he was calm enough to consider her perspective before officially trusting her. And he did so long enough until he saw her vision wasn’t clear as she saw it, hence being able to save her when she was trying to save him. The way they saved each other is what make them the only ones to get out of the plan and not fall back into it in the franchise successfully. Once the pieces were put together, her nightmare was able to end. This movie is still entertaining on its own, but there are still a handful of things that confused me upon rewatching. For example, why does it take so long for Michael to call Kimberly that the car was leaking transmission fluid? He could’ve told her before leaving rather than call over an hour later. Hell, he also could’ve given her his car so he can repair hers while away. I don’t even want to think too hard of the opening vision, but it’s totally on Burke and not Death when he doesn’t have a lid on his coffee cup before it falls on him. You’re asking for a mother load of accidents. If I gotta get into continuity errors, how is Eugene in the pile up when he’s got space to cut? I don’t want him to die and I know Burke was behind him which could’ve led to a chase but since he seems pretty fast on a motorcycle, I don’t see the point of not taking a risk. Evan’s death also could’ve been avoided if he got to the fire extinguisher before the fire got bigger. The fact he waited until after the fire expanded is on him. Burke even acted pointlessly when coming to Kimberly’s home uninvited rather than call her again. And why the fuck did Adams load his gun and point it at Isabella? If you she ain’t a threat, don’t be doing stupid shit like that. Also, Clear was lying so bad when saying Billy and Carter & Terry were his friends. She could’ve left it by saying there were fellow survivors like her and nothing more. The only one that was her friend was Alex, so I’m not gonna act like she was cool with everyone since she didn’t talk to them until after the plane exploded. On top of that, why did the news van show up? If they were following the group, that could’ve been said because no one explains how they knew where they’d be. And if Death is acting backwards, it kinda cheated its own rules when having Clear killed at the same time as Eugene. Since she was the last survivor of Flight 180 and the death order is reversed in this narrative, she should’ve been saved for last. Ignore this, then you’ll enjoy what they’re going for. In short, Final Destination 2 is the best of the horror series for amping it up in creativity of suspense and brutality. If you liked the first film, see this now.