Final Destination 2
| Final Destination 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 A bad sequel to a bad film.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Final Destination 2 is a 2003 horror film directed by David R. Ellis. It was distributed by New Line Cinema.
It's the sequel to 2000's Final Destination.
Plot
In 2000, one year after the explosion of Flight 180, college student Kimberly Corman is heading to Daytona Beach, Florida, for spring break with her friends, Shaina McKlank, Dano Estevez, and Frankie Whitman. While waiting on the entrance ramp to U.S. Route 23, she has a premonition of a deadly pile-up caused by a logging truck. She stalls her car on the entrance ramp, preventing several people from entering the highway, including lottery winner Evan Lewis, mother Nora Carpenter and her fifteen-year-old son Tim, businesswoman Kat Jennings, stoner Rory Peters, pregnant Isabella Hudson, high school teacher Eugene Dix, and state trooper Thomas Burke. While Burke questions Kimberly, the pile-up occurs, but Shaina, Dano, and Frankie are killed by a car carrier after Burke saves Kimberly at the last second.
After the survivors are questioned at the police station, Evan is fatally impaled by a fire escape ladder while attempting to escape from a fire in his apartment. Aware of Death's presence, Kimberly seeks help from Clear Rivers, the last survivor of Flight 180 who committed herself to a psychiatric ward for protection after Alex Browning was killed by a falling brick.
When Kimberly informs Clear that Evan was the first of the highway survivors to die, unlike in her premonition, Clear realizes that the survivors are dying in reverse order. Meanwhile, Tim is crushed by a windowpane while leaving the dentist with his mother. Clear decides to help and introduces Kimberly and Burke to William Bludworth, who tells them that only new life can defeat Death. Believing that the birth of Isabella's baby would disrupt Death's plan, Burke sends fellow marshal Steve Adams to take her into custody while he gathers the other survivors in his apartment. When Nora decides to leave, a chain of accidents results in her head becoming trapped in an elevator, decapitating her.
The survivors take Kat's SUV to track down Isabella, who has gone into labor, prompting Adams to rush her to the hospital. Along the way, the survivors realize that the demises of the Flight 180 survivors affected all of their lives even before the highway pile-up by saving them from prior deaths, which inverted the sequence of the concurring accident. The SUV then suffers a blowout, causing them to swerve into a stack of PVC pipes in a farm that penetrate the car. Though no one is killed immediately, Eugene is injured and Kat is left pinned to her seat by a log. Rescue workers arrive and assist the farm owners, the Gibbons family, with rescuing the others while Eugene is hospitalized. Using the Jaws of Life, Kat's rescuer accidentally activates her airbag, causing her head to be impaled on a pipe protruding from her headrest. Her cigarette falls onto a gasoline leak from a news van that explodes, launching a barbed wire fence into the air that dismembers Rory.
Guided by a vision of a doctor named Kalarjian who Kimberly believes will euthanize Isabella; she, Clear, and Burke rush to a hospital to save her but while Isabella and her baby are safe, Kimberly sees through her premonition that Isabella was never meant to die in the pile-up at all. At the same time, an explosion from an oxygen leak in Eugene's ward kills both him and Clear. Kimberly realizes that the vision from the hospital was hers, deducing from an article of a survivor creating "new life" to defeat Death. To ensure Burke's safety, she drives into a lake to drown herself, but Burke saves her and she is revived by Dr. Kalarjian.
Later, Kimberly and Burke have a picnic with the Gibbons and Kimberly's father. The Gibbons explain that their son Brian was nearly hit by a news van on the day of the accident, but Rory saved him. As Kimberly and Burke realize the implications, Brian is suddenly killed in an explosion caused by a malfunctioning barbecue grill.
Bad Qualities
- Again, the story is at its worst, as the first film.
- Some of the deaths make no sense, or are even avoidable, such as, if Kimberly didn't yell "Pigeons!", teenage Tim wouldn't be chasing and frightening the pigeons away into the construction worker which resulted in his death.
- During the highway scene, one of the flaws was that the creators didn't do any research about it.
- The truck was carrying logs on a highway with a flatbed trailer rather than a log trailer, which could be very generic.
- The scene itself was actually like a Canadian place.
- Vehicles don't immediately blow up into fireballs when colliding on impact.
- Almost little-to-no story, which was slow-paced.
- Some of the scenes are too campy and aren't scary at all.
- The characters were trying to all be heroes, which is extremely lazy like the first film, even if Kimberly is some control freak making everything go her way.
- Poor acting.
- Unoriginal ideas.
Good Qualities
- Kimberly Corman and the other characters are likable, despite Kimberly is an interfering control freak trying to control everyone else's lives.
- The idea of placing a highway scene is decent and the scene itself is awesome.
- Decent soundtrack. Also, you can hear "Highway to Hell" on Kimberly's radio.
- Ali Larter and Tony Todd reprises their roles as Clear Rivers and William Bludworth from the first film, despite Clear has turned into a sour sulky mean girl and William was a cameo.
- The special-effects are well-done, mostly due to being real instead of CG.
- The Hookman's reaction to Nora's death is hilarious.
Reception
Like the first film, the film received mixed reviews from critics, gaining a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes. On Metacritic, the film scored a 38/100, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews" while IMDB Holds a 6.2/10 rating. The negative assessments sorted the film as "silly and illogical" and "begins with the same flawed premise" of its precursor, while positive evaluations eulogized the film as "a real jolter for horror fans", "recognizes the close relationship between fright and laughter", and "surprisingly good fun for the current crop of horror films".
External links
Final Destination 2 at the Internet Movie Database
Final Destination 2 on Rotten Tomatoes