Movie no image

Published on February 3rd, 2002 | by Erich Becker

0

Review: Final Destination 2

Final Destination 2 opens with one of the best action sequences you will ever seen on film. The pile-up sequence puts this movie in a class with The Matrix’s lobby scene as just one of the coolest things ever shot on film. The writers of FD2 should be patting themselves on the back for thinking up such a clever, amazingly fun way to see a chain of events unfold with so much precision and absolute amazement from the audience. I was left with my mouth wide open as the cars exploded, crashed, and impaled members of the cast and opened the sequel to one of my favorite movies of all time.

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, the original Final Destination featured Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) seeing a premonition of his plane exploding just after take off one year before the events of this movie. By him seeing Death’s design and cheating his way out of that design he caused a rift of events the put everyone he saved in danger. This lead to some very creative death sequences and a generally great movie in a genre that had become stale with too many Scream-wannabe’s and slasher-bore-fests.

Final Destination 2 picks up, as mentioned, one year after the events of Flight 180 in the first movie (you will see a reoccurring theme of 180 throughout the film). Kimberly Corman (the beautiful A.J. Cook) has a premonition while waiting to get onto the freeway about a huge pileup that claims her life, and the lives of everyone behind her on the on-ramp. So she positions her car to block traffic and spare the people’s lives from a horrible death, but what she does is start a chain reaction that causes Death to catch up to each and every one of the survivors and take what is his.

Final Destination 2 left me with an overwhelming sense of awe as the movie played out better than I could have hoped. I knew it would be hard to top the original, in my mind, and the mind’s of the casual movie fans. FD2 managed to impress me, and everyone in the nearly packed theatre that I saw it in over the weekend. The script, clearly and cleverly done, features many throwbacks and acknowledgements to the first movie, something that I was initially worried about. For those of you who saw the first movie, you know that the ending was both open ended and closed at the same time, so would FD2 go back and explain what happened after Final Destination faded to black? Yes, and no.

Yes, comes from the fact that they acknowledge what happened to each of the remaining principle characters by way of references, newspaper articles, and what Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) explains to Kimberly early in the film. No, stems from the way they went about doing it. While the death of one character is completely obvious at the end of Final Destination, the death of another is unforeseen and it seems as more of a way to cop-out of having him in the movie than anything else. It feels like a cheesy off-screen death that is briefly mentioned and forgotten.

To those of out there that are worried about having no creative death sequences, let me assure you that Final Destination 2 tops the original in both creativity and gruesomeness. We have decapitation, disembowelments, crushings, skull penetrations (yes more than one), and drownings to contend with this time around and through several of these the audience all cringed at the same time, while highly enjoying the whole thing.

Final Destination 2 ranks very highly with me because of it’s excellent, creative nature and how it breaks the mold for the generic horror type movie. FD2 sports an unknown, but talented cast who are able to give some characterization before becoming canon fodder. The original Final Destination reached cult status fairly quickly and see the sequel doing the same as a very successful, and enjoyable follow-up to a very entertaining original.

Tags: ,


About the Author

Thirty-something with a love of everything we cover here, and a few things we don't. Erich has run Entertainmentopia since the site's inception in 1999, countless redesigns, a few crashes, and a lot of media later, here you have it!



Comments are closed.

Back to Top ↑