Final Destination 2 (2003)

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Final Destination Reviews

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A couple of years after the release of the first 'Final Destination' film, there was enough there that a sequel was almost sure based on the first film's financial success and an open ending. I like a good, open ending that allows me to use my imagination to fill in the blanks, but not everyone feels that way. And with a horror movie where death itself is the villain, there is a massive pool of story options to choose from, AND it's a villain that never needs some resurrection or reason for existing. It's simply "eternal."

In 'FD2,' the story picks up a year after the explosion of Flight 180. We soon learn the fates of the final living characters, who have managed to dodge death for a while. However, it still keeps coming, adding to the idea that this whole situation is an unavoidable curse and the idea of how scary and unpredictable death is. However, as similar as everything in the beginning plays out, the only original character involved in this chapter is Clear Rivers (Ali Larter). The rest starts when college student Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook) begins her trip to Daytona Beach, FL, with some friends.

Just like in the first film, Kimberly has a premonition of a harrowing accident that kills several people in some pretty grizzly ways. But this time, it happens just before merging onto the highway, and her vision involves a log truck losing one of its logs and causing a chain reaction. Just like with Alex, Kimberly snaps out of it only to see her premonition begin to unfold in real life, causing her to park her car on the on-ramp, thus saving a handful of people meant to die in the accident that suddenly unfolds in front of them.

I must confess that with this chapter, at least for me, things get a bit more confusing, as stuff like intervening to save someone's life might alter death's plan slightly. Still, all in all, it is the same concept: everyone who survived the highway accident who was meant to be killed eventually starts getting hunted down, one by one, by death's design. This time, the survivors are more diverse, and there's less predictability about who will die when and in what way. They do a much better job keeping audiences guessing with this one.

Knowing about Clear Rivers's whereabouts, Kimberly seeks her out for help. Clear eventually leads Kimberly and state trooper Thomas Burke (Michael Landes) to William Bludworth (Tony Todd), the creepy morgue guy from the first film and an "expert" on death. Previously, he told us about death's design, a list of would-be victims who death will come for again should they avoid it the first time, hence the whole concept of these movies. This time, he adds the rule of death, which states that new life can defeat death. All signs now point to the pregnant Isabella Hudson (Justina Machado), one of the would-be victims of the on-ramp pileup.

Things don't only go into pure survival mode with this movie, like the last one, but it's also a combination of this particular group dodging death while trying to get to Isabella to make sure she doesn't become part of it all before her baby is born, which may save them all. There's a race against time with this one, making things a bit tougher, which is something I can compliment the film on. I also praise the film's overall unpredictability this time, with several moments of guessing how certain people will go out, even while a kill is set in motion.

The biggest takeaway from this is the accident itself, which is probably the scariest of all of them in the long run, simply due to how common street accidents happen and how the road is the most common route of transportation we all take. I like this one more than the first on the whole, but I have more of a nostalgic tie to the first. But here, the characters are more diverse, the kills are less predictable, and the big accident feels more challenging to avoid. Of course, it has aged a little, but they did a good job of taking the first film's concept and increasing its volume.

3/5

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