Final Destination 2

After the success of Final Destination, a sequel was inevitable and fortunately the humour and grisly going-ons of the first film have extended to the second. Again, there is no villain par say, but there is another group of people who play tug-o-war with Death himself.

Exactly one year after the airplane crash, Flight 180, in Final Destination, Kimberly Corman (A. J. Cook) and three of her friends are just about to set off on a road trip when she has a premonition about a huge car crash which would kill them all. Panicked, she stops the van and blocks traffic which is getting onto the motorway behind her – people who would be involved in the crash. As drivers behind her protest and complain about her blocking the slip road, they witness the huge crash further down the motorway as predicted.

Amongst the group of resultant survivors is Officer Thomas Burke (Michael Landes) who doesn’t know what to make of Kimberly’s prediction. Unfortunately, Death doesn’t like being cheated and proceeds to return and collect the survivors one by one (and in the most grisly manners). At first only Kimberly and Officer Burke are suspicious as they discover more similarities between themselves and the survivors of Flight 180.  

They manage to find Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), the only remaining survivor of Flight 180, who is currently living in a self-imposed prison. She believes that if she stays in her padded cell, with nothing sharp or dangerous then Death cannot get her and so far this imprisonment has worked well for her.

With Rivers help, Kimberley and Burke, try to explain to the remaining survivors what is happening to them. Once everyone is convinced that they are in fact being stalked by Death, they set about trying to work out how to survive. Death on the other hand is whimsical and breaking his pattern isn’t as easy as it sounds. The group has to find the weakness in the armour of Death if they are to survive an inevitable (and probably very gory) death.

While people running around, trying to avoid getting killed, doesn’t sound like the thing that can sustain one movie let alone two, there is still enough life (no pun intended) in the idea to carry the sequel.

Director David Ellis, who surprisingly is more noted for being a stuntman, manages to keep enough humour and gore to keep the film running at a good pace, admittedly, it’s not really a huge breakthrough from the first film.

As far as the performances go, let’s just say that the cast of Final Destination 2 really don’t have to worry about getting up to do any speeches on Oscar night. Everyone is in the film to be either killed in (often hilarious) gory fashion or to spend most of the time screaming whilst looking at people being killed.

Once the audience manages to get past the fact that Final Destination 2 is essentially the same as its predecessor, then it becomes much more enjoyable. It’s smattered with funny dialog and some very witty one-liners and even though it’s not going to win any awards for originality, it’s reasonably smart and thoroughly enjoyable.

Score 7/10