Kimberly Corman is going on a road trip with her friends...or so she thinks. On the way, she suddenly has a premonition about a car crash and terrifies the life out of her friends by coming to a complete halt on a highway. While trying to explain what she thinks is about to happen to a disbelieving police officer, the crash happens, killing her friends and several other people. Thanks to her premonition though, there are survivors. But Kimberley remembers a plane crash a year before after which the survivors died in freak accidents one by one. The only survivor is Clear Rivers, and she is in a psychiatric hospital. Kimberley goes to see Clear hoping for some answers. Will she get any? And will she persuade the other survivors that they need to cheat death in order to stay alive?
A J Cooke plays Kimberly Corman. I've seen the actress in Ripper and thought she was really good. As Kimberley, she gave a convincing performance - she does a lot of freaking
out, which she managed to do without annoying the pants off me, so that is definitely a plus. This is though a film that concentrates on action rather than character development, so Cooke doesn't really have the chance to show us what she's made of. Ali Larter returns from the first Final Destination as Clear Rivers and again gives a good performance bearing in mind the limitations to her role. I like her because she is not the usual perfect beauty that directors tend to pick, which makes her easier to identify with and therefore more realistic.
I spent ages trying to work out where I had seen Michael Landes, who plays the part of Officer Thomas Burke. He has recently been on our screens in Love Soup, along with Tamsin Grieg, but I know him best from an Agatha Christie interpretation. I really like him. There is something very appealing about the way he looks and acts on screen. As Burke, he is a very sympathetic character - he is the only one who believes Kimberly to begin with. Acting-wise, Landes gives a competent performance - again, he is forced to show more action than emotion - nevertheless he won me over. Without him, I think this film would have been little more than average.
Having seen the first Final Destination, I watched this immediately afterwards, expecting it to be pretty average. There are a lot of similarities with the first one, so that I was left thinking I'd seen it all before, but on the whole, this was a compelling film that kept me on the edge of my seat even though I thought I knew what was going to happen. The pacing is great - the film flashed by in no time at all and the viewer isn't given a moment to draw breath. And it really isn't necessary to have seen the first film in order to understand this one - it can be watched as a stand-alone and in fact, might be all the better for it.
Visually, there are some pretty spectacular accidents. Some of it is really gory, particularly when compared to the first, because we actually see the results of the accidents rather than being made to imagine it. One of the crash survivors is cut into pieces by a flying barbed wire fence - it literally slices him in three and we see his guts spilling out. This is something I'm more used to with Korean and Japanese horror. I don't mind it, but obviously some people will find it unnecessarily nasty - so be warned! There is a rating of 15 for this film - I actually expected it to be an 18 - but as it is about teenagers, I suppose it is aimed at the teen market.
There are some flaws in the plot - or at least parts that I didn't fully grasp - and that I think could have been handled better. It took me a while to work out what had happened to one of the characters from the first film, because it isn't immediately obvious. And because we aren't given any insight into the characters before the car crash, it took me a while to work out who they all were - the first death after the crash seemed completely random to me because I hadn't recognised him from the day of the crash. Obviously character development isn't the most important thing in this film, but being given time to work out who was who would have been a good idea!
I actually really liked this film. I expected to find it a bit silly - I did borrow it from a fourteen year old after all - but instead I found it thoroughly entertaining, albeit with the odd flaw. I have the third installment to watch and am a bit concerned that they can't possibly make it as good as the first two, but who knows? This one certainly worked for me. Recommended.
Advantages: Well paced, never loses direction and surprisingly intelligent Disadvantages: An unknown and redundant cast with minimal character investment
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