Exactly one year after the horrific plane crash of Flight 180 a group of teenagers are about to set off on their vacation. While approaching the highway, Kimberly (A.J Cook) has a gruesome premonition about there being a huge motorway pile up, killing everyone involved.
Just like Flight 180, Kimberly raises the alarm and prevents a group of people from entering the highway however just days after the accident the survivors start to die in freak accidents, sound familiar? Proving that no matter what people think, you can’t cheat death…
I was really impressed when watching this sequel for the first time a couple of years ago, it was released in 2003 and although the film depicts the events as occurring one year after Flight 180 in reality it’s three. I think this significant time gap bodes well for the films and they’ve followed the rule of three with their other two sequels with Final Destination 3 being released in 2006 and The Final Destination released at cinemas in 2009. The significance with the time gap being that it enables people to possibly forget the early twists that occur in the movie, making it a more tense atmosphere when you witness the horrific accidents towards the beginning of the film.
This sequel is a little different than most as it follows
the exact same premise that the first film was based on; an accident occurs and the survivors begin dying, this all sounds relatively simple but Final Destination adds something very innovative and intriguing to the mix enabling audiences to be captivated by each individual film and not be caught up in the ‘it’s all the same’ attitude. Of course with the sequel following the same foundation as the original film you’d be very naïve to think that it’s going to all be fresh and new but luckily because of the ingenuity and shrewdness of the Final Destination films it still manages to grip audiences, so much so that a forth film has recently been released, the only other horror film which I think surpasses that in the number of sequels and innovativeness is the Saw franchise.
Unfortunately I don’t think Final Destination 2 quite manages to match up to the imaginativeness of the first film because it’s simply a carbon copy but as the saying goes ‘if it aint broke, don’t fix it’ and that’s what they’ve done with this film. The makers of Final Destination 1 and 2 know they’ve got a good thing going here and know that it would be foolish to alter anything. In this film they’ve tried to go that one step further, making the film a little bit more believable; plane crashes are rare but there’s something shockingly simple about a highway pile up which is caused by the most mundane of circumstances.
The director clearly knows that he’s got a job on his hands to make this sequel match up to the brilliance of the first film; because it’s all been done before the element of surprise has been eliminated therefore the director has to try and be even more imaginative with the deaths and with that he sets up many red herrings, making the audience believe that a character is going to die a certain way only to do a complete 180 (no pun intended) and kill them a different way. This adds to the tension of the film and allows the audience to join in with the action and let them predict how a character is going to die only to shock them into killing them in another, arguably less inventive way. Unfortunately the deaths lack a bit of originality and imagination the second time around, they’re not predictable but they’re not inventive enough to leave the audience stunned. In a way this does make the film seem a little more realistic though, in the first film the characters died in ways that you can never even imagine happening in real life but in this film you think to yourself that certain scenes could actually happen.
There were points in the film that made you think that this is too contrived even for a film, unlike the first film we gets hints of how the characters are going to die before it actually happens. Kimberly starts having mini visions of things happening to people which could have made the film more tense because you know that something is going to happen but the characters are oblivious however I think this makes the film unrealistic and takes away the element of surprise even more unfortunately.
The special effects are fantastic and the first accident scene with the pile up is superb, the time and effort that went into putting it all together really works to the films credit and just shows how clever and imaginative this film really is however the deaths subsequent to this never seem to be able to match up to the opening sequence meaning that after a breathtaking 30 minutes you’re then left with a bit of a lacklustre effort that desperately tries to recapture the magic of the first sequence.
The fact that they brought a character from the first film back makes the film a little less predictable because it means that there can be survivors, this again adds to the build up of tension because you never know if a character is going to do the ’impossible’ and escape their own death or intervene in another. Clear Rivers played by the most recognisable member of the cast Ali Larter plays the survivor from the first film, she plays a welcome addition to the film as her character adds to the unpredictability of it all.
Overall I think this is a good, if somewhat flawed sequel. It was never going to match up to the originality of the first film due to the repetitiveness of it all but it’s still great fun to watch and the fact that a forth instalment has recently been released just shows how popular and groundbreaking these films have become over the years. The third film was a little disappointing so hopefully the forth will be able to shed some new light on a film with a limited shelf life.
The DVD is available from play.com for £4.99.
The special features include: Filmmaker's commentary 'Bringing Death To Life' documentary Deleted and alternate scenes Music videos The Terror Gauge 'Cheating Death: Beyond And Back' documentary Choose your fate Fact track
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For every beginning there is an end...Final Destination 2, the sequel to the hit 2000 ... more
supernatural thriller, finds Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) the only survivor of the crash of Flight 180. Locked away by her own choice in the perceived safety of a psychi...
Advantages: Well paced, never loses direction and surprisingly intelligent Disadvantages: An unknown and redundant cast with minimal character investment
![Final Destination 2 [DVD] [2003]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78513809.jpg "Final Destination 2 [DVD] [2003]")
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