Final Destination 2

“People are always most alive right before they die. Don’t you think?”

If someone were to randomly ask me what my favorite Final Destination movie was, I probably would have said this one. It’s the one that my mind immediately goes to whenever I think about the franchise. I like all of the characters, the kills are almost all practical, it’s very hard to ask for anything more.

So imagine my surprise when I was actually a little bored as I settled in for my rewatch. I don’t think it’s simply a matter of me watching it so many times that the fun has worn off; it’s been several years, and even still that rarely happens to me.

The acting wasn’t nearly as good as I remember it being. I loved A.J. Cook for many years on Criminal Minds but found her to be a little insufferable here. Everyone else was largely forgettable, although Terrence C. Carson does have an excellent evil laugh.

Ali Larter is back as Clear, but Clear herself feels very different. She’s no longer the New Age-y, weird teenager who got off a plane because she felt a connection with the guy screaming that it was going to explode. She’s just bitter, and despite Final Destination 2 taking place only a year after the first one, feels and looks like the 27 years old that Larter actually was at the time.

I kind of wish that she didn’t come back. I loved that the movie took place in the same universe as the first one. (It was actually set in basically the same location, too.) It let the script skip over a lot of the world building by letting the characters already know about Alex and his visions.

It makes sense that there would be conspiracy theories about it! Of course, there would be in-universe lore and stories if the survivors of a terrible event all died. I also really liked how everyone was connected to the deaths in the first movie in some way.

Again, that just makes logical sense! Of course, there are going to be ripple effects. Do I understand why that means that Death is working backwards? No. But the foundation there is very sound, and I love it when my horror movies actually make logical sense.

But that doesn’t mean that we need Clear herself to come back and explain things, especially since she didn’t really add anything.

Tony Todd is great, though. His scenes are always great. I will never have a complaint about him. I’m already sad that he won’t be on screen again until Final Destination 5.

I’m not sure if the “new life” solution makes sense. If anything, I would think that it would just add another life to Death’s list, but I can appreciate the symmetry of it all. There are definitely worse solutions that they could come up with, and at least this is something for the characters to actively work towards as opposed to just continuously avoiding things.

Thinking back, it isn’t that my mind goes to Final Destination 2 whenever someone mentions the franchise as much as it goes to one, specific scene: the highway premonition.

If you have never seen it, then go watch it and come back. There are at least a dozen copies on YouTube. Good? Good. Now you know why an entire generation refuses to be anywhere near a logging truck while driving.

There’s just something so incredibly real and immediate about the premonition itself. I won’t spoil specific premonitions for future movies, but they’re a little outlandish at times. (Hello, fourth movie!) And sure, there are plane crashes all the time, but it still feels like an almost impossible thing to wind up in.

A car accident, though? A multi-wreck pileup while just driving down the highway on a normal, sunny day? Something that you get caught in through no fault of your own? That’s very possible. Hell, it’s almost mundane.

Especially for me since I have driven on Route 23 many, many times in my life, and one of my highschool friends did get into a car accident because her water bottle fell and slipped under the break pedal so she couldn’t stop. (She was totally fine, by the way. Just shook up.)

But even with the sound concept, that’s no guarantee that the sequence itself would be any good, or that it would continue to hold up more than twenty years later. So much credit has to be given to the director, David R. Ellis. He was a stuntman, and that experience really shines through.

Every car in that sequence (and throughout the entire movie) is practical. Those are real cars that are flipped, crushed, exploded, careened... all of it was real. As far as I can tell from my research, the only shot that was 100% CGI was of the logs actually falling and bouncing on the road. Real logs don’t bounce like that.

But everything else? It was about as practical as they could make it. They used CGI for things like transposing an actor’s screaming face over a dummy right before it got squished by a real log, or to erase the cords used to pull someone across the road.

It’s a triumph, and it’s also a philosophy that continues throughout the movie. Every kill is like that. It is all as practical as they could make it. The shot of Rory falling apart into pieces? Practical. Evan getting impaled by the fire escape ladder? Practical. Tim getting crushed by the windowpane? Practical, with some added CGI birds in order to make the scene more dynamic.

It’s stuff like this that makes me instinctually call it my favorite Final Destination movie, even if it isn’t quite as good as I remember.

Random Thoughts

Most “This Was From 2003” Moment: Burke using his authority of a cop to wrongfully imprison someone on outright false charges, and it being seen as a good thing.

Tim is the strangest 15 year old I have ever seen. Sure, he looks like he is, but I swear his mom (and the movie) treat him like he’s seven.

This is the only Final Destination movie that functions as a direct sequel. It is also the only movie where all of the survivors are complete strangers to each other.

Ellis directed one of my favorite bad shark movies, Shark Night 3D. He unfortunately passed away in 2013.

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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.

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