Review: Final Destination 2

Final Destination 2 reeks of more-of-the-same.

Final Destination 2
Photo: New Line Cinema

Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook) foresees a deadly traffic accident, thus preventing a group of motorists from losing their lives on Route 23. Death has a plan, which Kimberly dutifully complicates to umpteenth degrees. It’s as if Death recently discovered Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and now sits around pondering, “How do I kill Peter Piper using a pepper but make it look like a pipe is going to do him in? I got it! Let’s have Peter accidentally drop a pepper in arsenic but before he eats it let’s have him dodge an anvil, a flock of seagulls and three blind mice.” Final Destination 2 reeks of more-of-the-same. Indeed, the only apparent difference between this and the original film is that Death wields its murderous daisy wheel in reverse. In the original film, the survivors of crash Flight 180 were gruesomely killed one by one in the order that they would have died had they remained on the plane. Here, those who die first are the ones that would have died last on Route 23. The literal-mindedness of the material suggests that its been written for idiots with no concept of the afterlife. Death itself has been successfully reduced to a punchline. To the film’s credit, the executions are sporadically funny. A scene where an otherwise precocious teenager runs gleefully toward a flock of pigeons before being crushed by a gargantuan plate of glass has to be one of the funniest set pieces I’ve seen in years. But, unless the writers can figure out a way for Death to kill upward and downward, they’ve completely exhausted their directions and a third film now seems unlikely.

Score: 
 Cast: Ali Larter, A.J. Cook, Michael Landes, T.C. Carson, Jonathan Cherry, Keegan Connor Tracy, Sarah Carter, Lynda Boyd, David Paetkau, Justina Machado  Director: David R. Ellis  Screenwriter: J. Mackye Gruber, Eric Bress  Distributor: New Line Cinema  Running Time: 103 min  Rating: R  Year: 2003  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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