Final Destination 2

Horror Subgenre: Creative Kills

Often times, sequels are disappointing. ESPECIALLY horror sequels. It seems for every Evil Dead 2, there’s a Friday the 13th Part 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. But every once in a while, they rise up and become greater than their predecessor. Such is the case with Final Destination 2, a movie built upon the Horror Movie Money Shot: creative, ridiculous deaths. FD2 takes the premise of Final Destination – a group of people escape a tragedy, only to have death circle back and kill them in Rube Goldberg-esque ways – and cranks every aspect up to skull-crushing levels. It’s all set off by the most insane car wreck in movie history, which you can watch below if you’re up to it.

This movie is so insane, I can show you these two and a half minutes and be confident I’m not even ruining the best parts. Like The Thing, Final Destination 2 continually plays with your emotions. No one is safe. In fact, you know everyone will die. It’s built into the rules of the movie! You even know WHEN most of them will go. The true fun is seeing HOW.

Scenarios play out for minutes, setting the plan for a character’s death in motion by teasing the audience with several options, only to turn around and drop a plate glass window out of nowhere! Sometimes you’ll be relieved when someone bites it just so you can catch a breather, but then…holy shit where did that barbed-wire fence come from??

FD2 is a pleasant surprise that could have easily been a forgotten sequel. By upping the creativity, tension, and body count, Final Destination 2 is the perfect group horror movie. I’ve seen it many times, but I’ve yet to tire of its awesomeness.

MUST-SEE SCENE: The gruelingly drawn-out scene in which a character escapes a minimum of 7 opportunities for death in his apartment, starting with a grease fire, continuing with suffocation, followed by amputation, electrocution, explosion, a slip on spaghetti, and ending with a falling ladder. And even when you think you know when he’s going to die, you’ll still never see it coming.

By the way, anyone else notice the tag line for this movie in the poster above? Look familiar? Well, IT SHOULD!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 10:40 pm and is filed under Film, Horror Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.