Final Destination 2 – 2nd of five Final Destination Reviews

Yesterday it was Final Destination. Today it is Final Destination 2. Wonder what it will be tomorrow? – I guess you will just have to wait and see. But for now, let’s drive down the lane that is Final Destination 2 for a review.

The story – Final Destination 2

The plot looks a lot like the plot in the first movie. However, Final Destination 2 starts out by telling you it has been one year since the accident of flight 180 from the first movie. The main character, Kimberly, watches it on the TV so you know that she knows about it. On the TV they also talk about the strange deaths that occured afterwards to the survivors of the plane crash.

Later that day Kimberly and some of her friends are out driving, when Kimberly gets a vision. She sees a major traffic accident. Afterwards she stops the traffic by blocking it with her car. A cop drives up to them and asks why Kimberly is doing that and she freaks out. The people in the other cars behind Kimberly are getting annoyed when the accident happens for real. Everyone is shocked and is taken down to the police station. Here they talk about what happened to the survivors of flight 180 and so the real fun starts.

So, the story seems to follow the first movie and similar things happen. I don’t mind that since it is a sequence. In fact, I love that the events of the first Final Destination movie is a bigger part of the second movie. I also like that this time the sequence of who should die next is backwards, and that there is an explanation for that. All in all they did a good job tying the two movies together.

The acting and characters

Just as in the first Final Destination movie, I think the acting in Final Destination 2 is good. All the emotions are there and I even noticed one of the actors shed tears. I don’t know if it was done on command, though. You also see one emotion more in the second movie than in the first, which is grief. Of course grief occurs in Final Destination, but in Final Destination 2 you see a mother watching her son die up close. And then the mother basically says that she doesn’t care if she dies, too. And she says it convincingly.

Again as in Final Destination I like that some characters are difficult to convince of Death’s design and plan. Even after a few deaths one of the characters is not convinced. I also like how the characters are not linked to each other, except for the mother and son, like they were in Final Destination. Yet because of the first movie, they are linked together in a weird way.

The camera

In Final Destination I loved how the camera would zoom in on random objects, and sometimes not so random objects. And sometimes you would see a shadow in the objects. Final Destination 2 did an even better job of this. There was more creepy object zooming than in Final Destination and also sometimes the objects don’t really matter. The reason I find it so interesting is because it makes it more difficult to predict how the characters will die.

The sound and lighting

The sound and lighting is just as creepy (read: Good) as in Final Destination. I still end up feeling uneasy already by the time I watch Kimberly having her vision even though I have watched the movie four or five times. The Final Destination theme melody gets me everytime. I also love how they use the lighting to make Death’s shadow and to make some of the warning signs to show that Death is near. Well done.

Other things about Final Destination 2

One thing I noticed while watching Final Destination 2 was how the deaths of the characters goes faster and faster toward the end of the movie. Or maybe it just seems that way because another accident happens. I also think there are more unrealistic deaths in Final Detination 2 than in Final Destination. It is not necessarily a bad thing but it can come off as a bit funny.

Final Destination 2 is…

Great. It is very close to being as great as Final Destination. It got a more complex story than Final Destination because the two stories of the two movies are connected. I will recommend that you watch Final Destination 2 not long after watching Final Destination since you will pick up many more details that way. Final Destination 2 is a little more unpredictable than Final Destination. The only thing as far as I am concerned that pulls Final Destination 2 down is the more unrealistic deaths. Yet they are not bad enough to only give it a “very good”.