Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.5

Final Destination 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Death Goes Slumming

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 7, 2011

The same studio brass that had the foresight to change the original film's name from "Flight 180" to Final Destination understood exactly what they wanted in a sequel, and it wasn't the witty genre parody that broadened the film's appeal to a larger audience including people like, well, me. They wanted the core horror audience consisting primarily of teens who would buy tickets to see people killed in gross and unexpected ways. So they handed the reins to producers Craig Perry and Warren Snide, who had been there for the first film but whose real claim to fame was the American Pie series; they recruited writers Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, who were young, hip and had just sold New Line The Butterfly Effect; and they hired director David R. Ellis, a veteran stunt coordinator and second unit director, whose experience supervising onscreen mayhem spanned decades and included To Live and Die in L.A., The Perfect Storm and the Matrix films.

The result is slick and professional, but for my taste it's a crashing bore. (And yes, I know that phrase is a groaner for those who have seen the film.) As much as FD2 attempts to position itself as a logical successor to Final Destination -- borrowing and even attempting to further its "Death's plan" mythology, and bringing back Ali Larter's Clear Rivers as a continuing character -- the film lacks the original's paranoia and the sense of a paranormal world following its own inexorable logic. The deaths are all so obviously about misdirecting the audience that there's nothing creepy or supernatural about them. It's very hard to scare someone effectively when you make a lot of noise rustling around in the bushes before you jump out yelling "boo!" The most you can hope to do is gross them out with the bloody awfulness of your fright wig, which is where the makers of FD2 succeed best.

It's the one-year anniversary of Flight 180's crash. Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook) is packing up her SUV and saying goodbye to her father (Andrew Airlie) as she embarks on a road trip with friends to Daytona. Pulling onto the freeway, Kimberly encounters ominous portents, including a school bus from Mt. Abraham High School (home of the ill-fated French class that died on Flight 180) filled with football fans chanting "Pile up!", and a kid in a passing car staring at Kimberly while miming a head-on collision between a toy car and truck. Shortly thereafter, Kimberly's vehicle is one of many smashed to bits in a spectacular traffic disaster caused by a logging truck that pops its cables and dumps its load onto the highway. Dozens of people are killed, including Kimberly.

At which point, Kimberly snaps back to the present, just as Alex Browning did before Flight 180 took off. She's still at the freeway entrance. Convinced she's just glimpsed her future and that of the drivers and passengers behind her, Kimberly blocks the freeway entrance with her vehicle, drawing the attention of a state trooper, Thomas Burke (Michael Landes), whom Kimberly saw mangled to a pulp in her vision. While Burke is trying to make sense of Kimberly's semi-hysterical explanation, the logging truck whizzes by and, shortly therafter, the pile-up begins, just as she predicted. Burke can't understand it, but Kimberly has just saved the life of everyone she blocked on the on-ramp. (Well, not everyone. But why spoil it for first-time viewers?)

So now the makers of FD2 have replicated the first film's setup: a group of survivors who have cheated Death due to a premonition, but who will be picked off one by one by increasingly bizarre and elaborate accidents. The difference is that the survivors are connected only by the random circumstance of having been on the freeway on-ramp at that particular moment. (An attempt, halfway through the film, to establish a deeper connection is strained, half-hearted and quickly abandoned.) Also, since they've all heard the weird stories about the Flight 180 survivors -- a TV interview plays over the credits, providing essential exposition, and Trooper Burke seems to be something of a buff on the subject -- they should all be prepared for Death's return visits. But most of the survivors don't believe all that superstitious nonsense until it's too late.

Then again, how can the characters be expected to take something seriously that the filmmakers themselves treat with such obvious disdain? For the creators of FD2, the "Death's plan" mythology is no more than a pretext for staging elaborate executions with as much gore and shock value as they can devise. Logic or consistency in the mythology is utterly secondary. To take an obvious example, late in the film a character hysterically puts a revolver to his head and pulls the trigger repeatedly, because he's tired of waiting for Death to take him and wants to go out at a time of his choosing. The gun never fires, despite being fully loaded. Six duds? Impossible! But, as someone else explains, "It wasn't his time." So what about all those vehicles that ended up in the highway disaster in place of the vehicles that Kimberly prevented from entering the freeway? It wasn't their time either; those people shouldn't have crashed.

Take another example. Kimberly seeks out Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) for help, because she's the last of the Flight 180 survivors, Alex Browning having died in yet another "accident" between the two films. Clear has had herself voluntarily committed to a mental institution, where she occupies a padded room from which any object posing a potential threat has been banned. Clear rarely allows visitors, but she sees Kimberly. Eventually she leaves the institution and leads Kimberly and Burke to our old pal, Bludhorn the mortician (Tony Todd). A visit to a mortuary is always good for more gross-out scenes, and the filmmakers get good mileage out of a crematorium and a nipple-ring. But since they still have to give Bludhorn some lines, they resurrect the theme of "defeating Death by creating new life" that was excised from the first film -- but with a twist. This time around, they aren't talking about having children. They're referring to near-death experiences from which the victim is revived. Why this should be considered a victory over Death (since the revived person will still die) is never explained. In essence, the filmmakers have substituted word play for any meaningful effort to expand the series' mythology. The real purpose is to set up an apparent happy ending as misdirection for one final gross-out gag to close the film.

The original Final Destination took an innovative approach in its use of everyday objects as items in the Grim Reaper's toolbox. Not content with that approach, the makers of FD2 turn Death into a world class sadist, a kind of paranormal Jigsaw who seems to enjoy toying with its victims (though it's really the audience who's being toyed with). Thus, for example, an elaborate sequence plays out in a dentist's office involving nitrous oxide, a leaking aquarium, electrical malfunction, a mobile with defective strings and various other small details that conspire to put one of the characters at risk. But none of this turns out to matter. The real threat lies elsewhere. Everything in the dentist's office is equivalent to the typical cat that, ever since at least Alien, has been required to leap out at someone hunting something dangerous in the dark, so that he or she can jump, breathe a sigh of relief, then be attacked by the real monster -- and be decapitated, pierced through the eye, crushed under falling glass, impaled on a pole, sliced into thirds by wires while entrails go flying, or blown to smithereens so that body parts land right in front of shrieking loved ones. Because that's what FD2 is really about, and that's entertainment.

Final Destination 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Regardless of how one feels about the film, the 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray image is above reproach, with solid blacks, excellent detail (the better to gross you out with), good color rendition, and no indication of DNR or other inappropriate digital tampering. I did not spot any compression artifacts or motion blurs, even in kinetic sequences like the highway disaster. Contrast and white levels are well-handled, which is especially important in the scene where Kimberly visits Clear in her padded cell. This is a fine effort from Warner/New Line, no doubt aided by the use of a BD-50.

Final Destination 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track provides an immersive and powerful presence to the big set pieces, especially the giant highway pile-up. Bass extension may not be the most powerful I've heard, but it certainly lets you know when massive objects hit the ground (or each other). Small ambient noises appropriate to various environments appear in the surrounds during quieter moments, while dialogue remains firmly centered. The effective score is again by Shirley Walker, who chooses her moments well and whose score is beautifully rendered.

Final Destination 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Director David Ellis, Producer Craig Perry and Writers J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress: In this lively and jocular commentary, the filmmakers make one thing clear: Whatever one thinks of the result, they achieved exactly what they intended. They wanted the deaths to be as gory and disgusting as possible, and their efforts were so effective that the first preview audience found the film excessive. The cut released to theaters and featured on this Blu-ray is slightly toned down, not because of the MPAA, but because it alienated audience members. Ellis offers interesting technical observations from time to time, but the bulk of the commentary comes from Gruber, Bress and Perry, and one sometimes gets the sense that, if they'd had their druthers, they would have dispensed with the Death's plan mythology and all exposition entirely, leaving themselves free to present a series of inventive killings -- "death porn", if you will.



• The Terror Gauge (SD; 1.78:1, enhanced; 14:02): This is an interview with Dr. Victoria Ibric, identified as a specialist in neurofeedback, who hooks ups three volunteers to various monitoring devices and records their brainwave patterns and certain physical responses in reaction to key scenes in FD2. It's unclear what the data adds up to, but it's interesting to hear Dr. Ibric rattle it off.



• Cheating Death: Beyond and Back (SD; 1.78:1, enhanced; 18:09): This featurette gathers interviews with people who have been revived after being declared clinically dead. Many of the stories commonly reported recur here, including the sensation of floating above one's body and looking down on the scene, and the experience of encountering beloved relations previously deceased.



• Bits and Pieces: Bringing Death to Life (SD; 1.78:1, enhanced; 30:31): This featurette covers the film's special effects, but it begins with a short history of "splatter films" and Grand Guignol featuring film historian David Del Valle, Drew McWeeney of Aint It Cool News and Herschell Gordon Lewis, known as "the Godfather of Gore". By situating FD2's effects in a historical context, the featurette makes them more interesting than the movie they're in.



• Music Videos (SD; 1.33:1): The Blank Theory, "Middle of Nowhere" (4:31); The Sounds, "Seven Days a Week" (3:34)



• Deleted/Alternate Scenes with Optional Commentary (SD; 1.78:1, enhanced; 10:19): There are five scenes. Some are longer versions of scenes that remain in the film, while others were lifted in their entirety. The commentary explains why the changes were made, but the explanation boils down to the same thing in each case: The deleted material wasn't needed and bored the audience.



• Theatrical Trailer (SD; 1.33:1; 1:32): "For Every Beginning . . . There Is an End." This wasn't it. Three more sequels followed.

Final Destination 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's a famous quote from an obscure English poet named Edward Young (he's obscure because this quote is pretty much all he's remembered for), which says that a writer who imitates Homer's Iliad isn't imitating Homer, because Homer made the effort to be original. He wasn't imitating another writer. (I'm paraphrasing, loosely.) A similar observation applies to FD2. When Glen Morgan and James Wong made Final Destination, they were certainly aware of many other movies, but they didn't set out to imitate them. They were developing a new and, at the time, rather original idea in the suspense and horror genre. The same can't be said of the makers of FD2, who, like most sequel makers, didn't even try to replicate the creative process that Morgan and Wong undertook. They just copied the result, and they didn't even make a particularly good copy, because they gave short shrift to the parts of the Morgan/Wong original that bored them (the creepy atmosphere, the paranormal mystery) in favor of the material they liked: shock effects, gore and . . . more gore. If you share those tastes, then the Blu-ray of FD2 should be right down your dark alley.