FINAL DESTINATION 2 (2003) Wasn't so final, was it? The original Final Destination was one of the very best of the teen horror movies in the last eight years, and should probably have stayed one of a kind. It was so singular in concept (teens who'd narrowly avoided death find themselves killed through fantastic freak accidents), I always figured any attempt at a sequel would probably be a total rehash with nothing to recommend it other than more fun death scenes. No surprises here, then. Just before merging onto a crowded highway, the driver of a carload of totally airheaded teenagers has a psychic vision of a massive pileup killing everyone involved. So she refuses to merge, which pisses off everybody in line behind her but at least they don't get killed when the crash happens. They get killed later. Final Destination 2 relies less on lethal Rube Goldbergs, and more on quick bursts of bodily destruction that often need to be rewatched, because if you blink, you'll miss 'em. Sliced to bits by flying barbed wire, heads impaled, bodies folded in half and squished by falling glass...the lingering, agonizing deaths of the first movie are replaced here by deaths which are spectacular in their own way, but make for less involving viewing. It was fun to see Kirsten Cloke stumble around her kitchen as seemingly everything there fell over in the worst possible way...it's also fun to see a lady get her head popped off by being on the wrong side of an elevator door, but not as much. The other minor twist on the original's concept is, the lead's doomed friends are the first to die, leaving her to figure all this stuff out with people she doesn't even know, i.e. the other motorists. They're helped along by a script that serves only to get us from one death to the next, and has little use for logic (who paid for seven cell phones, let alone seven cell phone plans?). Despite Tony Todd returning and sounding like he's illuminating things, I still have no idea why one teen would get a psychic vision of the future and avoid death's design in one movie, let alone two. Characters and audience alike are advised to "look for the signs" that foreshadow an upcoming death - in other words, if you see a swordfish, somebody's probably gonna get stabbed with the swordfish. Same way it works in all horror movies, really. Also returning is foxy Ali Larter, who is almost enough to make me forgive the inevitably disappointing hand-in-garborator scene. In just one movie, the Final Destination movies (there's a third on the way, if not out already) have made it obvious that their purpose for being is to string together inventive death scenes - like the Omen movies without the pseudo-religious nonsense, though this movie does make some efforts towards that with something about a pregnant woman giving birth so everyone else can live. Destined to end up on a Terror In The Aisles-style compilation flick. This isn't the kind of horror movie that's going to keep you up at night. It'll probably keep you going back to the scene index on the DVD though. BACK TO THE F's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE