Final Destination 2

Review by Jason Gaston

Like many people across the world, I awoke on this day watching the space shuttle Columbia disintegrate above our heads. I, like so many, spent most of the day watching the news waiting for someone to make sense of the tragedy and explain why seven astronauts... the best of the best... were now dead.

To get my mind off of things, I picked up the girl I love and went to see - of all things - Final Destination 2. An ironic choice because, seriously, after a horrible event like what happened this morning, how can we ever find entertainment value in death?

Naturally, I asked myself the same question over a year ago after the 9/11 attacks and, as I watched Final Destination 2 work its grisly magic on screen, I came up with the answer.

It's escapism.

I'm not a kid... I understand that everything I see on screen isn't real. I understand that the actor or actress who gets shot, stabbed, maimed, burned, crushed, decapitated, speared, dismembered, pureed, sliced, and diced goes home at the end of the shoot alive and well.

Maybe there's that one thing about Final Destination 2 that cheered me up (and yes, it did cheer me up)... the inclination that death can be cheated of its prey and that life can go on.

Escapism in a world that got a little too real today.

Okay, enough of my attempt at a philosophic diatribe, lets get down to business. Final Destination 2... Why was this sequel made? I would normally say I don't know, but in this case I do and it has something to do with this symbol: $

If you look it up in a dictionary, you will find this entry:

Sequel (see-cwell) n. What happens when a movie makes money (See also Prequel).

The first movie was all about drama and death... the sequel is all about death and entertainment.

A bad thing? Well, yes and no... Final Destination 2 isn't anywhere near as classy, slick, or as engaging as its predecessor. Many of the characters are shallow and you pretty much can't wait until they die horrible deaths.

The good thing about Final Destination 2 is that death has gotten a lot more creative since 1999. He's traded in wayward clotheslines for big panes of glass and knives for malfunctioning elevators. This is probably one of the most gruesome, bloody, and disgusting movies to come out of Hollywood in years. I mean, think of how grisly the first movie was, multiply it by twenty and you've got Final Destination 2.

The movie takes place a year after Alex and his friends escaped death by getting off Flight 180 before it took off and exploded. Naturally, the people who got off the plane began to die in weird accidents as Death began to balance the yin with the yang. A year later, everyone is dead with the exception of Clear Rivers who has had herself committed to a padded cell.

All of the sudden, it all begins to happen again. Kimberly Corman gets a premonition of a horrific pileup on a highway (which is an awesome and horrifyingly disgusting action sequence, by the way) and blocks an onramp saving the lives of everyone behind her.

Of course, Death feels cheated so he starts killing them one by one again.

Let me put it to you this way... as far as style goes, the original has the sequel beat... not only beat, but lapped several times. This new movie is hardly more than just a clothesline to hang death sequences on. However, with that said, this movie is a lot more tongue and cheek and more merciless than the first. It's more gory, it's more cruel, and it's more horrific. The death scenes are wicked.

This is the kind of campy thrill ride that kicks your ass and makes you like it and causes the pretentious out there have strokes.

Simply but, if you've got a weak spot for fun, a strong constitution, and a few bucks burning a hole in your pocket, go give this movie a try. It's just 90 gnarly minutes of fun and wincing.