My Thoughts After Re-watching Final Destination 2 (2003)
My youngest daughter is beginning to love horror movies and asked us to pick out something scary, so I went with the Final Destination films. This included Final Destination 2. Here are my thoughts after I re-watched it for the first time in several years.
What was the point of the leaking transmission fluid? I mean, I know this series is known for its fake outs, but that puddle on Kimberly's (A. J. Coleman) driveway had zero impact on the plot. I thought that was a complete waste because the film could have had a clever callback to it by having one of the protagonists, believing they had escaped death, slip on it late in the film.
The crash scene in this movie is iconic and lord knows, I move to the other lane whenever I get behind any truck hauling something like that log truck was. However, I suspect it wouldn't have been anywhere near as deadly had the drivers had brakes that worked and weren't (presumably based on the explosions) all choosing to haul dynamite.
I can buy people believing the plane crash from the first film and maybe even some of them hearing rumors of what happened to the survivors afterwards. However, remembering that many details on the spot, including the flight number, seemed like something that only happens in the movies.
The irony of lottery winner Evan Lewis (David Paetkau) being the first of the survivors to die was a nice touch, as was the way he died. However, the man just won the lottery, why was he still living in a crappy apartment and trying to make dinner out of leftovers? I would have, at minimum, checked into a luxury hotel with room service while looking for a mansion to buy.
The whole "Death's list" thing raises a lot of questions. For example, if Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) is still alive and Death is working backwards on the list, shouldn't she be the last one he should be attempting to kill? Or are there two separate lists or even different versions of death? Does that list just include Americans or are people from other countries who escaped death also on that?
So, did that dentist office just choose not to mention the incident the incident that nearly killed Tim (James Kirk)? I mean, he nearly died and I find it very hard to believe his overprotective mother (Lynda Boyd) wouldn't have still been in that dentist's office reading them the riot act rather than outside, where he was killed.
Speaking of which, a shout out to the unseen people who had to clean Tim's squished body off the pavement. They did a great job.
Someone from that fire department, however, should probably lose their job. I've never done that job before but even I know (thanks to watching TV) you're supposed to deactivate the air bag to prevent it from going off unexpectedly while trying to rescue a trapped occupant.
Kimberly's confused interpretation of her visions just didn't make sense. First of all, even with blood on them, who doesn't recognize their own hands? Second, why would she assume she's seeing things through another person's eyes in the first place? And then there's the part about Dr. Kalarjian (Enid-Raye Adams) and the assumption the very clear attempt at CPR was a murder attempt, despite the same vision showing a van underwater.
Why would they be so quick to assume their plan worked? Let's forget for a moment the whole "I'll drown myself to stop death" thing wasn't even remotely thought through before Kimberly stole the ambulance. Wouldn't you think there would at least be some caution with that optimism considering her interpretation of "new life" was a bit of a stretch.
OK, I liked that ending. It still raises a whole bunch of questions about Death's list and where we were in the order, but it was clever and even a bit funny (at least by horror movie standards). I'd even go as far as to say that might be almost as iconic as the crash scene.
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Here are my thoughts from other movies:
My Thoughts After Re-Watching Joy Ride (2001)
My Thoughts After Re-Watching Child's Play (1988)
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