Remains on the right track.

Rating: 8/10 (10 August 2011)

Here we have sequel, that is essentially the same as the first film, but provides a lot more thrills and a lot more special effects than the first. Final Destination 2 has the same scheme as its predecessor - the hero of the film, this time a female named Kimberly (Cook), is on a road-trip with her best friend and her two pot smoking buddies. She has a premonition on the road that she is one of the many victims to a deadly traffic pileup. She blocks the on-ramp so no one can get by, the premonition comes true, various people survive, but are then killed off in the order they would've died if she hadn't blocked the road. There we have Final Destination 2.
It's safe to say we get more of a variety in our characters this time around. In the original, it was all students aboard a flight to Paris. This time, we have a student, a mother, a teacher, a lottery winner, a pregnant women, a drug-addict, a self-centered woman, and a police officer. Clear Rivers (Larter) from the original film returns here to pair up with Kimberly and police officer Thomas Burke (Landes) to try and stop death's design.
The idea is we all have a fate, but the flaw is we can cheat it. In this case, Kimberly and the crew's fate was to die in the pileup, but due to her lucky premonition everyone is saved. After you cheat death and save yours and many other lives the only way you can prevent the rest of the gang from dying is for the person who had the premonition to commit suicide or have a child being born, creating new life somehow saving the rest of the people. You're better off not to question the idea, and just go along for the ride.
The special effects in this are sub-par to the first film. The problem with the first film was that some of the death sequences were at night, and some, didn't involved many crafty designs, or twists and turns, most likely because it was the first of its kind. They didn't know their standard. But still, Final Destination had some memorable and quite impressive death scenes. Especially when you consider frequent hidden hints and "180" appearances.
Final Destination 2 offers a bit more build-up by showing something falling, shifting, sliding, moving, etc. The trigger effect that leads to these deaths is perfect, and reminds me why I love this franchise. It can go above and beyond everything if it just remains realistic and plausible.
There are a few problems sadly. For one thing, some scenes in the morgue and the mental-institute are poor build-ups to the main event. They last long, and tend to ramble. It's best to try and make the rule make sense to you, rather than listen to a bunch of people talk about it. My advice; watch the first film. Watch it again. Get an idea of how this design works, and then continue to watch the remaining films in the franchise. Eventually, it will come to you. Patience is a virtue.
One question I asked myself in the first film was "Why Alex?" Up until about halfway through, I asked "Why Kimberly?" The film provides logical information on why it's Kimberly's turn to have the premonition. But I still I have two questions; (1) Why does this premonition aspect exist if its purpose is to mess up Death's plan? Don't you think Death (I love how I'm using him as a real person right now) would try everything to stop this premonition? And the premonition sequence lasted about four minutes in this film. You couldn't tell me Kimberly sat stopped on the on-ramp, in utter silence with two talkative pot-buddies in the back seat and her annoying blonde friend without them shaking her or talking to her, and no one from other cars behind her came up to knock on her window. They took all the plausibility, pumped it into the death sequences in the film, but at the same time, drained it from the events leading up to the deaths. Never heard of that happening.
Clearly, I'm over-analyzing what is supposed to be an enjoyable horror flick. That it was. Final Destination still remains calm, and not cocky, and cartoonish like one would think. While some franchises get carried away, for now, Final Destination is on the right track.
Starring: Ali Larter, A. J. Cook, Michael Landes, and Tony Todd. Directed by: David R. Ellis.