Bad acting, silly ending hurt decent sequel

Rating: 7/10 (3 February 2003)

The first "Final Destination" film was entertaining and creative as a group of students tried to outwit death... now comes the sequel.. is it as good as the original? No.. not even close. Is it entertaining in it's own right? Yes, to a point. The lead character this time is played by A.J. Cook, a young actress who seems to be popping up in many of these thriller films these days. She plays Kimberly, a girl who has a vision that forshadows a freeway crash that kills herself and many others. She blocks traffic and saves a handfull of people, while others die in the gruesome tragedy. And this movie does not skimp on the violence or gore like many other films these days do. The death scenes in this one are quite gruesome. Of course death starts picking off the survivors in freak accidents and Kimberly goes off to find the only survivivng character from the first film (Ali Larter, looking like she's phoning this one in after cashing what was probably a decent size check for a fairly small part). The film is entertaining on its own face, but does have problems. The conections to the first film are tenuous and seem forced and rather silly and the acting (with the exception of Cook, who does a servicable job) is bad, even by these films standards. The story has enough twists and turns and false scares to provide a decent ride, though understanding all the hookum about death and how to trick him is rather mind boggling, the ending is as silly as can be. Still, its entertaining enough and has some cool effects and gore scenes so that the less discriminating horror fans should enjoy it. GRADE: C