Great sequel.

Rating: 8/10 (20 January 2007)

Final Destination 2 starts as Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook) & three of her friends set off for Denver, while on the highway Kimberly foresees an accident in which she, her friends & several other people die. Kimberly is shook up by the vision & refuses to carry on, as she is spoken to by officer Thomas Burke (Michael Landes) on the side of the road the huge accident she foresaw happens. She is saved although her friends still get killed while several other people who were supposed to die in the accident are also prevented from death by being held up behind Kimberly's car. Everyone just assumes that they were extremely lucky & that's that, but later that day Evan Lewis (David Paetkau) who was supposed to die in the highway pile-up is killed in a freak accident. Kimberly starts to have more visions as she foresees the death's of the people she saved, the people who were supposed to die & the people who seemingly cheated death. But death won't be cheated & if your time is up, your time is up...
Directed by David R. Ellis I thought Final Destination 2 was a throughly entertaining film & a worthy sequel. The script by J. Mackye Gruber & Eric Bress does what every good sequel should, it takes the original premise, elaborates on it, makes everything more spectacular & cranks things up a notch while being a fine film in it's own right. The basic Final Destination (2000) story is here, in fact in some ways you could call it as much a remake as a sequel as the two films are virtually the same but I found it great to watch as things get off to a spectacular start with a terrific highway pile-up & then the rest of the film as death catches up with the protagonists, I liked the way the accidents happen & the intricate build-ups to them with all manner of coincidences that lead to the unfortunate victims demise. Having said that things do turn a little silly at the end as it becomes too supernatural with things moving on their own, doors being jammed & these scenes felt too deliberate & not down to random chance or coincidence. There are some clever references to the original, the character's are good & pretty likable & as a whole I thought it was a throughly entertaining & watchable film that moves along at a great pace.
Director Ellis does a great job & he builds the tension up in the run up to the kills very effectively. There are plenty of other fun film references including some of he character's being named after various horror directors. The kills are cool & quite graphic, the pile-up has someone lose their head via a huge log, someone is squashed to a bloody pulp, there's a decapitation, someone gets a spike through their head, someone is sliced up by barb wire, someone gets a ladder impaled in their eye & there's a pleasing amount of blood. The special effects are very good with the initial pile-up being particularly impressive.
With a supposed budget of about $26,000,000 Final Destination 2 is extremely well made & has that Hollywood polish about it. The acting is OK & a special mention goes to Keegan Connor Tracy as Kat whom I rather fancied...
Final Destination 2 is a top film that I enjoyed immensely & it's as simple & straight forward as that. Definitely recommend, another sequel Final Destination 3 (2006) has been made.