12 = THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FILM
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Sequel turns stomachs,trickles irony
REVIEW
So begins Final Destination 2, a movie that can't wait for its stupidly defensive cast of forgettable characters to die spectacularly horrible deaths. As exploitive as Faces of Death, this sequel tests the gory limits of the teen horror flick, so the faint of heart and the weak of stomach should beware.
Stephen Shupe
sshupe@kansan.com
The previews for this surprisingly efficient and criminally fast-paced movie were less than promising, but that's probably because the good stuff is far too bloody to show on television.
It's the one-year anniversary of the Flight 180 tragedy that wiped out dozens of students from Mount Abraham High School. The survivors who cheated fate by skipping the flight have all been tracked down by Death even the hero of the original film, Alex Browning, was killed in the interim by a falling brick. Only Clear Rivers (Ali Larter, less bodacious and more schizophrenic than before) remains.
Kimberly Corman (A.J.Cook, doing cutely paranoid renditions of Jennifer Love Hewitt) and her horn-dog friends are road-tripping to a spring-break getaway for a week of sex and
drugs. Like Alex in the first film, Kimberly has a premonition of a devastating cataclysm expertly staged by director David R. Ellis except this time, it's a pile-up on the ground instead of an explosion in the air.
Kimberly freaks and manages to warn some of the victims, but it's too late for her friends, who are soon turned into flaming barbecue on the side of the highway.
Remember the bus that came out of nowhere in the first film to splatter a lead character into oblivion? Every death in Final Destination 2 provides the same kind of jolt. The movie works solely on the basis of its almost laughably high shock value.
The original characters were more sympathetic and better developed, but kudos to Ellis's casting director, who obviously has a knack for picking out a particular brand of actors bland enough to merit a good shellacking. The new film also benefits from not having to explain too much—the script quickly establishes that Death is pissed and then the mayhem ensues.
Final Destination was not a traditional horror movie and neither is this. No boogeyman hides in the shadows and most of the action takes place during daylight.
What the films have brought to the genre is a scary logic to the details that will lead to a character's demise — be it via home appliances, electrical disturbances or flying links of barbed wire.
Final Destination 2 is filled with the same kind of fun, in-your-face irony that set the first film apart. Where Alex heard John Denver crooning the country-boy strains of "Rocky Mountain High", Kimberly hears AC/DC wailing "Highway to Hell". This kind of fatalism alone would provide a gold mine for material for any number of sequels. Final Destination 3 could take a more euphemistic approach
FINAL DESTINATION 2 ... B+
Starring: Ali Larter, A.J. Cook and Tony Todd
Rated R for strong violence, gruesome accidents, language, drug content and some nudity
Playing at South Wind 12 Theatres, 3433 Iowa St.
with Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven."
Some may like their horror more psychological and with more-engaging players, but there's no denying this movie's braininess is in knowing exactly what will make its audience's eyeballs bulge. And Ellis isn't afraid to break the rules — he kills off a kid (this is the most disturbing image in a mainstream movie in a while) and even lets the T.B.G. (Token Black Guy) survive through the first hour.
The biodegradable bodies on display here seem to have been constructed out of putty, which is basically what they are in Ellis' hands.
Shupe is an Augusta graduate student in journalism.
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