Final Destination 2: The Same Old Sludge

Functioning in this strange role in-between a spinoff and a sequel, Final Destination 2 is a little bit better, a little bit worse, and entirely too familiar to the merit-bankrupt movie preceding it. If you loved the first Final Destination for whatever reason, you'll love this one too. If not, buckle up for a long cinematic prison sentence with me, because we've got four more of these things to review. I won't lie, the idea of a race against the clock to uncover the cause of a series of fatally unfortunate accidents is an interesting premise. But an idea stays an idea if work doesn't follow it. This movie is virtually identical to the first Final Destination, except someone cut the synopsis of the first movie out with scissors before carefully pasting the words car crash over the top of plane crash. This is both a blessing and a curse, mostly a curse. This movie is interesting, but far from intellectually stimulating.

I don't believe in handing out frequent one-out-of-ten or even one-out-of-five reviews, and I'll concede that most bad movies are founded on ideas good enough to avoid such a fate. Final Destination 2 is no exception. I'm not someone who needs everything in a movie spelled out for me, though I do appreciate how this sequel takes something of a potshot at explaining its own intriguing premise. The first Final Destination made a major misstep by forgoing an explanation for the carnage, but this sequel initially finds significantly better footing than the original by at least making an effort to theorize about what could be happening. Unfortunately, it jumps ship on its detective work and devolves into all-too-familiar pulp fiction mayhem before long. I don't even think the filmmakers know why anything in their movie is happening at all, and so we're left just as in the dark as they probably are. Final Destination 2 is precisely the same thing as the first movie, just featuring a near-miss car pileup rather than a fateful plane crash. Fans of the original will be pleased to see more of the same, but if you didn't like the first one, you'll find this to be just as samey and unengaging an experience as the one before it. This movie is very familiar - too familiar, if you ask me.

The acting is marginally better in this installment, but the originality has taken a hit. I don't have much to add about this movie that I haven't already said about the original. Still, I like how some of the major players here take the idea of connected deaths seriously after the now-infamous plane crash and the events that followed it. However, good icing can't mask the taste of a raw cake. Ultimately, Final Destination 2 is a PowerPoint presentation of the same macabre thrills and blatantly underbaked drama of the first movie, and I'll come out and say that this is already getting a little old. I appreciate how this sequel takes fleeting shots at theorizing about the cause of all these deaths, but it doesn't follow through on any of its ideas. As a result, much of this movie is, once again, one big gimmick without much rhyme or reason justifying its lineup of bizarre accidents. It does a few things better than the first movie, but because it doesn't come up with any new ideas, it still lives under the shadow of its predecessor's sins, and in some respects, it even does a few things worse.

I got into this series because of the positive buzz surrounding Final Destination Bloodlines, and to give the franchise a backhanded compliment, I am highly interested in seeing how it rights the boat, because two movies in, the Final Destination series is six feet under and sinking rapidly. It is little more than a teen drama, hoping that enough foul language and underbaked adult content can somehow make it more. It fails to understand that what defines a film's quality is not what it portrays, but how it portrays it. It is the cinematic equivalent of clickbait, an exciting tagline with nothing of value behind the link.

Final Destination 2 - 4/10

Proverbs 18:9