Final Destination 2
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Final Destination 2 is a 2003 horror film and the second installment in the Final Destination series. It is distributed by New Line Cinema and directed by David R. Ellis. It is also produced by Craig Perry and written by Jeffrey Reddick. It is the sequel to the movie Final Destination (2000). It is followed by Final Destination 3 (2006). It was released on July 22nd, 2003.
Plot
It has been one year since the tragic explosion of Flight 180. While going on vacation, Kimberly Corman, (played by
A.J. Cook) traveling with her friend Shaina (
Sarah Carter) and two other male friends, has a premonition of a horrific
freeway pile-up while still on the on-ramp. She causes outrage when she blocks traffic, but the signs prove true. The survivors, Eugene (T.C. Carson), Rory (Jonathon Cherry), Katherine (
Keegan Connor Tracy), Nora (Lynda Boyd) and her son Tim (
James Kirk) are all held up at the police station and Kim begins to tell everyone about her strange premonition. They all leave, but one of the survivors dies mysteriously, and Kim begins to suspect that her premonition is really something more. In a mental institution, she meets Clear Rivers (
Ali Larter), the sole survivor of Flight 180, who has had similar experience with premonition. She reluctantly accepts Kim's offer to help her spot the signs to keep her and the others alive, but the deaths have already begun. A police officer who initially brought everybody in for questioning, Thomas Burke (Michael Landes), also offers his assistance in keeping everyone alive, but it becomes a race against time as everyone has scattered after dismissing the tales. The enigmatic mortician William Bludworth (
Tony Todd) makes another appearance and provides more insight into the workings of Death involving the forces of balance.
Cast & Characters
- Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook): The visionary in this film. She is the one who prevents the pile-up. Because of the few people surviving Flight 180, anything that the survivors did afterwards affected other people, interfering in their planned deaths. Basically, if everyone died on Flight 180, then people in this film would have died months ago prior to the pile-up. Kimberly would have died along with her mother in a shoot-out robbery, but she was caught up in watching a news special on how a teenager "committed suicide" (this is Tod's death in the first Final Destination).
- Clear Rivers (Ali Larter): Returning in this sequel, Clear comes out of her safe self-imprisonment and helps the new set of survivors, using her knowledge and experiences based on the first film. She is the last survivor of Flight 180.
- Shaina (Sarah Carter): A friend of Kimberly that dies minutes after the pile-up.
- Dano (Alex Rae): A friend of Kimberly that dies minutes after the pile-up.
- Frankie (Shaun Sipos): A friend of Kimberly that dies minutes after the pile-up.
- Mr. Corman (Andrew Airlie): Kimberly's father. Notices an ominous transmission fluid leak from Kimberly's SUV as it pulls out of their driveway.
- Officer Thomas Burke (Michael Landes): A New York State trooper who gathers everyone together to inform them of what's going on, provides the equipment and serves as Kimberly's love interest. He would have died months prior in a shoot-out while on the job, but he was busy cleaning up the remains of Billy Hitchcock (Flight 180 survivor) at a train accident.
- William Bludworth (Tony Todd): The strange mortician that seems to know more about death than most people. He talked to the first round of survivors in the first film and told them the concept of the design and intervening in it. Here, he tells Kimberly only one thing: "Only a new life can defeat death."
- Eugene Dix (T.C. Carson): A teacher who would have died at a school when a kid brought a knife and stabbed him. However, he had been transferred to another school to take over for another teacher (Valerie Lewton). He was a survivor of the pile-up.
- Rory Peters (Jonathan Cherry): A druggie who acts as the relief of the group. He is likable, but a bit immature. He would have died in a theatre in Paris that collapsed, but he forgot to attend when a guy was hit by a falling sign (Carter from the first film).
- Kat Jennings (Keegan Connor Tracy): A very skeptical and direct woman who loves cigarettes. She is seldom seen without one. She would have died at a bed and breakfast when a gas leak suffocated all the renters, but she was unable to go when the bus she was on ran over a kid on the street (Terry Chaney of the first film). She is a survivor of the pile-up.
- Nora Carpenter (Lynda Boyd): She is the oldest of the pile-up survivors and is seen as skeptical, but she proves to be a loving and caring mother to Tim.
- Tim Carpenter (James Kirk): The youngest of the survivors, he and his mother Nora are seen as having an ideal mother-son relationship. It is unknown exactly how they were affected by the Flight 180 survivors.
- Evan Lewis (David Paetkau): First to die of the pile-up survivors when impaled by an apartment ladder. Won the lottery a day before the crash.
- Isabella Hudson (Justina Machado): A pregnant woman who was on the highway during the pile-up. The survivors falsely believed that Isabella having a baby would remove them from death's list. It isn't until much later that Kimberly realizes that she was not meant to die, thus her baby's birth will not save them.
Clear & Alex
Clear was fated to be the second to last person to die in the original Final Destination (after Billy and before Alex). Due to all of the interventions, by the Final Destination scene in Paris the list was Alex, Carter, Clear. Obviously, Carter intervened in Alex's death and subsequently was next in line and killed, making the list Clear, Alex. Since Clear is alive in Final Destination 2 and Alex is not, it can be assumed that at some point between Final Destination and Final Destination 2 that Alex intervened in a planned death for Clear, making Alex the one to die. We learn from Officer Burke's research and also from Clear that Alex was killed when a falling brick hit his face. His death was attributed to a gust of wind that dislodged the brick from a nearby building, but it was obviously what Death planned for him.
Clear attained the ability to see premonitions at the very end of Final Destination, but this ability either vanished or she was not aware of it in Final Destination 2. Devon Sawa (Alex) does not appear in the film due to a contractual dispute with New Line, so his character was killed off-screen.
When the decision was made to kill off either Clear or Alex in pre-production, Alex was chosen, as females seem to drive horror movies better than males. The fact that two female lead characters would be in this movie compelled Ali Larter to resume her role as Clear Rivers.
Deaths
There is a foreshadowing of the accident in beginning of the film: a set of car keys is on top of Kimberly's Road Trip journal. It says "ROAD TRIP", but the "T" is blocked and we see "ROAD RIP".
Death's original design was Kimberly and her friends, Evan, Tim, Nora, Kat, Rory, Eugene, Thomas (since Death was working backwards, Thomas would have been last to die because he was killed first in Kimberly's vision.) Interventions included, the actual order of death is as follows:
- Kimberly (intervened) and friends (Shaina, Frankie, & Dano)
- Death: Collision. Minutes after the gigantic pile-up, Kimberly is next to her vehicle looking around at the destruction and is unable to move due to the trauma. She sees a road sign that says "WARNING: CONSTRUCTION NEXT 180 FEET", but the camera zooms in on only the "180" (a reference to Flight 180) and we know something bad is yet still about to happen. She fails to notice the now-on-fire truck that caused the pile up that is coming straight toward her. Officer Burke sees this and successfully pulls Kim out of the way. However, the flaming truck still manages to strike Kimberly's SUV, with her friends still inside. They all die instantly.
- Intended Death: Collision. Originally last to die with Kimberly, Shaina, Frankie and Dano were trapped in the back seat of the SUV when Kimberly saw Evan burning in the fire, they too died when the truck killing her killed them as well.
Death: Impalement. Just after winning the lottery, Evan comes back to his apartment with lots of valuables (an Apple iMac computer, a ring, a watch, etc). Through his apartment window, he throws out some spoiling pasta that was sitting in the frying pan for a while. Evan also cooks some frozen food on the stove. He sets the carton with the Chinese food next to the refrigerator and while looking away, a refrigerator magnet falls into the paper box with the rest of the food (leaving the remaining magnets on the fridge to spell out the word eye). Oblivious to this, he puts the Chinese food into his microwave and checks his calls while waiting. Most of the calls he received are from women who found out about his lottery winnings. He chuckles about this and puts on the gold watch that he bought. But, before he can put on the ring, the microwave starts to spark. Startled by the sudden shock, he accidentally drops the ring and it rolls into the sink and down into the garbage disposal. Instinctively, he grabs for it, but gets his hand stuck in the drain. Just then, the food on the oven catches fire, and the flames slowly spread around the kitchen, causing a grease fire on the stove. Evan, still stuck, uses a rag to knock the pan off the stove, which spreads flames to his trash can and then the rest of the apartment. He frees his hand, and unsuccessfully tries to put out the flames. Accepting that the fire is unbeatable, Evan attempts to leave through the fire escape outside of his apartment, but every one of the windows mysteriously lock shut simultaneously. He gets a chair and breaks the window, enabling him to escape. Evan races down the fire escape and his apartment explodes. Barely escaping death, Evan goes more slowly down the escape route, but comes to a stop when the ladder gets stuck on the way down. He shifts his weight on it, trying to get the ladder down. It shoots down, and he gets off and steps back, but trips on the pasta that he threw out earlier, falling on the shattered glass from the broken apartment window, his face under the ladder. The ladder comes down and the metal tip of it stops inches from Evan's face. Realizing that he has dodged death once again, Evan lets out a laugh of relief. Then, the ladder comes down, impaling Evan through the eye, killing him instantly.
Intended Death: Burning/Blunt force trauma. Originally fifth to die, Evan sped through the log wreck, either hoping to avoid everything, or careening out of control, he looked up to see he was headed for a fuel truck's tank. He ducked under the dash as his Thunderbird clipped the tank causing it to well up into a fireball of an explosion. He was pinned in as his car came to a stop and as he tried to free himself he screamed in pain as he was being burned alive. That was shortened however when the log truck came up behind his car destroying him.
Death: Crushing. Kimberly has a vision that Tim or Nora will die due to something involving a flock of pigeons. She and Officer Burke see the mother and son coming out of the dentist's office, after Tim had just been in the dentists office where the viewers thought he would die due to spilled water next to electrical equpiment, distracted dentist (by pigeons) with large drill, where construction is taking place in front of the building. There are pigeons gathered together on the sidewalk. Kim runs towards Nora and Tim and shouts out "Pigeons!" trying to warn them. Tim does not realize the urgency in her voice and interprets it differently. He notices the pigeons and runs towards them playfully, scaring them off. Unknown to Tim, he is actually right under a glass panel that is being used for construction. Most of the pigeons fly towards a man operating machinery and he blindly flicks the release lever on the crane dashboard, which lets the glass panel fall to the street. Tim looks up, but it is too late and he is crushed.
Intended Death: Head On Collision. Dying the same time as his mother, Nora, and fourth in order, Nora and Tim were caught in the midst of the falling logs. Tim screamed for her to stop, but in a panic, he dropped one of his water bottles under the brake pedal, keeping Nora from stepping on it, the out of control vehicle collided head on with a log and burst into flames.
Death: Decapitation. Nora, upset over Tim's death, decides to leave the protection of the other survivors and just wants to get home and plan her son's funeral. She and Eugene both leave the survivors' meeting at Thomas Burke's apartment. They take the elevator, but before Eugene leaves, Thomas gives him a cell phone to give to Nora. In the elevator, Eugene and Nora are quiet, but become uncomfortable when an older man comes in with a basket full of prosthetic arms and other theatrical props, such as hook-hands. The man stands behind Nora, sniffing her hair and looking her over, and Eugene looks over disapprovingly. In the apartment, Rory attempts to put a few things in the closet, but the contents fall out and hit Rory. He is fine, but with the light bulb and the various objects on top of each other, a peculiar shadow is cast. He warns the other survivors and they call Nora warning her of a "man with hooks." Nora, still in the elevator, drops the phone when it rings and kneels to pick it up, getting her braid caught in one of the hooks of the prosthetic arms the man has (this is not apparent to anyone but the audience). When Officer Burke tells her about how a man with hooks is going to kill her, she panics. She stops the elevator and tries to get out, but her braid is still stuck on the prosthetic arm hook. She tries to pull herself off of the braid and out of the elevator while Eugene and the old man try to untangle her braid, but the elevator door shuts, pinning Nora's head inside the elevator and her body outside of it. The elevator starts to rise slowly while Eugene and the old man try inside of the elevator to help Nora and Clear and Kat try to help her outside; all of their efforts are fruitless. Eventually Nora's head stops the elevator, but it keeps trying to go up. Nora coughs up blood and with a cry of "I don't wanna die!" the pressure pops her head off, spraying blood all over Kat and Clear and leaving her severed head in front of the horrified men inside the elevator.
Intended Death: Head-On Collision. Dying at the same time as her son, Tim, and fourth in order, Nora and Tim were caught in the midst of the falling logs. Tim screamed for her to stop, but in a panic, he dropped one of his water bottles under the break pedal, keeping Nora from stepping on it, the out of control vehicle collided head on with a log and burst into flames.
Death: Impalement. After Nora's death, the group (now including Clear) is anxious to get to the hospital to see Isabella have her baby. On the way there, the survivors cross paths with Isabella (in labor), causing them to swerve, blow a tire, and ultimately crash onto a field on a farm. The cop escorting Isabella wants to help the group, but Isabella insists on continuing to the hospital. Some locals from the farm run to where the survivors are and the cop is convinced that it's safe enough to leave. The survivors have crashed into some pipes and logs, some of which are thrown into the car through the back windshield. Eugene is impaled through the chest, but still alive. One of the pipes in the car has its sharp end poking through the headrest, immediately behind Kat's head. Kat herself is trapped in the driver's seat due to a log through the doors across her lap, pinning her down. Some news vans arrive to cover the situation. One of the vans almost hits a farm boy named Brian, but Rory pushes him out of the way just in time, saving his life. Kat, however, is still in the van and a fireman is trying to help her out. He uses the jaws of life and crams them into the door at the front end of the SUV to get Kat out. Kat is irritated by the noise and asks him to be quieter. The man sarcastically replies "Yeah, sure, I'll just put it on quiet mode," and prepares to go at it again. With force, he thrusts the jaws deep into the SUV, and the airbag deploys, pushing Kat's head back into the sharp pipe behind her. The airbag dies down, and the audience sees the pipe through Kat's head, and she drops her cigarette.
Intended Death: Crushed. The third to die in the pileup, Kat swerved to avoid Rory's exploding truck and careened into another log, it sent her up into the air and the SUV fell over on its cab, thats when Nora and Tim's car crashes into the same log causing the two cars to explode.
Death:sliced lacerated limbs. The fuel tank of one of the news vans that arrived to cover the crash is torn by some jagged rocks on the ground, and gasoline begins leaking onto the ground, seeping across the ground and into a few of the pipes. The pipes slowly drain the gasoline under another van and the wind blows Kat's cigarette into one of the pipes, igniting the gasoline. The fire travels under the van, igniting some engine parts and blowing the van up. The blast blows a section of barbed wire fence (two fence posts with three strands of wire strung between them) out of the ground and across the field at a high rate of speed. Rory is oblivious to this (as he was taking drugs) and the fence posts fly past him, the wires slicing through leaving three pieces (chest up with two arms, stomach and hips-down). He stands looking surprised for a moment before he literally slides apart.
Intended Death: T-Bone Car Crash. Rory was the third to die in the pile up, when the logs barelling toward his truck caused him to swerve and hit them, he did several tumbles before landing upright again, he was injured, but not dead. He let out a laugh of relief before turning to see (and scream at) a truck oncoming that collided with his truck, causing it to explode.
- Eugene Dix & Clear Rivers
Death: Incineration. Eugene is in his hospital bed hooked up to an oxygen machine. He watches the news and learns of Kat's death, and he now knows that it's his turn to die. He watches helplessly as his oxygen machine fails but, luckily for him, the back-up kicks in. The survivors have been relying on the hope that Isabella having her baby would save them from Death's list, as "new life defeats death". However, they are mistaken, as Isabella was never meant to die in the pile-up, so Isabella and her baby nothing to do with Death's design. Kimberly confirms this as she has another vision. Clear leaves the group and searches for Eugene. Lulled into a false sense of security, Clear opens Eugene's door, which hits a wire and jerks the plug from an outlet, creating a spark, which sets off the escaped oxygen, blowing up the entire room. Eugene and Clear die instantly and Clear's charred body is blown backwards and lands in front of Kimberly.
Intended Death (Eugene): Crushed. The second to die on the freeway accident, Eugene had been riding at high speeds on his motorcycle, attempting to avoid the logs careening toward him, Eugene slipped from his bike, hitting the ground and sliding down the pavement, only to come to a violent stop against one of the logs that had caused the accident, he looked up and cried out as his motorcycle then crashed against him, crushing his torso and killing him instantly.
Intended Death (Clear): Plane Crash. Clear Rivers was one of the students bound for Paris on flight 180, one year prior. She was originally intended to die on the flight and has escaped numerous attempts by death to claim her since then.
Intended Death: Impalement. Though Tom never died in the movie, his original death was the first of the highway accident victims. Driving his patrol car behind the log truck that inevitably caused the pileup, a cup of coffee fell into Burke's lap. He grunted in pain as he averted his gaze to retrieve the cup and clear his lap, failing to see the logs snap loose from the truck, he looked up to see one flying at him as it bounced off the highway. It came through his windshield smashing his head into bits and sending a lot of blood out the back of the police car.
Death: Drowning. Putting all the visions she has had in the past day together, Kimberly realizes that in order to defeat Death, she must die. She drowns herself and her heart stops, but she's resucitated by Doctor Kalarjian, metaphorically given a "new" life. Since she actually died, she is no longer on Death's list and can live normally.
Intended Death: Collision. The last of the pileup victims to die, when her SUV flipped over a rolling log and tumbled several hundred feet before coming to rest on its side, Kimberly and her friends were injured and incapable of getting out of the car. To her horror, Kim saw the log truck crash through the flames, destroying Evan in his car and careening towards her and her friends.
- Brian Gibbons: Incineration. Months later, Kimberly, her father, and Thomas join the family who helped them during Kat and Rory's death scene for an outdoor barbecue. Brian, who is serving everyone, gets up to get more food, but mentions his close call with the news van. While he is over there, his dad reminds us that he was saved by Rory. Kimberly and Thomas look at each other, but they are startled by the barbecue grill blowing up in the background, killing Brian. His charred, dismembered arm lands in front of his mother who screams the film into the credits.
Intended Death: Blunt force trauma. Intervened by Rory. Originally intended to die when news vans rushed into the farm crash site, Brian was pulled from in front of the speeding van by Rory. This placed Brian on death's design as he was not meant to live.
- Kimberely Corman and Thomas Burke: Impalement. In the Final Destination 3 'Choose Your Fate' DVD option, viewers can read an article at the Subway scene that says that Kimberly and Thomas were killed by a woodchipper.
Note: Kimberly and Thomas' above descripted death was not shown in the movie, but the FD3 'Choose Your Fate' option.
Spoilers end here.
Trivia
- Once again, characters are named after actors and directors from classic horror movies, including Roger Corman and John Carpenter.
- According to the InfiniFilm features, the highway crash sequence shut down 11 miles of highway for 14 days.
- Rocky Mountain High (instrumental) can be heard playing in the lift during the scene where Rory is going up to Officer Burke's apartment. This song is used extensively in the first film.
- When Officer Burke was researching Flight 180, a photo of Terry Chaney after the bus accident can be seen. This is actually a photo of the actual dummy used for the scene. Additionally, the website he was seeing had photos of the Flight 180 survivors with a description of how they died under the photo. If one pays close attention, Alex's photo can be seen with the other victims, but the camera angle was careful that his death was not revealed, at least not until Clear was introduced.
- Out of all the characters who died in this film, Eugene was the only one who died offscreen. There is a scene of him burning, but that was deleted and included in the InfiniFilm features. Additionally, the explosion was originally going to be set off by a birthday cake.
- Mary Elizabeth Winstead auditioned for this movie, but did not make it. She later starred in Final Destination 3 instead.
- Clear appears to be a mature adult, but according to her character, she is 19.
- Nora's death scene was originally going to be longer and more gruesome, having the elevator going up and down repeatedly. The filmmakers decided against it and just had the elevator go up.
- Rains and bad weather delayed shooting, especially on the farm scene.
- The director's last name was included in the film as an offscreen police officer's name. It can be assumed that the Final Destination 3 character Perry Malinowski was named after Craig Perry as well.
- Although this film begins exactly one year after the explosion of Flight 180 from the first Final Destination, the film actually starts off 5 months after Final Destination ends.
- The original character for Tim was going to be a seven year old boy, but the filmmakers decided it would be too harsh to watch, so they changed it to a fifteen year old character.
- The concept of writing in a pop star was brought up again while writing the script (see Final Destination), but was again trashed.
- This movie, like the first, takes place on Long Island. The mental ward where Clear lives is in St. James.
- In Final Destination 3, a brief shot of a newspaper indicates Kimberly and Burke were killed in an accident involving a woodchipper.
- At the start of the movie in the opening credits a model plane can be seen. This is the same model plane that was in Alex's room in Final Destination's intro.
- If you listen closely to the officer in Isabela's car when he's reporting Kat's car crashing in the field, he says they are at the 180 mile marker, an obvious reference to Flight 180.
External links
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