Directed by David R. Ellis / Written by J. Mackye and Eric Bress
Starring Ali Larter, AJ Cook and Michael Landes
100 mins / New Line Cinema / Rated R

Scary Movie Deux

Kimberly Corman just wants to get away for a little vacation, so she and her friends hop in a car and head down the freeway. Unfortunately, Death wants a piece of them. Apparently, there's a lot of crazy stuff happening on Canadian highways, because she soon gets involved in one of the biggest car crashes in the western hemisphere. It involves: logs, fire, drugs (twice), drinking, and breasts, among other things . Not only is it the biggest car crash, it's obviously the most complicated.

Let me just get up on my soapbox and get out of this review for a second. Not for one minute, ever, have I believed that a movie shot in Canada is something other than Canada. They shoot there because it's cheap, clean and safe. But no place in America (except for perhaps the Northwest) looks like it. There's no pine tree lined highway with huge mountains in the distance anywhere near New York. I never buy it. And please, feel free to stick some American actors in the flick too. Just so we don't have to hear the word "water" pronounced "wooter." End of rant.

Final Destination 2 is the follow up to 2000's original in which Death creatively stalked various high schoolers. This film follows much the same formula. We know what's going to happen (people are going to die - duh) but the real fun comes in seeing how they'll eat it. The early crash sequence was really a standout of the film and with this man behind the camera, it shouldn't be any other way. Director David R. Ellis was a second unit director on the upcoming Matrix movies which include some spectacular car action.

Cook. In a hall. Alone.

What's good about the crash and death scenes in Final Destination 2, is that death builds a natural tension into every moment. You never know when the it's the characters' time to bite the big burrito. This would make for suspenseful viewing, if the whole thing wasn't so goofy. At least I can say definitively that the problems of the film aren't because of the acting.

I was looking forward to Tony Todd's cameo, but it's really less than that. And just note: cremations are now done on Frankenstein movie sets, complete with fog, in the middle of suburbia. Just a little silly. The cast is all great, despite their strictly Canadian composition. As the lead, Kimberly, AJ Cook is cute, she can emote and I would expect to see much more of her in the future.

The violence and gore is definitely more gratuitous than the first movie - each death is amazingly graphic. It'll have the true horror fans squealing in delight, and the squeamish running for the aisles. Unfortunately, that and the inventive, mouse trap like sequences are the only real joy that can be found in this movie.

Don't let me be in another movie like this!!

Final Destination 2 has a lot of redundancy in the overwhelming number of "death is coming" explanations. And the expositional dialog goes on so long, you can't help but laugh at the ridiculous way these people converse: "First this is going to happen, then that happens unless of course, that other thing happens."

There's various standoffs with death, to varying degrees of success, but there's never that one crazy gunfight at the OK Corral standoff that you expect to see. Essentially, the problem all boils down to the horrid script. It's atrocious, poorly paced, filled with dull passages and is only occasionally humorous. In fact, the film is often funny without being scary - sometimes purposefully, often times not.

Yet despite its obvious leaps in logic, the film is a fun one. It's exactly the kind of film you want to see with a huge audience, on a late Saturday with a few drinks in your system. It's really the only way you're going to completely enjoy the flick. I could talk about the nature of death and fate, but the movie doesn't care enough about the subject, so I'll ignore it too.

Movie Grade: C

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