Monday, October 1, 2018

Horror Movie Mini-Reviews: Final Destination 2 (2003) and Final Destination 3 (2006)

* Final Destination 2 (2003)


Exactly one year after the disastrous explosion of Flight 180, a group of people survive a car crash only to die by mysterious, coincidental accidents one by one. Kimberly saw the vision that saved all of them and blocked the freeway onramp until the accident happened. She and Deputy Marshall Thomas try to figure out a way to thwart death before it's their turn.


Final Destination 2 isn't the best movie, but it does have the most horrific care crash scene I've ever seen. It has everything: explosions, people being smashed, logs bouncing along the highway, water bottles blocking brakes, and, most horrific, people seeing what's coming and being unable to stop it. The clues right before it are also on point: a drink responsibly beer truck with a drunk driver, football players screaming "pile up," highway to hell on the radio, and a kid smacking toy cars together. The crash is best and most memorable part of the entire film.The kills beyond that are pretty decent, even thought the lottery winner's is pretty ridiculous. The businesswoman's was one of my favorites because it was so sudden and led to another unexpected and graphic death.


The lore gets pretty convoluted here. The pattern is packwards for no reason and the coroner (played by the amazing Tony Todd) says that new life that wasn't meant to be can restore balance to death. This theory turns out to be useless and the pattern of people dying is backwards for no discernable reason. The main characters chasing around the others actually causes more deaths and they save no one. The only cool reveal is that all of them cheated death once already and you can't die out of order, even if you try to. The way information is revealed makes it almost impossible to figure out the end on your own. Final Destination 2 is very flawed and not very good beyond a few scenes.

My rating: 2.5/5 fishmuffins

* Final Destination 3 (2006)


When she sees a vision of a roller coaster crashing, Wendy freaks out and brings some people with her, saving them from the horrific accident. As each person saved starts dying, she realizes the clues are in the pictures and scrambles to save her friends.


Final Destination 3 is the worst movie in the franchise by far from the characters to basic concepts. The characters are barely more than paper and all pretty unlikeable, from the overly lecherous Frankie to the equally fake Ashley and Ashlynn to the weirdly abrasive Wendy. It was incredibly unnerving that no one cared about Frankie's upskirt shots and over the top gross treatment of women. I cared literally nothing for any of them and it didn't really help that a few characters were literally interchangeable either because of name or look. This is the one where I feel nothing except joy at any of the deaths and any character interaction seemed to take forever.. The clues coming in the photographs sounds like it would be cool, but so many of them were way overreaching that they as well not have used them at all.


The one thing the movie gets right are the deaths, except for the initial crash. It used too much CGI and looked pretty fake. However, the other deaths proved to be amazing. The dual tanning bed deaths of Ashley and Ashlynn were utterly cringeworthy: roasted to death and stabbed with countless shards of glass. The car crash death was a beautiful example of misdirection, resulting in a surprise death. The ending pleasantly surprised me and I liked the references to the previous films. The rest of the film, however, made it clear that the disjointed story was connective tissue barely linking the kills together.

My rating: 1.5/5 fishmuffins

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