Final Destination 2 is a 2003 American supernatural horror film directed by David R. Ellis from a screenplay by J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress, based on a story by Gruber, Bress, and Jeffrey Reddick. It is a sequel to Final Destination (2000) and the second installment in the Final Destination film series. The film stars Ali Larter, A. J. Cook, and Michael Landes. The film follows a young woman who saves a group of drivers from a highway pile-up, which she predicted from a premonition. She must find ways to defeat Death after the survivors begin dying in freak accidents.
After the financial success of Final Destination, New Line Cinema contacted Reddick regarding plans for a sequel. Since the original film's crew was unavailable, New Line replaced most of the production team. Filming took place in Vancouver and Okanagan Lake.
Final Destination 2 was released on January 31, 2003. The film received mixed reviews from critics. It grossed $46million domestically and $43million overseas, earning $90million internationally against a $26 million budget. It was also nominated for four awards, including the Saturn Award for Best Horror Film. The highway scene was called the "greatest car crash scene in movie history" and was nominated for the MTV Movie Award for Best Action Sequence. A third film, Final Destination 3, was released in February 2006.
Plot One year after the explosion of Flight 180, college student Kimberly Corman is heading to Daytona Beach, Florida, for spring break with her friends Shaina, Dano, and Frankie. On the entrance ramp to U.S. Route 23, she has a premonition of a deadly pile-up caused by a logging truck. Kimberly stalls her car and steps out, preventing eight people from entering Route 23: state trooper Thomas Burke, high school teacher Eugene Dix, stoner Rory Peters, businesswoman Kat Jennings, widowed mother Nora Carpenter and her fifteen-year-old son Tim, lottery winner Evan Lewis, and pregnant delivery driver Isabella Hudson. As Burke questions Kimberly, the pile-up occurs, and a car carrier crashes into Kimberly's car, killing Shaina, Dano, and Frankie. Burke pulls Kimberly away from the crash in time, saving her life.
The survivors return to their respective homes, where a fire escape ladder fatally impales Evan when he attempts to flee from a stovetop fire in his apartment. Sensing Death's presence, Kimberly seeks help from Clear Rivers, who has hidden from Death in a psychiatric ward after Alex Browning was killed by a falling brick, making her the last survivor of Flight 180. Clear tells Kimberly that their survival provoked Death to kill them in the order they would have died at Route 23 but concludes that Death must be working backwards since Kimberly's friends died before Evanwhile Kimberly survived because of Burke's interventionunlike in Kimberly's premonition, where they all died after Evan. Clear also tells Kimberly to look for omens and save herself, warning her that Burke's rescue merely puts her after him on Death's list.
Kimberly sees omens of Tim's death but fails to save him from being crushed by a glass pane. Clear decides to leave the ward and introduces Kimberly and Burke to a mortician, William Bludworth, who tells them that only "new life" can defeat Death. Burke holds Isabella in custody under false charges to protect her, believing that the birth of her baby would create the loophole they need to ruin Death's design. He gathers the other survivors in his apartment for safety, but when Nora leaves, a chain reaction causes the doors of an elevator to decapitate her. Eugene attempts suicide with Burke's gun, but it repeatedly misfires; Clear rationalizes that it is not Eugene's turn to die.
The survivors ride in Kat's SUV after learning that Isabella was hospitalized to give birth. Along the way, the survivors reveal that the deaths of Flight 180 survivors inadvertently saved them from fatal incidents before Route 23's pile-up, creating ripple effects that Death resolves by reversing its list. The SUV suddenly blows a tire and crashes into a farm owned by the Gibbons family. Kat is pinned in her seat while the others escape. Rescue workers hospitalize Eugene, while one of them accidentally causes Kat to be impaled by a PVC pipe. Her death triggers a chain reaction that causes barbed wire to be launched in Rory's direction, fatally dismembering him.
Kimberly, Clear, and Burke rush to the hospital after Kimberly has a vision of a doctor named Kalarjian apparently killing Isabella. They see Isabella give birth to a baby boy and rejoice in the belief that their ordeal is over. However, Kimberly has another vision revealing that Isabella was never supposed to die on Route 23. Suddenly, an oxygen leak from Eugene's ward explodes and kills both him and Clear. Kimberly realizes that she must die clinically and be resuscitated, thus creating the loophole that defeats Death. She drives an ambulance into a lake and is revived by Dr. Kalarjian, saving both her and Burke.
Later, Kimberly and Burke picnic with the Gibbons and Kimberly's father. The Gibbons tell the story of Brian, their son, being saved from a speeding news van by Rory. As Kimberly and Burke realize the implications, Brian is killed when a malfunctioning propane grill explodes while he is grilling.
Cast
Production Development Final Destination, the first film, was conceived by writers Jeffrey Reddick, James Wong, and Glen Morgan from Flight 180, a spec script intended for use in The X-Files. The film premiered across the United States and Canada on March 17, 2000, grossing $10,015,822 on its opening weekend and an overall gross of $112,880,294 internationally. The film's success inspired New Line Cinema then-President of Production Toby Emmerich to approach Reddick for a sequel, to which he responded positively. Reddick asserted that he "wanted to expand on the mythology and not just tell the same story over again". Wong and Morgan were not available for production since they had already signed on their respective projects The One and Willard. Instead, New Line hired second unit director and stunt coordinator David R. Ellis as director and writing partners Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber as co-writers.
"Second unit is like an extension of directing, you're doing big action sequences on film and it was just something I was going after. Once I got the offer from New Line and we got a good script, it was kind of a natural transition," Ellis professed. "I wanted our film to be able to stand alone but I watched Final Destination to see what they did that was so successful. I tried to use some of that while trying to keep a stand-alone feel for our movie. I kind of took what worked and tried to improve on it," Ellis added. "We wanted to take what the first film did effectively, and add levels and layers that would come out through the characters. When we first started writing this, we were trying to think, 'How can we make Death just a total badass?' and to be perfectly honest, the first crack we ever took at this script had to be reined in!" Bress uncovered. On the other hand, producers Craig Perry and Warren Zide from Zide/Perry Productions also returned and helped on financing the film, with Perry stating, "We could have made no other movies and the first one still would have been a satisfying experience. But when we were given the opportunity to make a sequel, we jumped at it."
Casting
One of the prior film's main characters, Alex Browning (Devon Sawa), was killed off-screen in the film. Rumors indicated that Sawa had a contract dispute with New Line concerning the deduction of his salary; however, Perry resolved the issue with the statement that "it had everything to do with narrative, and nothing to do with money or Devon's unwillingness to come back". Despite this, New Line reinstated Ali Larter to reprise her character as Clear Rivers. "When New Line asked me to come back, I thought it was great. They showed me the script and let me have some input, and it was really terrific", Larter revealed. Larter indicated that Clear "[has] gotten to a hardened place and tucked herself inside because she has felt so much pain in her life. By having herself committed to a mental hospital, she has created a safehouse so that Death can't get her." Tony Todd also resumed his character as mortician William Bludworth. "It's the same character that we saw before that the audience loved", Ellis expressed.
The role of Kimberly Corman was given to Canadian actress A. J. Cook, who previously starred in the 1999 film The Virgin Suicides. Cook described her role as "a very strong girl, very determined because her mother died a year earlier, right in front of her eyes, so she had to grow up quick". Ellis described her role as "a girl who can have some fun cause they're going on a trip and they're gonna have a good time, yet someone who can stand up to Clear, to come and challenge Clear on a race, and to bother with Clear". Cook added that "it's so rare to find one strong female lead in a horror film, not to mention two [Larter]". Ellis and Perry were amazed by her sensitivity and vulnerability in her performance, and she was hired instantly. "[We] were at the beginning of what's going to be a long successful career for her", Perry cited.
Michael Landes, who appeared as Jimmy Olsen in the TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, was cast as Thomas Burke. Landes defined him as "a real nice, decent guy who comes across this huge car accident [and] who is very intrigued to begin with" and as "the guy who bumps into the girl and he goes nuts as her protector". Ellis pointed out that he "just wanted to find someone who's young and who can relate to these kids. It wasn't an older guy, but still strong enough and yet sensitive. [Landes] brought this really good balance to his part." Landes was cast a day after his audition, which caused flight schedule problems on his departure two days after and cancellation of his appointments.
Former Living Single star Terrence C. Carson was hired as Eugene Dix. Carson identified his role as "a very by-the-book type of person but soon has a change of heart as the corpses begin to pile up". The crew was enticed of Carson's casting, with Bress mentioning how his "originally envisioned Woody Allen-type of character has got ten more times life than it ever had. It's got ten times the personality, this charisma that T.C. brings to it... he's just such a great presence." Similarly, Perry was astonished by how Carson "can take the most absurd lines and deliver them in such grammatized form with his eyes and his deep rich speaking voice". Jonathan Cherry, who recently emerged in the 2003 film House of the Dead, was appointed as Rory Peters. Cherry characterized Rory as "a very opposite of me whose arc goes from, 'I don't really care at all', to 'Oh my God, this is really happening!'"
In the script, Bress said that Rory was his favorite character to write since "he's great comic relief, he's got a drug problem, he's funny, and he's all that". Bress bragged that "Cherry is awesome, awesome casting cause he's just so funny and the way he delivers his lines. It's like 'Oh yeah. That's good! That's better!'" "What I think was surprising on him was that from all of the humor he's involved and his sort of itchiness that he has with Kat, there is some moments where he reveals how vulnerable he really is and so the shield comes down and right in there you're really becoming sympathetic to Rory. You like him at first cause he's the funny guy, but then you care about him because you realize that there's a place that humor comes from that we all share", Perry appended.