On March 17, 2000, the original Final Destination was released to the masses. The film, which many were ready to dismiss, became a bit of a sleeper hit when it opened to $10 million and carried that to a solid $53.3 million finish. With a budget of just $23 million and a worldwide gross that hit $112.8 million when it was all said and done, Final Destination hit that sweet spot in horror that was very similar to 1996’s Scream. They both featured high concept premises that were very fresh at the time and their execution allowed them to stand out from the pack. Scream poked fun at horror movie conventions while Final Destination did away with the masked killer and had “Death” itself taking out the would be victims of the cast. The threat was unseen, but still terrifying because it put you in the position of being in danger by performing some of the mundane daily routines of life.
The success of Final Destination pretty much guaranteed a sequel and 15 years later we celebrate Final Destination 2. Final Destination set the tone but I’m a firm believer that Final Destination 2 formed the blueprint that would shape the rest of the franchise. Fans of the series are keenly aware that the first film has brains to go along with the body count while the sequels have checked those brains at the door in favor of clever ways to kill everyone off. This conceit began in Final Destination 2 and while it may not have the same cultural impact in the genre as the first film, it’s definitely the true predecessor to how wonderfully over the top the franchise would become.
The original Final Destination 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’s surprising success inspired New Line Cinema then-President of Production Toby Emmerich to approach Reddick for a sequel, to which he responded positively:
“I wanted to expand on the mythology and not just tell the same story over again.”
The unfortunate turn of events was that Wong and Morgan weren’t available for production since they had already signed on their respective projects The One and Willard. New Line, not wanting to wait for them to become available, hired second unit director and stunt coordinator David R. Ellis as director and writing partners Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber as co-writers. The stage was soon set for the new players to craft a new story to expand the franchise:
“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” – David R. Ellis
Casting the sequel began on a very tricky note. The original Final Destination, which starred Devon Sawa as Alex Browning, had his character dying in the original ending. Early test screenings before the release of the first film were overwhelmingly positive, except for the conclusion of the film, so the ending was reshot with what moviegoers saw upon the film’s release, and with Sawa’s character seemingly surviving his first bout with “Death”. Although rumors circulated at the time of casting for the sequel that Sawa had a pay dispute with New Line over the reduction of his salary, which prevented his participation, producer Craig Perry cleared it up by stating his character wasn’t included due to narrative and not over disputes over money.
The sequel did need some familiar faces from the first film and that’s why it was decided to bring back Ali Larter as Clear Rivers. Perry went on to explain why it narratively made sense to bring only one of the main cast members back for the sequel:
“We’ve brought back Clear (Larter) in an interesting way and we just felt that to bring both of them back would make you wonder too much just what the hell they’d been doing for the past few months. Are they locked in a vault somewhere? The story would get bogged down and the characters wouldn’t grow. We had an option on Devon to return, so money wasn’t an issue. With Clear, Ali’s character knows everything about the enemy that she and Kimberly are facing and she’s the perfect mentor for Kimberly. Ali’s character has incarcerated herself into a mental institution for her own protection so she’s the main link to the original film.”
The role of the aforementioned Kimberly Corman, who is the new vessel for seeing when “Death” is coming, was given to Canadian actress A.J. Cook, who previously starred in the 1999 film, The Virgin Suicides. Ellis and Perry were said to have been amazed by her sensitivity and vulnerability in her performance, and she was hired instantly for the role, which gave the horror sequel two strong female leads.
Michael Landes, who appeared in the TV series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, was cast as Thomas Burke. 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 in the role a mere day after his audition.
The supporting cast was filled by various working actors who weren’t necessarily household names. Former Living Single star T.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.” Jonathan Cherry, who recently emerged in the 2003 film House of the Dead, was cast as Rory Peters. 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.” Blackwoods actress Keegan Connor Tracy played Kat Jennings. Perry defined the role as “someone who is really so self-absorbed that without being overly malicious is incredibly rude and insensitive to the feelings of all those around her.” Her casting was assessed by Perry as “full of energy” and “embodies the self-aware nervous energy of Kat. Rounding out the cast are Lynda Boyd (Rachel Todd in You, Me and the Kids) as widow Nora Carpenter and James Kirk (Kyle Morgan in Once Upon a Christmas) as her son Tim Carpenter, David Paetkau (Hunter Kerrigan in Just Deal) as gambler Evan Lewis & Justina Machado (Vanessa Diaz in Six Feet Under) as pregnant Isabella Hudson.
Final Destination 2 was released on January 31, 2003, and unlike its predecessor, the response was a bit more mixed from critics. The film received a 48% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes but its consensus pretty much sets up the true intentions of the sequel:
“This sequel is little more than an excuse to stage elaborate, gory scenes of characters getting killed off.”
Perhaps the review from Variety is even more telling as to how this film was REALLY supposed to be viewed:
“Death, that reliable old nemesis, is back for more in “Final Destination 2“, which suffers from the same rancid dialogue and acting problems as the original but with a much funnier pulse. The real progenitor here is less the previous pic than the sick-funny horror cinema of George Romero. Unlike several recent horror items trembling at the thought of an R rating, this sequel goes for the bloody gusto, and will have the target older teen and horror auds eating it up, with steady return customers”.
The film does offer up a more comedic bent. The first film took its premise a bit more seriously while the sequel took a more tongue and cheek approach. Despite the characters being killed off in horrific ways, there was some dark humor in how absurd some of the fatalities were. Just look at this list of kills and remember how over the top, yet inventively, they played on screen: Impaled in the eye by a fire escape ladder, crushed by a glass pane, decapitated by an elevator, impaled through the head by a dislodge pipe, dismembered by wires from a wire fence, incinerated in an oxygen explosion, & blown apart by an exploding barbecue grill. It all sounds silly on paper but I give credit to the filmmakers for seeing the humor in the situations and simply owning it and not shying away from showing it in all its horrific glory.
The one sequence that doesn’t play up the humor of the deaths, is the opening highway scene which sets up the initial vision that puts the film in motion. The plane crash, in the first film, was the centerpiece of that installment, and I would argue that the sequel tops it in almost every way. The sequence is superbly executed and there is a reality to the sequence that actually elevates it to a high level of tension. Anne Billson of the Guardian.co.uk probably sums it up best:
“It’s one of the most terrifying sequences I’ve ever seen, all the more effective for being grounded in reality; few drivers haven’t felt that anxious twinge as the badly secured load on the lorry in front of them starts to wobble.”
The scene, known as The Route 23 pileup, was included in the lists of best car crashes or disaster scenes by “Screen Junkies”, “Made Man”, “Unreality Magazine”, “All Left Turns”, “Chillopedia”, “Filmstalker”, “i09”, “UGO Entertainment”, “Filmcritic.com” & “New York Magazine”.
The film’s reception at the box office was successful but on the surface seemed less so when compared to the first film. It opened higher at $16.3 million but tapped out lower with a domestic gross of $46.9 million. It’d worldwide total also came up short of the first film with $90.4 million but that’s all still solid on a $26 million budget. The film found even more success with it hit DVD and I think while the film lost viewers who appreciated the more cerebral vibe of the original, it definitely gained horror fans who took pleasure in its comedic slant to the death sequences. This is why I think this film, even more than the original, really pushed where the franchise would go moving forward. It seemed to be an approach that worked because if you look at the box office trajectory of the franchise, the more it expanded on its more ludicrous aspects, the better they performed: Final Destination 3 ($54 million, $117.7 million worldwide), The Final Destination ($66.4 million, $186.2 million worldwide) & Final Destination 5 ($42 million domestic, $157.9 million worldwide). Even though the last film is the lowest grossing of the series domestically, it still achieved a worldwide dominance that would likely not have been possible without the initial success of Final Destination 2.
Horror sequels aren’t normally celebrated years later as classics, although some do break that bold. I’m not deeming Final Destination 2 to be on that level but I do give it credit for knowing what it was and knowing where the franchise needed to go to entertain its fans. Some horror films succeed based on their visceral thrills and Final Destination 2 is a fine example of a horror film that uses those thrills and makes absolutely no apologies for it.
