If decapitation, evisceration, incineration, dismemberment and gouging are your idea of scintillating entertainment then Final Destination 2 is the flick for you.
This sequel to the surprise 2000 horror hit Final Destination takes scream and squirm levels to new highs.
Director David R. Ellis worked as a stuntman and stunt coordinator for more than 25 years before he directed his first feature film and it shows.
The highway crash sequence that opens the flick is an example of superb editing combined with amazing car stunts and mind-boggling computer effects.
Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook) and three friends are on their way to a wild weekend when she has a premonition of a highway pile up.
Terrified, Kimberly refuses to enter the highway from the off-ramp thus saving the occupants of several cars behind her.
Death hates to be cheated so, as in the original Destination, the Grim Reaper tracks each of them down taking their lives in equally gruesome ways.
Kimberly remembers the story of the survivors of a plane crash who died violent deaths within months of rushing off their ill-fated plane.
She and policeman Thomas Burke (Michael Landes) track down Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), the only survivor of that event.
Like the Jamie Lee Curtis character in the Halloween films, Clear is closeted away in a padded cell of a mental hospital to protect herself from the demon stalking her.
Ultimately she is persuaded to join Kimberly and Thomas in their attempts to rally the other survivors and together attempt to thwart death.
Ellis stages the deaths of the unfortunate survivors with teasing morbidity.
When the camera follows a certain person, the audience knows he or she will die but not exactly how and Ellis drags out the suspense with the creepiest of results.
This is not a film for the squeamish. It is extremely gory but it is also clever.
Ellis invites viewers to laugh as they squirm and avert their eyes from the inevitable and graphic mutilations.
HORROR CLONE
Final Destination 2 is very much a clone of the Friday the 13th, Halloween, Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street films.
It's a slasher movie in which Death is the demon stalker.
Part of the fun is that Ellis and his actors do not wink at the audience.
They play everything straight and serious rather than as a parody or send-up of the genre.
Even more commendable is that Final Destination 2 doesn't pretend to be anything but an exploitative thrill ride.
It manipulates the audience as much as it does its characters, working something like a haunted house roller coaster ride.
(This film is rated AA)
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