Final Destination 2
New Line Home Entertainment
Cast: Ali Larter, A.J. Cook, Michael Landes
Extras: Commentary Track, Featurette, Music Videos, Trailers, Deleted Scenes
Rating:
While the first ’Final Destination’ movie was a clever blend of foreshadowing terror and a wicked cat and mouse game with Death, the sequel ’Final Destination 2’ is nothing but an all-out splatter movie. Desperately and superficially it tries to connect plot points to the original movie, serving up a story without much cohesiveness or logic. Ultimately, this film, is really just a 90-minute line-up of the most gory deaths you can imagine with blood and guts all over the place. Characters act irrational throughout without any common sense or logic abilities, making it hard to really suspend your disbelief, and the bad acting – especially A.J. Cook stands out as an example of inadequacy – don’t help things either.
The movie is presented in an anamorphic widescreen transfer on this DVD in its original widescreen aspect ratio. The transfer is very clean and stable and free of any blemishes. The transfer is rich and shows a very high level of detail – good for spotting even the most elaborate detail in the blood and guts – and the color reproduction is bold and natural. Black levels are well balanced, creating deep and solid blacks, and shadows that are solid but never lose definition. No edge-enhancement is evident, and the compression has been handled meticulously.
The audio on the DVD is an aggressive and dynamic 5.1 EX channel Dolby Digital track that will give your equipment a thorough work-out. A 6.1 DTS audio track is also supplied, and both make very good use of the added surround center channel, bringing the freaky accidents to even more realistic live. With a deep bass extension, the woofer will shake your foundation a few times and the crystal clear high ends are also free of distortion. Dialogues are well integrated and never drowned out by the music or the sound effects.
The DVD comes with a commentary track with the director, producer and writers. It is thorough commentary track, but I find it a bit strange how they can all look over even the most glaring error in the film’s logic and character behavior.
’Final Destination 2’ is an infinifilm, which means that the bonus materials are directly integrated in the feature presentation, if you so desire. But you can also watch all of the materials separately, in a more traditional manner. As in the best New Line tradition, these extras are simply superb and take the subject matter a little further. The documentary section of the release discusses the history of splatter movies from its beginnings to today’s form. With illustrious interviewees, such as Herschell Gordon Lewis and others, this documentary is extremely well crafted and offers some good insight into the genre – though I’m not sure what the ’aint it cool news’ nerd is doing there.
You will also find a few deleted scenes and alternate takes on this release, as well as music videos and a trailers section.
’Final Destination 2’ is what it is. A splatter movie for the year 2003. No brain, no intellect, no suggestiveness, no imagination, just overt graphical violence and bucketloads of guts and blood. Too shallow for my taste, too unimaginative and too unconvincing, this film never manages to live up to James Wong’s original film. Because of its graphic no-holds-barred nature however, I know that many will think it’s the best thing since sliced bread… go, figure.
