This ten-minute piece is one of nine computer-animated shorts created by various animators, seemingly realistic, yet all the characters are drawn. It becomes apparent upon closer inspection, but initially, seeing a half-naked man and woman fighting with swords… It’s impressive, a showcase of a bright computer-generated future, with a plot demonstrating all possibilities: space, a city, an abyss, some massive, worm-like monstrosity that turns out to be enemy tankettes, and everyone is fighting, flying… The short is aptly titled “The Final Flight of the Osiris.”
The main course is then accepted as a given, regardless of what’s thrown into it. “Final Destination 2,” with a budget of $26 million, has already grossed $46 million in America. It’s watchable, although David Ellis isn’t a cult director, A.J. Cook is far from a cult actress, and the dubbing is beyond terrible – you constantly want to mute the sound to avoid the awful falseness. But everything else is neatly done. Even those who initially avert their eyes from crushed heads and severed limbs will eventually chuckle at the methodical selection of scenarios. “How else can you destroy a living being?”
The Premise
The film conveniently and neatly recaps the first installment during the opening credits. Then, a girl in her “rover” drives off with friends for a getaway, and they joke, smoke weed, and check out the passing scenery on the highway. Alongside other cars and bikers, a truck carrying long, thick logs speeds along. The tension builds until one of the ropes securing the logs snaps, sending a log crashing straight into the windshield of a police car. The sheriff is obliterated, another car with a mother and child crashes into the wreckage, an explosion, another explosion, and it all goes downhill… A guy engulfed in flames crawls, screams, and chars before your eyes. Another is crushed from the waist down, tries to escape, but the truck runs him over, right over his head. Catastrophe.
The Vision
A minute later, it turns out that the girl behind the wheel, still safely stopped at a traffic light with her friends, had a vision. She slams on the brakes, causing a traffic jam. Everyone is annoyed and confused. The sheriff approaches, and she incoherently explains her horror. A minute later, the very same truck with the long, thick logs passes by. It travels another hundred meters, and the accident she predicted begins, with the same carnage and fire. In short, most of those who were supposed to die, did. But some survived. The mother and child, the sheriff, herself, a pregnant woman, another guy – about a dozen people in total, whom she blocked at the traffic light – the girl managed to save. She saw them die in her vision, but they are still alive. This is where the film’s plot truly begins.
Cheating Death
The girl realizes that they all survived by chance, against death’s will, and now death will quickly catch up to them in any other circumstances – as happened in the first film, which featured a plane crash. On the theme of “you can’t escape fate,” a collection of fatal accidents begins, linked by the girl’s and the sheriff’s unsuccessful but necessary attempts to prevent them, all for the sake of continuing the film. The rest of the movie is as neatly done as possible, showing how diverse and cinematic fatal accidents can be.
One of the survivors is killed in his own kitchen when his hand gets stuck in the sink drain, and a plastic clothespin accidentally falls into a plate of food placed in the microwave. Others go to the dentist, where there are fish in an aquarium, a drill, and pigeons outside the window, but it’s all a red herring, as a crane crushes the boy when he leaves the dentist’s office. Another has her head torn off in an elevator, and so on. The airbag and thin wire scene is well done. The inventiveness is evident, but the only complaint is that everything is too slow and predictable. The pacing was slow on the highway, and no faster later in the hospital. There are also several factual errors. Oxygen cannot explode that violently. The elevator scene is also questionable. Only a couple of lines put the story in the context of the horror genre, creating wit. Overall, it’s a bit boring.