Horror Film Review: Final Destination 2 (dir by David R. Ellis)

Posted on October 25, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After I rewatched Final Destination, I watched it’s sequel, 2003’s Final Destination 2.

Final Destination 2 is not only one of the best horror sequels ever made but it’s also the film that, even more than the first installment of the series, established what we consider to be a typical Final Destination film. The characters are far more eccentric and the deaths are far more elaborate. Death itself shows a sense of humor that wasn’t present in the first Final Destination film. If you manage to escape Death the first time, Death isn’t just going to track you down. It’s going to play without and have some fun before it finally fills its quota.

Final Destination 2 opens with Kimberly Corman (AJ Cook) having a vision of a crash on the interstate. She’s so freaked out by her vision that she blocks the entrance ramp. This may save the life of everyone stalled behind her but it also ends up killing all of her friends when a truck smashes into her SUV. Fortunately, Kimberly survives because she had gotten out of the vehicle to talk to a policeman named Thomas Burke (Michael Landes).

So, the bad news is that all of Kimberly’s friends are dead.

The good news is that Kimberly has a whole new group of friends, all of the people who were supposed to die on that highway but who are now alive and on Death’s do-over list as a result of Kimberly’s actions.

Along with Kimberly and Thomas, Death now has to take care of lottery winner Evan Lewis (David Paetaku), stoner Rory (Jonathan Cherry), neurotic chainsmoker Kat (Keegan Tracy Connor), teacher Eugene Dix (T.C. Carson), and Nora (Lynda Boyd) and her son, Tim (James Kirk). It turns out that Death is not only after them because they didn’t die on the highway but also because they all have a connection to the deaths that occurred in the first Final Destination. It’s actually a pretty clever idea and it also provides an excuse for Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) to return from the first film and act as a sort of death guru.

Needless to say, the deaths are elaborate. In fact, they’re so elaborate that Final Destination 2 occasionally feels like a satirical take on the first film. It’s not just that Nora loses her head in an elevator accident. It’s that there just happens to be an old man carrying a box full of claws on the elevator. In another scene, Rory looks inside a closet and sees hundreds of things that could possibly kill him, my favorite being the bowling ball that just happens to be precariously balanced on the top shelf. When Clear Rivers returns, she doesn’t just explain how death works. She also gives them a list of safety precautions that make her sound like an overly protective parent, looking at her son or daughter’s apartment and freaking out over how many appliances have been plugged into one outlet.

Final Destination 2 is a clever film with an appropriately dark and macabre sense of humor. On the one hand, all of the characters are well-written and the cast is so likable that you don’t want to see any of them die. On the other hand, Death is so inventive that it’s hard not to want to see what it has up its sleeve. And, like the first film, the sequel works because it gets at a universal truth. You can avoid death but can never truly escape it.

Guilty Pleasure No. 7: Final Destination 2

Posted on May 25, 2013 by Arleigh

The Final Destination series started off as a nice little horror film with a pretty original take on the slasher genre. We don’t have a psycho maniac on the loose killing off teens and pretty young adults. No, this film had Death itself stalking the usual photogenic and stereotypical young people (and the token adult). The film didn’t just have Death stalking and killing them but doing so in the most complex Rube Goldberg-like death scenes ever on film.

As with any horror film that has any sort of success this one received a sequel and then more sequels until it has become an almost bi-yearly event. My favorite of the series will always be the second film in the franchise.

Final Destination 2 is not a good film by any stretch of the imagination, but what it lacked in the fresh originality of the first film it more than made up in the inventiveness of it’s kills. Final Destination 2 makes absolutely no sense whatsoever other than Death decides to kill off a bunch of new young people. The film’s plot doesn’t even follow the same rules brought up in the first film. But none of that matters because it’s all about the kills and deaths. From the eye-opening freeway pile-up in the beginning of the film to a large plate glass literally squashing a teenage boy straight into the pavement, the kills in this film could never truly be topped by any of the others later on in the series.

As a guilty pleasure this one is always a must-see for me. Though I make sure I’m not going out on a drive any time soon after seeing it.

Review: Bates Motel 1.10 “Midnight”

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Have you seen this episode yet? If not, you might not want to read this review. Spoiler warning!)

Well, we all knew that was going to happen, didn’t we?

To recap: During last night’s episode of Bates Motel , Norman (Freddie Highmore) asked Emma (Oliva Cooke) to attend a school dance with him. Emma bought a really pretty dress and was obviously very excited to finally go out on a real date with Norman. However, before Emma showed up for their date, Norman was upset by 1) Bradley (Nicola Peltz) showing up at the motel so that she could talk to Dylan (Max Thieriot) and 2) Norma (Vera Farmiga) telling him that she had been sexually abused as a child. Once they got to the dance, Norman wouldn’t stop staring at Bradley and Emma finally lost her temper, told Norman to get a ride of home from someone else, and then left.

(And allow me to just say, “You go, girl!” Seriously…)

After getting punched out by Bradley’s boyfriend, Norman started to walk home in the pouring rain. As always seems to happen whenever Norman is walking home, someone drove up and offered him a ride. In this case, it was his overly concerned teacher, Miss Watson (Keegan Connor Tracy). Miss Watson took Norman back to her place and, after washing the blood off his face, then said that she’d give Norman a ride home after changing clothes.

It was at this point that Norman started to hallucinate. Norma suddenly appeared, sitting on a couch and demanding to know what type of teacher would actually take a student home with her and then go into her bedroom to change clothes without bothering to close the door first.

“You know what you have to do,” imaginary Norma told Norman.

One jump cut later, Norman was again walking in the rain and, as was revealed in the episode’s final scene, Miss Watson was lying dead in her bedroom with her throat cut.

This, in itself, wasn’t really a shock. Simply by the fact that the show’s main character is Norman Bates, we already knew that he would have to end up killing someone by the end of last night’s season finale and Miss Watson, as an established character who wasn’t really central to any of the show’s storylines, was the obvious victim. As such, what happened on last night’s episode wasn’t exactly surprising but it was still effectively handled. While the show is often thought of as being a showcase for Vera Farmiga, Freddie Highmore has done such a good job of making Norman into a sympathetic character that it’s still somewhat upsetting to be reminded of just what Norman Bates is destined to end up doing.

Up until Norman and Emma left for their date, last night’s episode was dominated by both Norma and Vera Farmiga’s ferocious performance. If I haven’t said it before, Vera Farmiga deserves (at the very least) an Emmy nomination for bringing Norma to such memorable life. During last night’s episode, Norma enlisted the suddenly rather mysterious Sheriff Romero (Nestor Carbonell) to help her deal with Jake Abernanthy (Jere Burns). In his calmly intimidating way, Romero confronted Abernanthy, told him that nobody did any business in his town without his permission, and then proceeded to gun Abernanthy down. It was a moment that was as surprising as the death of Miss Watson was predictable.

And so concludes the first season of Bates Motel. It’s been a frequently intruiging and occasionally frustrating season but, perhaps most importantly, it ended strong. I’m still not totally convinced that there’s all that many stories available to be mined from a prequel to Psycho but I’m certainly looking forward to seeing what happens when this show returns next season.

Random Observations:

“SCREW OFF, SHITHEAD!” Seriously, if Vera Farmiga didn’t already deserve Emmy consideration, she deserves it for her delivery of this one line.
I wonder if Eric (the guy that Miss Watson was on the phone with) will show up next season.
One of the best scenes last night: Norma and Dylan bonding over target practice.
Everyone online seems to be obsessed with hating on Bradley and hoping that Emma and Norman get together. However, doesn’t Emma have enough to deal with without the addition of a psychotic boyfriend?
Speaking of Emma and Norman, their “fight” at the school dance was handled pretty well by both Olivia Cooke and Freddie Highmore. The contrast between Cooke’s anger and Highmore’s blank expression was a definite highlight of the episode.
How many times, this season, was Norman offered a ride while walking down the street? Seriously, it seems like it happened at least once every episode.
I’ve really enjoyed reviewing the first season of this frustrating but frequently intriguing show and I look forward to continuing to do so during the second season.

Review: Bates Motel 1.9 “Underwater”

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week’s episode of Bates Motel was all about marijuana.

No sooner has Norma (Vera Farmiga) recovered from finding the decaying corpse of Deputy Shelby in her bed then she’s having to deal with the hippies openly smoking weed out on the motel’s porch. Now, I have to admit that some of my best friends are hippies but, for the most, they’re a lot more charming than the Bates Motel hippies. The Bates Motel hippies are all incredibly dirty and rather rude. Even worse, one of them has a guitar and insists on both playing and singing The Goo Goo Dolls’ “Slide” during all hours of the night. Seriously, I thought Dylan (Max Thieriot) ran off the guitar-playing hippie last episode. Maybe he came back.

However, as one of the hippies explains to Norma, the town’s entire economy is pretty much dependent on that huge marijuana farm in the woods. So, the hippies can pretty much do anything they want without having to worry about being strung up in the town square and being set on fire. In one of my favorite moments from last night’s episode, Sheriff Romero (Nestor Carbonell) drives up to the motel, calmly glances at the pot-smoking hippies, and then pretty much ignores them for the rest of his visit.

One of the hippies takes a liking to Emma (Olivia Cooke) and gives her a pot cupcake. To the show’s credit, Emma doesn’t have a melodramatic freak-out or anything else that we’ve come to expect from television whenever a character tries drugs for the first time. Instead, she gets rather realistically spacey and paranoid. Hilariously, Emma’s stoned paranoia isn’t all that different from Norma’s natural paranoia.

Speaking of which, this week’s episode was also dominated by Vera Farmiga and her performance as Norma Bates. Throughout this season, Farmiga has proven that she’s an actress who knows just how much scenery she can chew before losing credibility. One the joys of this show is watching Farmiga continually take Norma to the edge of becoming a caricature and then pulling back at just the right moment. Last night, we got to see Norma confront one of the annoying hippies about “smoking a doobie” on the motel’s front porch and physically attack a sleazy real estate agent for refusing to help her sell the motel. And, of course, we can’t forget about the tres creepy scene where she climbs into bed with Norman (Freddie Highmore).

Norman, as always, is having issues of his own. After having a dream about drowning Bradley (Nicola Peltz), he writes a short story about it. Ms. Watson (Keegan Connor Tracy) is so impressed by the story that she volunteers to help Norman edit it. When Norman tells her that he’s not sure if his mother would approve, Ms. Watson tells Norman that maybe they don’t need to tell his mother. In fact, maybe it can just be their little secret. As Ms. Watson talks to Norman, it becomes apparent that she’s interested in more than just being his teacher.

This leads, of course, to an interesting question. Is there anyone in the town of White Pine Bay who isn’t crazy?

No wonder Jake loves this place! Yes, despite having checked out of the motel, Jake Abernathy (the wonderfully creepy Jere Burns) is still around. First he sends Norma flowers and then, at the end of the episode, he pops up in the back seat of her car and tells her that if she doesn’t pay him $150,000, he’s going to kill both her and her sons, therefore setting us up for next week’s season finale.

If there’s been a reoccurring theme running through my reviews of Bates Motel, it’s that this is a show that has struggled to define itself. This first season has been spent trying to find a consistent theme and tone. Over the past 9 episodes, whenever Bates Motel has attempted to be a straightforward thriller, the show has struggled. However, when the show has accepted the inherent oddness of being a weekly prequel to Psycho, Bates Motel has succeeded. Bates Motel is a show that benefits from going over the top. Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed this week’s episode, Underwater, as much as I did. Underwater was Bates Motel at its over the top best.

Random Observations:

I have to admit that I’m not really all the interested in finding out who Bradley’s father’s girlfriend was. However, I do think that Bradley and Dylan make a cute (if doomed) couple.
It’s hard for me to pick an absolute favorite moment from last night’s episode. Certainly, Romero’s nonchalant reaction to the hippies and Emma’s reaction to the cupcake were contenders. However, I think my favorite moment had to be the sleazy real estate guy saying, “Oh shit!” and running for the back of the office when he saw Norma approaching.
Only one more episode to go in this season and nobody’s taken a shower yet…