Final Destination 2

Movie review by Nell Minow, Common Sense Media
Final Destination 2 Poster Image

Common Sense says

age 18+

Gruesome, ridiculous, really bad waste of time.

R 2003 100 minutes
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Parents say

age 15+

Based on 15 reviews

Kids say

age 14+

Based on 35 reviews

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A Lot or a Little?

The parents' guide to what's in this movie.

What Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this movie is very gory and that death is a meaningless event held up for entertainment value. Many of the accidents involve everyday items, which might lead some audience members to view their surroundings in a much different way. Several college age kids use drugs in a casual, off-hand manner that the other characters appear to accept. Parents in this movie seem unwilling to discuss possible peril with their children and are powerless to help their teens survive.

Community Reviews

Schmoopy15
Schmoopy15 Adult
July 2, 2020
age 10+

This website has crap reviews

These movies are not scary or gory and the deaths are cartoony and would never happen in real life. Everyone on here is taking this way too seriously like someone even said they would show their kid The Ring and The Shining before letting them watch these. I have watched like the First and the newest Halloween movie, Friday the 13th Pt1 and about a quarter of pt 2, Child’s Play, and Ma. I’m 18 and my parents won’t let me watch The Ring or The Shining but we all love this movie series. This one being our favorite because of the scene at the very end where the grill explodes and kills a boy and his mom who is sitting at a picnic table with her husband and some of the other characters screams. The kid’s arm flies off and lands on the table in front of her and she screams again. Which I find absolutely hilarious! Y’all need to lighten up and you kids need to watch something other than Sponge Bob and Cinderella. The plot line for those of you that couldn’t see one is this; A girl has a premonition that there will be a bad car accident on the highway she and her friends are on; well she survives and so do the people in the cars behind her, well since they were all supposed to die that day they all die in some cartoony, ironic, humorous way until death completes it’s list. There are kids who think 50 Shades of Gray is a more appropriate movie than these movies and that movie is purely filled with sex scenes with the occasional dialogue in between. These reviews are absurd!

This title has:

Great messages
Great role models
Luka Keats 100
Luka Keats 100 Adult
April 13, 2016
age 18+

TERRIFYING MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WASTE OF TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Movie is absolutely terrifying. All the Final Destination Movies are terrifying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why were these Movies made!!!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn't bare watching them and they scared me to death!!!!!!!!! DON'T BOTHER WITH THIS FILM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This title has:

Too much violence
See all 15 parent reviews

What's the Story?

If you saw the first Final Destination, or even just the preview for this sequel, then you are familiar with the plot. A group of people know that they are going to die; what they do not know is how this untimely event is going to take place. It is for this "how" that the audience, eyes darting around the screen to pick out possibly lethal traps, stays riveted for most of the movie's 100 minute running time. As with the first movie, the premise is that we cannot escape death when our turn has come, so if we were meant to die in an accident but somehow skip this fate, then we are due another visit from death to correct the omission. In this case, strangers on the merge to the highway avoid death in the form of a fiery pile up due to the premonition of the pretty but uninteresting, Kimberly (A.J. Cook). While still congratulating themselves for not dying, the survivors begin to fall victim to a string of bizarre accidents. Kimberly seeks out the sole survivor from those fated to die in Final Destination, Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), who has some helpful things to say but cannot stop the body count from rising.

Is It Any Good?

Not bothering with everyday movie conventions like plot, acting, or logic, this wisp of a sequel found its competitive advantage in Final Destination and pursued it with gleeful abandon. The first movie took the time to follow teen horror flick conventions, to develop characters -as thin as they were - and to throw in some theories about why all these people were dying. In the second movie, all these time-fillers are skipped and the movie becomes a heaping helping of mind-boggling mayhem. FINAL DESTINATION 2 asks why it should bother with the parsley of plot, dialogue, or characters, when people just want a plateful of death.

In many ways, tunneling all of the sequel's energies into a smorgasbord of imaginative deaths works better than the heavy-handed "suspense" of the original film. The acting is mediocre at best. Do they solve the riddle in time? Few will care, considering that there is no reason to like any of the characters and the main thrill of the movie comes from the elaborate nature of the deadly accidents. If this movie is supposed to be a scary thriller, then it flies far of the mark. If, however, Final Destination 2 seeks to take us no further than bloody spectacle, then it does a fine job indeed.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the characters' different reactions to surviving the accident, and facing the continuing danger to themselves. One of the characters proclaims that he is the master of his own fate and that therefore he will not die. Parents might discuss this concept of fate and the role of our own actions to influence our futures.

Movie Details

  • In theaters: January 31, 2003
  • On DVD or streaming: July 22, 2003
  • Cast: A.J. Cook, Ali Larter, Michael Landes
  • Director: David R. Ellis
  • Studio: New Line
  • Genre: Horror
  • Run time: 100 minutes
  • MPAA rating: R
  • MPAA explanation: strong violent/gruesome accidents, language, drug content and some nudity
  • Last updated: April 1, 2022

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