Final Destination 2 - The Time Death Went Backwards

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

If this poster doesn't give you chills, I give up!

You would think, that I have the Final Destination franchise figured out. But like I said in the very beginning of my previous blog about the series, each film causes you to think and learn something new every time. And unsurprisingly, I was right. That entry has been updated several times since its initial upload, and I do not see that ending anytime soon. But we'll see. Even though every movie in the franchise feels like one - as if you're watching a really long film - there are various differences sprinkled here and there. They sometime help or (in most cases) hurt the franchise's continuity.

Case in point: what did surprise me was that I basically missed one specific moment from Final Destination 2. I'll get to that momentarily, but I can tell you right now that while the moment doesn't seem to have any real affect on the franchise's continuity, I can no longer ignore it.

So about Final Destination 2...

I'll start with the synopsis of the movie. A group of people - mostly adults - start dying one by one in the order that they would've died in a highway pileup on Route 23 if they were not stopped by the visionary, Kimberly Corman. Blah blah blah, basically the general synopsis is no different from the other films in the series.

A group of people - mostly/mainly [age group] - start dying one by one in the order that they would've died in [accident/disaster] had it not been for [visionary] saving them from the accident/disaster.

But as made clear before, the movies are not as similar as we think they are from a distance. All you have to do is break them all down. In the case of Final Destination 2, after the main characters cheated Death, the order in which they die is reversed. This is later explained to justify the film's interconnection with Final Destination. How, you may ask?

By giving most of the survivors a forgettable backstory!

Most of these survivors of the Route 23 pileup were previously supposed to die during the events of Final Destination, where the survivors of Volee Airlines Flight 180 die in strange freak accidents.

Kimberly Corman

"About a year ago, My mom and I were at the mall. I was supposed to meet her outside, but I got caught up watching this news report about [Tod Waggner] who committed suicide. I kept thinking, "How can you strangle yourself in the bathtub? That's... That's stupid." It felt wrong. And yet..., I heard some gunshots and I ran outside. Some kids were trying to steal my mom's car. She tried to fight them off, she was a fighter, and they killed her. After the funeral I kept thinking that it should have been me. I guess everyone must think that but, I guess I was right."

Officer Thomas Burke 

"Last year my partner and I were heading out when a call came in about a train wreck. Frank decided to let me handle it alone. He died that night in a shootout. If that call had come in just... seconds later, I'd be dead too. Shit... The call about the train wreck, that saved my life? That was the night I scraped up, Billy Hitchcock."

Eugene Dix 

"It's not the first time I cheated death. A kid came to school with a knife... killed his teacher. Teacher would have been me, but I was transferred to another school two days before. Wait, wait. The teacher I replaced, her name was Valerie Lewton. She was from Mt Abraham. She died in an explosion."

Rory Peters 

"Hey, do you guys remember that theatre in Paris that collapsed last year and killed everybody inside? Well, I had tickets to go but one night, I'm in Paris and I'm just tripping on acid and sipping lattes and such. And then all of a sudden, [Carter Horton] out of nowhere just get WHACKED by this falling sign!"

Kat Jennings 

"So last May, I'm supposed to go and stay at this cheesy little bed and breakfast in Pennsylvania. Anyhow, there's this major gas leak that no one knows about, and all the guests suffocated during the night. I never made it; the bus I was on splattered [Terry Chaney] all over the road."

As you can see, those five people were going to die somewhere else but ended up getting distracted by the tragic events of the Flight 180 survivors. According to Clear Rivers, the only reason Death's Design is backwards is because she and the others from Final Destination survived the plane crash. 

So if Clear and the others never got off the plane, none of the Route 23 survivors would've survived their near-death experiences prior to the pileup? How do we even know that to be true?

Going by my belief about Death's Design, you could say that they would've had a similar situation to fellow Final Destination 2 character Brian Gibbons who just randomly died despite (allegedly) never being a part of Death's Design. But because they were eventually on Death's Design it's even more possible that they were on the same boat as Molly Harper from Final Destination 5. If so, that means that they were really never meant to die before the Route 23 pileup, similar to Molly never actually being a part of Death's Design until she became a passenger on Flight 180.

Whatever the case may be, the fact that the characters of Final Destination 2 were apparently supposed to die during the events of Final Destination makes no sense, and adds nothing to the former flick (or the whole of the franchise, really) and is never brought up again after just one scene. A scene that came in way too late into the film's runtime for anybody to care. But at least it makes the characters from both Final Destination and Final Destination 2 seem more "connected" than we think.

As for the other Route 23 survivors - Evan Lewis, Tim Carpenter and Nora Carpenter - we don't know what their deal is. Where were they when Clear was nearly killed? Where were they when Alex Browning died? You tell me, WRITERS!

Still lost? I don't blame you.

For years, I watched that scene over and over and over again, and could not understand the point that Clear was trying to make until now. But luckily there's a slightly less ridiculous and less convoluted way to figure out why Death is working backwards. I don't know how many people actually noticed, but I did. According to Kimberly's vision of the pile-up, the order of deaths were Officer Burke, Eugene, Rory, Kat, Nora and Tim (both at the same time), Evan, and Kimberly and her friends (who died the same time as her) - Shaina McKlank, Dano Estevez and Frankie Whitman.

When the pileup finally happened in real time, the main characters were already safe because Kimberly deliberately blocked traffic on the on-ramp. However after Officer Burke asked Kimberly to step out of her SUV, the highway accident had already happened. And less than a minute later, Kimberly nearly gets ran over by an oncoming truck, whose driver didn't think to stop for some reason. But Officer Burke quickly pulls her out of the way. Meanwhile, her friends Shaina, Dano and Frankie were still in the SUV, and were ultimately hit by the truck. Remember: Officer Burke intervened and saved Kimberly, while her three friends were too late and were hit and killed by the truck. So far, I was able to find three Death-cheating moments that could have caused Death to go backwards: (1) Shaina, Dano and Frankie cheated Death with Kimberly, because Kimberly did not drive them into the area of the pile-up. (2) Kimberly cheated Death twice by not driving into the area of the pile-up, and later dodging the truck that hit her friends. (3) Officer Burke nearly sacrificed himself to save Kimberly, but ended up cheating Death as well. What do all moments have in common? Kimberly's friends, whose Deaths would have been enough to cause Death's List to go backwards, as death would move on to Evan hours later, followed by Tim, then Nora, then Kat, then Rory, then Eugene, then tried to come for Officer Burke and Kimberly. 

Done and dusted!

Well, for now, at least. I don't think Final Destination 2 is a bad movie; it's actually one of my favorites. I just don't think that the characters' backstories were necessary at all. The return of Clear and Bludworth should've been all the writers needed for the sake of interconnection. But whatever. What's done is done, as I always say.

For what it's worth, the poster for Final Destination 2 tops my list for the best posters in the franchise! 

Final Destination - What is Really Going On?

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Final Destination franchise is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of iconic horror movies. If anything, it's a very misunderstood one. Plenty of people will dismiss it as just plain stupid. But having been a fan since the first movie premiered in 2000, the older I've gotten, the more I started to notice things that I never used to. And it's nice to have my own viewpoint of how movie's crazy logic works.

Each film causes you to think and learn something new every time. There seems to be no right or wrong answer to how Death's design is meant to work. Why not, you may ask? Because there a lot of contradictions and maybe even questions that are left unanswered. So it should come as no surprise that some of my theories may be different from yours.

So what is Final Destination even about?

No matter which Final Destination flick you choose to watch first, the premise is always the same, because the premise is Death's Design. The design (which is the entire film) always begins with a group of rather dashing people - classmates, co-workers, strangers, etc. - who become victims of an incoming accident.

• If the movie is led predominantly by teenage characters, the accident happens at nighttime by the end of their senior year of high school.
• If the movie is led predominantly by adult characters, the accident happens at daytime and involves cars.

One of the group members is the visionary who randomly starts to have an ominous premonition that something tragic is going to happen. This person then has an elaborate vision of the deadly accident - in which they die last, which reminds me:

• If the visionary is male, we actually see how he dies.
• If the visionary is female, her death is never shown.
• The latter tradition is broken in Final Destination: Bloodlines, as the female visionary Iris Campbell is killed on-screen in her premonition.

Immediately, the visionary snaps back to real time, sees what's about to happen, and tries to get as much people as possible out of the place where the disaster will happen. But everybody cannot be saved on time. Eventually the people who cheated death, which at first means to escape and ultimately survive an incoming disaster, ends up getting killed (in bizarre freak accidents) in the order that they would've died in the accident. That particular order is known as Death's List. The visionary then teams up with another survivor, usually of another gender, and they (along with other remaining survivors) have to figure out how to stop death for the final time. Admittedly, that goal doesn't make sense as everyone who is born is immediately dying. Yeah, I went there.

And that's pretty much the basis of Final Destination. While the idea is the same with every movie in the series, the argument of how to cheat death gets more complicated with every installment. This is especially if you decide to really analyze the movies to the point of exhaustion, as I did.

How does one cheat death again and get away with it?

This is where my theories begin; you're welcome. 

Imagine you are the visionary. So far, based on what the legendary coroner William John Bludworth says, there seems to be multiple ways: 

1. As the visionary, you have to remember the order that everyone was supposed to die in the disaster. The trick is to figure out when and how each person will meet their fate. To do this, you have to follow the signs, or omens, as you initially did before having the vision of the accident. The difference, however, is that all survivors are now capable of seeing or feeling a sign or two. The signs are not to be taken lightly, as even the most ridiculous ones can help you or another survivor physically intervene in someone else's near-death experience and save that person. This causes Death to skip that person and move on to the next person. But this doesn't mean that the person that Death skipped is no longer on Death's List. Once the others are dead (or skipped) it will come back to the person who cheated death for the second (or third, or fourth, or however many) time This was seen on every Final Destination film.
2. The other idea is to "kill or be killed". There will be that one person who will save themselves by any means necessary. One who cheats death can take the life of someone who was not on Death's List, ultimately stealing that person's remaining life. That's right, MURDER! But keep in mind that I said, "remaining." It's possible that the person who (accidentally or deliberately) gets killed by a survivor was already days or weeks away from dying anyway. Meaning the survivor-turned-murderer is still on Death's List either way. This was seen on Final Destination 5.
3. If all else fails, and you still have enough time to do so, you can immediately hide in a secluded indoor safe-proof area, free of anything that could potentially harm or kill you. Anyone who's on Death's List can do this, not just the visionary. It is not the most ideal way to live, but it seems like the best way to escape Death because you will be in a safe environment, and will very much be granted a longer and peaceful life. It is when you leave the place, that you are as good as gone. Final Destination 2 gives the best option: a padded room in an institution. On the other hand, both Final Destination and Final Destination: Bloodlines show us that living in a messy cabin is a big fat NO.
4. Then there's perhaps the most successful way to cheat death: you have to die. But here's the twist: Bludworth says that only new life can defeat Death. You have to sacrifice yourself, and you must be clinically dead (flatlining for five minutes, if not longer), ultimately breaking the cycle, and giving yourself and the remaining survivors new life. It's easy to assume that no survivor can pull this off. But as far as I know, only you, the visionary, can pull this off. And you can all start over with a clean slate and are no longer a part of Death's List. So far, the only time this technique was successful was seen in Final Destination 2. However, there have been several failed attempts seen in Final Destination, The Final Destination, and Final Destination: Bloodlines. This is mainly because either the visionary still had a pulse when attempting to die, someone else is not a visionary themselves, or it was not the attempter's time to die.

But isn't there a way to get out of a disaster and no longer be on Death's List?

Sadly, no. However, multiple viewings of the first five films seemed to have suggested otherwise.

1. As the visionary, according to The Final Destination, you are obviously the one who will try to stop an accident from happening. You must have the vision about it first, and then have enough time to somehow prevent it from ever happening. It was initially believed that this would automatically break the chain, and everyone who would have been a casualty was off Death's List. The exception would have been someone who had already cheated death by surviving a previous disaster (that they were supposed to die in), and managed to survive the recent accident that you prevented from happening (whether or not the person is a visionary themselves). But Final Destination: Bloodlines shows that it does not matter if the survivors of an accident that no longer happens had cheated Death in the past. If you, the visionary, stop the accident from happening, that means that you, and everyone that you saved, are all on Death's list. 
2. Perhaps the easiest way to avoid an accident is just by escaping it, as seen in the lead character's vision of the disaster. Basically, these people were never meant to die in the accident and therefore would've still been okay. But these people can't have been survivors of previous accidents that they were supposed to die in, otherwise they are toast no matter what. This was seen in Final Destination 2, The Final Destination and Final Destination 5.

So how do you explain Brian Gibbins?

Keep in mind: I'm asking myself this particular question as I type along.

There's something about Brian Gibbons from Final Destination 2 that just makes him mysterious. And it's hard to make out what it is. Brian almost got killed by a speeding news van only to be saved by Rory Peters, a survivor of the highway pile-up on Route 23. At the end of the film, he dies. But Brian was not one of the survivors of the pile-up. So where does he fit into to this analysis? Why did he eventually die and not some random bickering couple from Final Destination 3?

We really don't know anything about Brian because he was a minor character. Since he wasn't in the vision of the pile-up, we can easily assume that he was never in the highway, period. But then again, Final Destination 3 had a minor character named Perry Malinowski. She survived the roller coaster crash according to the vision that Wendy Christensen had, only to die a few days later. We just don't remember her being on the roller coaster because she was such a minor character, to point where she never said a word. Wendy didn't remember her being there either.

But if Brian was never at the highway, maybe he was supposed to die in an off-screen accident unbeknownst to us, let alone the creators of Final Destination 2. And if I was to go any further, maybe he (if he was the visionary) or someone else (if that person was the visionary) successfully stopped another major disaster from happening, yet he still remained in Death's List because he had already cheated death before. Or instead, maybe after cheating death the first time, he managed to flee another accident according to his or someone else's vision. Just a little something to think about. We may never know the real reason he is a part of Death's Design. But I can tell you this: it was not because of a speeding news van; at least in the messy canon of the Final Destination franchise.

As for the bickering couple that I briefly mentioned... who knows at this point? They argue, flee an incoming truck, and are never seen again. Next!

What about Molly Harper?

There also seems to be some confusion over Molly Harper from Final Destination 5. She managed to escape the North Bay Bridge before it collapsed - according to a vision that her boyfriend Sam Lawton had - and would do so in real life, as well. So surely, she should not have been on Death's List as a result. But then she (along with Sam) gets killed in the Volee Airlines Flight 180 plane explosion in the end of the movie.

Unlike Brian, Molly was a main character, but that's where the differences stop between her and Brian. What was she there for? How did she become one of almost three hundred people that died in the plane explosion?

Some say that Molly probably became a part of Death's List because she survived almost getting killed by fellow survivor Peter Friedkin (Remember what I said about the "kill or be killed" thing?). It sounds likely, as Sam saved Molly from getting killed. But still, she was not on Death's List, so she should've been fine in the long run.

But then lies another problem: months after the attempted murder, she and Sam die in the aforementioned plane crash, which was seen through the eyes of another visionary, Alex Browning from Final Destination, making Final Destination 5 a prequel by the way. If my assumption about Death's Design is correct (and that's a BIG if), she probably had a similar situation to Brian's. She might have cheated Death previously by surviving a disaster that came before the bridge collapse, except she was actually supposed to die in said previous accident according to a vision. 

Or maybe she's no different from anyone else who dies in the opening disasters of each movie, meaning she just happened to become a victim of an incoming accident. That would probably make the most sense, as Final Destination 5 ends where Final Destination begins. Plus, we don't have time to know every (potential) victim of an accident. And notice that I didn't assume her to be a visionary, because it's clear in Final Destination 5 that she had not a clue of what was going on (or did she), until Sam was able to put two and two together, after two of their co-workers (two survivors of the bridge collapse) died. 

Who really knows? How many times did I say, "two?" What is really going on?

Any last words?

Don't get me wrong: the Final Destination franchise is very fun to watch to this day, and the death sequences are very memorable and iconic. But the more I watch the movies, the more I find myself questioning a lot of things. I never question the physics, laws of gravity or the fact that the characters in Final Destination 3 and The Final Destination are made of rubber, because nobody should really care about those at this point. But I'm always questioning how the whole "cheating death" thing is really supposed to work. I guess we will never know, will we? The writers can never get it right.

Like I said, the premise of the Final Destination franchise is always the same. However, it is worth noting that while the entire film series takes place in the same universe, only two of the five movies are standalone sequels.

• Final Destination 3 and The Final Destination are self-contained and only make brief references to the first two films. It's a completely different cast for each movie. Neither film features William Bludworth. They sometimes feel like soft re-whatevers. And they have a slightly light and comedic tone. They could've been straight-to-DVD movies.
• Final Destination, Final Destination 2 and Final Destination 5 are clearly interconnected, to the point where they are an unofficial trilogy. This is evidenced by the fact that Bludworth makes cameo appearances in these three films. Clear Rivers, survivor of the plane crash, stars in the first two movies. And she and the other survivors of the plane explosion appear in both Final Destination in main roles and Final Destination 5 in archived footage (due to Final Destination 5 being a prequel to Final Destination).

I can already tell that my opinions about how the Final Destination series works is not at all what the creators had in mind. But I kind of blame the writers for the many plot holes that occurred throughout this underrated and underappreciated franchise. As so much is deliberately left to the imagination, it is only natural - and more than fair - to have my own viewpoint on it overall. Then again, you can't cheat death.