One year after the explosion of Flight 180, in 2001, college student Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook) is on the way to Daytona Beach, Florida, for Spring Break. Her friends Shaina McKlank (Sarah Carter), Dano Estevez (Alex Rae), and Frankie Whitman (Shaun Sipos)) accompany her. Waiting on the entrance ramp to U.S. 23, she has a premonition of a logging truck causing a deadly pile-up. She stalls her car on the ramp, which prevents several people from accessing the highway.
They are lottery winner Evan Lewis (David Paetkau), a mother named Nora Carpenter (Lynda Boyd) and her teenage son Tim (James Kirk), businesswoman Kat Jennings (Keegan Connor Tracy), a stoner named Rory Peters (Jonathan Cherry), a pregnant woman named Isabella Hudson (Justina Machado), high-school teacher Eugene Dix (T.C. Carson),and state trooper Thomas Burke (Michael Landes). The state trooper is questioning Kimberly as the spectacular pile-up occurs, and he saves Kimberly at the last second, but Shaina, Dano, and Frankie are killed by a car-carrier.
The survivors are questioned at the police station and later Evan is fatally impaled by a fire-escape ladder trying to escape from his burning apartment. Kimberly feels Death’s presence and questions Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), the last survivor of Flight 180, who is in a psychiatric ward after her friend Alex Browning was killed by a falling brick.
When Kimberly tells Clear that Evan was the first to die, Clear realizes that the survivors are dying in reverse order to those in the premonition, unlike the Flight 180 crash. Tim is crushed by a windowpane while leaving the dentist’s office. Clear introduces Kimberly and Burke to mortician Bludworth (Tony Todd), who seems to know everything that’s happening, and who says that only new life can defeat Death. Trooper Burke believes the birth of Isabelle’s baby would disrupt Death’s plan, so he sends Marshall Steve Adams (Aaron Douglas) to watch over her in custody while he gathers the other survivors in his apartment. When Dora leaves, she is decapitated by an elevator.
The survivors take Kat’s SUV to track down Isabella, who is in labor being rushed to the hospital by Deputy Adams. On the way, the survivors realize that the deaths of the Flight 180 survivors have affected their lives, saving them from Death in the car-crash. That’s why they are dying in reverse order. The SUV suffers a blowout and swerves into a stack of PVC pipes that penetrate the car. Eugene is injured and Kat is pinned to her seat. Rescue workers arrive and the Gibbons family that owns the pipes (Alf Humphreys and Chilton Crane) help to free them. Eugene is hospitalized. But the Jaws of Life accidentally inflate Kat’s airbag, causing her head to be impaled. Her cigarette falls into a gasoline leak and a news van explodes, causing a barbed wire fence to dismember Rory.
A doctor named Ellen Kalarjian (Enid-Rae Adams) is caring for Isabella and Kimberly has a vision that the doctor will euthanize her, so she, Clear, and Burke rush to the hospital, but Isabella and the baby are safe. Kimberly thinks that Isabella was never supposed to die in the pile-up in the first place. Meanwhile, Eugene and Clear are killed by an oxygen explosion. Kimberly, to ensure Burke’s safety, drives into a lake to drown herself, but Burke saves her and she is revived by Doctor Kalarjian. Later, on a picnic with the Gibbons family and Kimberly’s father, the Gibbons family explains that their son Brian was nearly hit by a news van on the day of the accident and Rory saved him. As this sinks in, the BBQ tank explodes and Brian is killed.
The film was directed by David R. Ellis, the screenplay by J. Mackie Gruber and Eric Breiss, based on a story by them and series creator Jeffrey Reddick. It was filmed in Vancouver and at Okanagan Lake in B.C. It received mixed reviews from critics, thought to be less well-made than the first film and called silly and illogical, but positive reviewers thought the combination of horror and dark humor was good fun. It was the lowest-grossing film of the Final Destination series but was nominated for several horror prizes, including four Saturn Awards. It lost out to 28 Days Later and The Ring. The pile-up was nominated for a special effects award by MTV but lost to the Helms Deep battle in The Two Towers. The only CGI used was that of the flying logs because logs that heavy do not fly like targeted missiles; they just roll. But anyone who has driven behind one of those log-truck behemoths knows how they felt about it.
The accident was based on a 125-car pile-up on Interstate75 in Georgia in 2002. The elevator decapitation was based on a real event in 2002 as well. Kimberly Corman’s name is an homage to Roger Corman. John Denver’s music appears again. Basically, this is pretty much the same as the first film, but everything has been ratcheted up. The road pile-up at the beginning is finely choreographed, Tony Todd is seriously creepy as is much of the movie in general, the Rube Goldberg deaths are more complex, and there is a great deal more blood. The plotting is tight and the dark humor is wicked funny at times. Every death is preceded by little cues to what is coming--a clip on TV, a scrap of paper, or fridge-magnets spelling it out. I was impressed by the detail and thought it better than the first movie.