Written by J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress
Directed by David R. Ellis
Runtime 90 min.
4 out of 5
After Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook) has a premonition about a massive series of car accidents on the highway she and her friends are on, she pulls her car over. A cop, Thomas Burke (Michael Landes), comes up to her and asks why she’s blocking traffic. She says there’s going to be a huge accident and, sure enough, events begin to unfold on Highway 180 . . . but without them in it unlike in her vision. The cop goes to alert other emergency personnel. An oncoming truck heads right for Kim’s car. Kim escapes but her friends are killed. Yet others—who had died in the multiple wrecks in Kim’s vision—also survive.
Soon, the survivors are all together. Except one by one Death comes for them, making things as they should be, restoring order and bringing his agenda of who dies and when back under his control.
To try and stop the cycle before it’s too late, Kim seeks out a survivor from the first movie—Clear Rivers (Ali Larter)—and Clear takes command, explaining why people are dying and how to save themselves.
If they believe her.
Shock, gore and suspense are what this movie is all about.
I got to tell you, this movie had me biting my nails all the way through. After the *ahem* blood settled and we knew who the major players were, I was gripping my seat because very quickly they slowly begin to die. And not just, oh, they die slowly—but in that step-by-step, cause-and-effect way that is the Final Destination franchise’s hallmark. These movies are very much about the Butterfly Effect, and the way the tension is created as you wait for someone to be a goner is pure gold.
I loved the creative ways folks died in the movie. No clear-cut, bang-you’re-dead stuff here. Just pure strange ways of checking out. The most creative, I thought, was when that kid got squished by a falling sheet of glass. Didn’t see that coming, and the way he folded in half is burned in my memory. Likewise when the barb-wired fence dices Rory (Jonathan Cherry) into pieces. Who comes up with this stuff?
The only thing that got under my skin was Clear’s constantly talking about “Death’s design.” Okay. We get it. He has a design. Move on. I don’t need to hear you using that phrase a thousand times in the movie.
This flick has a permanent place in my DVD collection.
Recommended.
