Editorials
‘Final Destination 2’ Expanded Death’s Rules and Delivered a Standout Opening Disaster
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If there’s one singular moment that stands above all the gruesome opening catastrophes and over-the-top deaths in the Final Destination film series, it’s the logging truck and the deadly highway pile-up it caused in Final Destination 2.
The original Final Destination set the bar high with a harrowing plane explosion mid-air. Its direct follow-up, released in 2003 and set one year after the first film’s events, upped the ante in terror with a far more statistically probable catastrophe that hits closer to home. Director David R. Ellis (The Final Destination, Snakes on a Plane) and screenwriters Eric Bress & J. Mackye Gruber (The Butterfly Effect) expanded upon their predecessor’s elaborate kills as well as Death’s rules.
Armed with an almost entirely new cast and set of characters, Final Destination 2 unceremoniously kills off Final Destination’s protagonist and premonition wielder Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) off-screen between films, noted via newspaper clipping and details by the sole returning character, Clear Rivers (Ali Larter). Clear acts as the new cast’s guide to Death’s designs, albeit with new wrinkles and hints toward divine intervention.
In anticipation of the sixth installment, Final Destination Bloodlines, we’re retracing Death’s steps to examine the established lore, formula, and, of course, the standout kills from the series, and Final Destination 2 remains one of the series’ highlights.
The Inciting Disaster
This sequel opens with an introduction to college student Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook), who’s on her way to Florida for Spring Break with friends. As the camera drifts in and out of vehicles to introduce key players, it also begins to toy with viewers and build suspense. The telltale signs of an encroaching premonition highlight all the various ways one small mishap can snowball into a world of destruction and hurt.
The actual cause is ultimately revealed to be the logging truck, whose bindings snap and cause its massive logs to roll out into traffic. It triggers a chain reaction of car crashes, explosions, freak accidents, and violent deaths for all on that stretch of road. Straight away, one log smashes through Burke’s patrol vehicle, coming out through the back covered in his viscera. While pinned in her overturned vehicle, Kimberly watches all of it happen in horror.
Before a careening car comes for her, she snaps out of the vision on the entrance ramp, avoiding the pile-up and beginning Death’s new game.
The carnage is all captured in graphic detail, with director David R. Ellis often slowing down the camera to let every single gruesome moment soak in. This intense sequence effectively transformed the logging truck into a real-life boogeyman, in no small part because of its plausibility. Accidents involving a logging truck have happened before and could happen again, anywhere.
Flight 180 came with a much higher death toll, but the freak accident on Route 23 is so elaborate and grounded that it easily holds its own.
The Standout Kills
1) Death by Escape Ladder
Lottery winner Evan Lewis (David Paetkau) thinks his lucky streak continued when Kimberly’s premonition prevented him from entering the highway moments before the pile-up, but his luck runs out when he’s among the very first to fall at Death’s design. As such, Evan gets an appropriately complex sequence filled with ominous clues in his apartment.
As Evan cooks, the camera pans past his fridge with magnets that spell “Eye,” clear foreshadowing reinforcing his premonition fate. As Final Destination previously revealed, kitchens are a hazard in this franchise. As the dominoes of doom line up, Evan is eventually forced to flee a burning apartment. His early carelessness with spaghetti comes back to haunt him, culminating in the fire escape ladder crashing down right into his eye socket.
2) Elevator of Death
Nora Carpenter (Lynda Boyd) isn’t interested in playing Death’s game, but it’s too bad for her that she doesn’t have a choice. As the survivors are gathered together to formulate a plan against Death, Nora has had enough and leaves. Death becomes imminent when Nora heads to the elevator, which is playing “Rocky Mountain High” by John Denver.
After built-up tension, the pressure release comes in a gnarly sequence that sees Nora’s braid get caught in a hook, causing her to panic and fall into the elevator’s closing doors, where her head is crushed over and over until it’s removed from her body. All while the remaining survivors look on in helpless horror.
It reinforces the franchise’s ability to exploit everyday fears, from elevators to road disasters. For even more kills from Final Destination 2 and beyond, read our full ranking here.
Death’s Expert
“Hello, Clear. I’ve been expecting you.”
Thanks to Clear’s return and her helpful interactions with the franchise’s resident mortician, she brings the newcomers to Bludworth (Tony Todd) as he’s preparing the body of Evan Lewis. As with the previous installment, it’s Bludworth who provides critical intel: Death can only be defeated with new life. For every life there’s a death, for every death, there is a life.
It’s invaluable advice that helps this new batch formulate a plan to cheat Death a second time. It’s also a scene that crystallized Bludworth as a core element of the franchise, thanks to Tony Todd’s engimatic and powerful performance.
Editorials
‘Bloodstone: Subspecies II’ Revisited: A Bigger, Bolder Follow-Up to Full Moon’s Vampire Cult Classic
Horror sequels are a peculiar thing. In most cases, follow-ups to scary movies tend to retread the same formula with different victims and more over-the-top scares. This is because audiences tend to be more interested in the antagonists of these pictures than anything else, with even main characters becoming disposable when the time comes to produce a sequel.
That’s why some of the most memorable horror sequels are the ones that actually manage to hold onto interesting survivors from previous films while also pushing the story forward instead of having the same thing happen again to a different group of people. From Scream 2 to Dream Warriors (and arguably even The Exorcist III: Legion), there are quite a few of these innovative sequels to go around.
However, if there’s one franchise that deserves more attention when discussing bigger and better continuations that make the most of episodic filmmaking, it has to be Ted Nicolaou’s Subspecies.
The Full Moon classic spawned an indie horror icon, but bizarre sequel Bloodstone: Subspecies II is even more beloved than its predecessor.
Building a Bigger Vampire Saga
While the film itself takes place almost immediately after the events of the first movie, Bloodstone only entered production a couple of years after the release of the original as both Charles Band and Nicolaou weighed the pros and cons of returning to Romania to continue the series. In an effort to maximize efficiency, the team decided to invest in a trilogy where parts II and III, now fully written by Nicolaou, would be filmed simultaneously over the course of a single grueling shoot.
Much like the first Subspecies, Bloodstone’s low budget meant that the filmmakers once again had to cut corners and re-use as many of their resources as possible. Thankfully, the process was much easier this time around as Nicolaou, with the help of Romanian cinematographer Vlad Paunescu and his wife Oana, became more acquainted with local customs and made new friends. Shooting abroad still came with its own unique set of challenges due to a lack of translators and the occasional safety concerns, but the crew managed to make things work by filming things guerrilla-style and setting up shop in abandoned caves and real medieval ruins.
The director’s newfound contacts, coupled with the relative success of the first movie, meant that he was basically given free rein over an assortment of shooting locations usually considered off-limits for indie horror. That’s why Bloodstone features insanely ambitious lighting and effects work even during scenes shot in the middle of a bustling Bucharest. The filmmakers went so far as to project Radu’s Nosferatu-like shadows over local monuments as if he were a Romanian boogeyman, an idea that was actually encouraged by local cinephiles.
In fact, many of the more elaborate scenes here had originally been planned for the first movie before being discarded due to the lack of available resources. It was only with the support of Romanian fans and filmmakers that Bloodstone was able to give Radu a chance to be even more menacing the second time around.
Michelle’s Transformation Takes Center Stage
However, when it came to the American part of the crew, not everyone was able or willing to return for another round of Romanian adventuring. That’s why Radu’s human-loving half-brother Stefan (Michael Watson) is unceremoniously killed off at the beginning of the film while the role of Michelle had to be recast. Denice Duff took over for Laura Mae Tate, with the character now being joined by her sister, Rebecca, played by Melanie Shatner (yes, that Shatner).
In the finished film, we follow Michelle as she awakens to her new life as a vampire and discovers that Radu has murdered her lover. Struggling with grief and her newfound bloodlust, Michelle contacts her sister overseas, with Rebecca soon travelling to Romania on an ill-advised rescue mission. Meanwhile, Radu (Anders Hove) reaches out to his undead Mummy (Pamela Gordon, underneath heavy layers of impressive makeup effects) and promises to deliver her the coveted Bloodstone artifact while also making Michelle his eternal consort.
Revisiting the movie, I was impressed with how introspective this story is when compared to the original. The sequel assumes that you’re already familiar with the previously established characters, so the story wastes no time in exploring the immediate aftermath of the previous film’s events. From Michelle’s reluctant transformation into a creature of the night to Radu’s obvious mommy issues, Nicolaou is way more interested in pushing these characters into new and uncharted territory rather than recycling existing plot points.
Practical Effects and Gothic Atmosphere Still Impress
Yet, much like the first film, it’s Romania itself that makes the movie worth watching. The ruins of Castle Vladislav are even more majestic now, and visiting the moody streets of Bucharest with its surprisingly punk-rock nightlife made for a nice change of pace when compared to the original film’s quiet village setting. Once again, the abundance of interesting locations makes the movie feel much more expensive than it really is, with the filmmakers surrounding our characters with a living, breathing environment that would be impossible to recreate in a studio.
The increased freedom also allowed Nicolaou to flex his filmmaking muscles and tackle more ambitious blocking/composition in the sequel. The low budget and tropey script mean that the visuals don’t always work, but it’s consistently clear that this neo-expressionist style could only come from a passionate team attempting to pay homage to the shadowy horror classics of yesteryear. If the retro atmosphere isn’t enough for you, there’s enough practical gore here to satisfy even the most demanding of horror hounds!
Radu himself is also far more interesting now that Hove is more comfortable working alongside an international crew, with the actor having gone on record explaining that, while he spent more time drinking vodka than working while shooting the first movie, the sequel was a much more creatively satisfying experience for everyone involved. The character’s relationship with his abusive Mummy is also a highlight of the expanded mythology, especially since the practical effects that bring her to life are just as freaky now as they were back in ’93.
My only real gripe with the horror elements of the picture comes from the glaring absence of the diminutive stop-motion minions from the first film, though I guess the surprisingly entertaining addition of Professor Popescu (Michael Denish) and his archeological antics mostly make up for that.
Bloodstone: Subspecies II is obviously the middle chapter of a trilogy, with the ending feeling a lot less definitive than its predecessor as several plot threads are left to dangle in the wind, but I appreciate how the flick explores new ground while remaining faithful to nearly all the ideas that made the original such a good time. While I don’t think it’s as big of an improvement over the first movie as some fans make it out to be, Bloodstone is definitely worth revisiting if you’re a fan of old-fashioned vampire yarns.
Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion to this initial trilogy, Bloodlust: Subspecies III!
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