I honestly don’t recall this film, but I know that I have seen it. Will it be just another shit sequel, or will it be halfway decent? It’s only 0.3 less on IMDB’s rating scale, so that’s encouraging. Clear returns as does Bludworth.
Start Film
This takes place a year after the first one apparently. We hear a talk show interview about how the survivors cheated death. This is done for those who haven’t seen the first one, you are immediately caught up. Hey, there’s a VCR! I remember when that was like the only clock most people had in their bedrooms. Yeah, I’m old. So what? Our main chick this time is Kimberly, and she has some irritating friend who I immediately want to be killed. So it is Kim, Shaina, Dano (the dude with weed), and Frankie, and they are on their way to Daytona. An old lady who is homeless wants cans and drops some. While driving past a school bus, Kim hears the people on the bus chanting “pile-up”. Heyyy, Highway to Hell was playing briefly, but she changed it. Fucking hell. Kim’s car is leaking transmission fluid. A biker chick just flashed her tits briefly. They are followed by a cop, so they tell Dano to get rid of the joint that he’s smoking, so he flips it onto the car next to them, and that vehicle has dry leaves on the wiper blades, so that is not good, but nothing seems to be fucked. Kim wants to pull off at a rest station as the service engine light came on. There’s a big truck hauling wood, a pregnant lady, a biker driving erratically, a truck driver drinking beer. Ugh. They go past a little boy who keeps ramming 2 vehicles into each other, and then some white dude listening to hip hop, and various other people. You get the idea. The cop’s coffee spills on his lap, and he’s behind the wood truck. The wood comes loose, takes out the cop. The fast biker starts sliding to avoid shit. The cocaine guy is trying to avoid him, but both get killed in various ways. The pregnant lady got it. Beer drinker and mom got it. Kim’s vehicle finally takes a tumble, and the speed car guy gets exploded. This is every bit of a clusterfuck as you’d expect. Basically everybody died, but it was a daydream. The old lady with cans shows up, then the school bus passes. She starts flipping out saying that there will be a big crash. Nobody is buying her story, but hey, Highway to Hell again. Do we get to see tits again? Kim blocks traffic, and the cop sees this and approaches Kim. Dano is flipping out about his weed. She explains that there will be a big pile up, so he asks her to get out of the vehicle, and everybody is pissed and impatient. Kim then sees the lumber truck and is flipping out, and the cop tells her to calm down, and there’s an accident and pile up. Pregnant lady, mom, biker, cocaine guy, and speed racer all are saved. Another truck swipes everybody in Kim’s vehicle, but the cop saved her. Now that we’ve established that, we have a plot.
At the cops station, a lot of people are there for questioning. One officer asks Kim to go over what happened. Fuck, 17 minutes in, and she has to describe what we just saw. She talks about Alex having a premonition, and how she had something similar. The biker, who’s this awesome black dude with a great voice, explains what happened to the survivors of Flight 180 or whatever it is. Oh, Clear is in a mental institution in Stonybrook. I know that I am simply here for the kills, but I don’t like anybody yet in this film, aside from the biker and Clear. Ugh, Kim tells her dad that she has a really bad feeling, and it’s not over yet. We have about an hour left, and by my calculations, 6-8 people to kill. So maybe this can pick back up for me.
Speed Racer walks up the stairs, down a hallway, almost falls, but doesn’t, because that’s how this movie rolls. This guy has a lot of Coronas and is a sloppy cook. He tosses his old spaghetti out the window. He sprays out cooking oil. A magnet falls into his Chinese, which he just put in the microwave. Apparently his name is Evan, and he won the lottery, and a bunch of chicks call him because he’s got money. The Microwave scares him, he drops his new ring down the sink. The microwave is sparking, and his hand is stuck in the sink. Now his pan is flaming. He tries to put out the flame from afar, but he just sets more stuff on fire. I have seen porns like this, where a hand gets stuck in the sink. They are all hilariously bad. He frees himself, uses the fire extinguisher, but it runs out. He heads towards his windows, but they close. He breaks out of the window and is on the fire escape. His apartment explodes. He keeps climbing, but the ladder is stuck, but it lowers. He takes a step, slips on the spaghetti that he threw out, lads on some glass, fire ladder drops, but gets stuck, and then it drops and goes through his eye socket. And there we go.
The cop is looking up how every person died from the first one, and Alex got killed by a falling brick, come to find out. Why Alex wasn’t brought back, I do not know. Update: Come to find out that contract negotiations didn’t go well. The new survivors are now seeing stuff on the news, including Evan’s death. I know the mom and son’s names are Nora and Tim. We see Tim reading Stephen King’s “Bag of Bones” for those who are interested. Tim’s got a sweet bedroom at the very least. At night, Kim sees tree branches that look like hands coming after her. Kim looks up directions to Stonybrook. This is the same institution as was used in Halloween Resurrection.
So Kim visits Clear and isn’t allowed to bring in anything that is possibly harmful. It’s a hell of a list. Clear is in room 109. She has a nice padded room at least. We see a ton of newspaper clippings on Clear’s wall. Clear doesn’t want Kim to come close to her, she is not trusting. Clear explains death’s list and the order and all of the same old shit. Because the officer intervened, Kim is now last in line. Kim says that her friends died last, so this is messing with what Clear knows and understands. Clear warns Kim to watch out for the signs, in your face, irony stuff. Don’t ignore it. Clear gives Kim the boot. Kim calls Clear a coward and selfish for not helping others. Nope, she’s just smart. The officer visits Kim, and the survivors are meeting at his apartment tonight. Kim sees pigeons in a reflection and is concerned for Nora and Tim. I am not. Clear looks like she is ready to leave the asylum.
Tim is at the dentist’s office, and there is this hot Asian chick. That’s cool, and a sweet fish tank. The fish tank motor is leaking water, near an outlet. A pigeon attacks a window. Chick’s name is Jean. Tim is going to get some nitrous, that’s cool. A pigeon has broken through in the waiting room. Tim is left alone and a bird figurine falls into his mouth and he is too groggy to get it out, but Jean saves him. The rest of the visit goes fine. Kim and Officer Burke show up screaming about pigeons. Tim is seeing a bunch of pigeons, so he scares them, they scatter, startle a construction worker, and a huge plane of glass falls on to Tim. Yeah. The death did look cool at least. Kim is finally believing, and she gets home, and there’s Clear. Clear brings them to Bludworth (Tony Todd). Yay!
There he is. He’s been expecting Clear. He tells her that you can’t cheat death. She is insistent that they can beat the design. “Only new life can defeat death.” Basically, for every death, there is life and so on. He tells Kim to follow the signs. Great scene. At a gas station, a guy says “Beeyotch”. I haven’t heard that term in a fortnight. Kim sees a premonition of a white van and crashing into a lake and drowns. That’s great. So they talk about the pregnant lady…duh. Time to find this bitch. Her name is Isabella Hudson.
All of the survivors meet up at Burke’s. Kim is handing out phones to contact people when she gets her visions. Eugene is the biker’s name, and he finds all of this to be bullshit. This sets off a series of follies that almost kills Clear inside the place. It was a fun, silly thing. Rory is cocaine guy, and Kat is the business lady who is easy on the eyes. They are death-proofing the house. Nora is ok with dying as her husband died 4 years ago, and now Tim. Tim was supposed to be younger, but the studio execs didn’t want to kill a 9-year-old. Amateurs. Eugene and Nora are going to leave. Rory almost gets it via things in closet coming down on him. He sees a vision of a man with hooks, and both Nora and Eugene are in an elevator with a guy who has a box of hooks, and he likes sniffing Nora’s hair. Ha. Burke calls Nora, but she can’t really hear him. A hook gets attached to her hair, so she is freaking out and when the elevator stops, she tries to exit, but we know the door closes hard, and now her head is stuck in the doors and the elevator is rising. Clear and Kat try to save her, but she loses her head over it. The Cryptkeeper would have enjoyed that. Eugene is seething and pulls a gun on the survivors now. Rory just said chillax. Eugene tries to shoot himself in the head, but the gun won’t fire. The gun was in fact loaded, and it wasn’t his turn to die. Time to find Isabella.
Since Isabella is supposed to drive into a lake, she is unable as she is in police protective custody. Isabella’s water just broke. The officer is panicking. She insists that he gets her to a hospital. She suggests that they take her van. Eugene says that this wasn’t the first time that he cheated death. So now everybody has a story. Burke has a story, and now Kat has one. She was on the bus that killed Terry from the first film. Rory was in Paris when Carter got it. Eugene replaced Val Lewton. Burke was at the train after Billy’s death. Wow, really guys? Kim’s story is about seeing a news report on Tod. So there we have it. Everybody avoided death due to the survivors from part one, all part of the plan. So had they not got off flight 180, all of our current survivors would be dead, get it? Good, because we must beat a dead horse. As the officer with Isabella approaches the Survivors in the SUV, a tire explodes, and Eugene is hurt. Officer Adams calls in the accident but has to get her to the hospital. Eugene’s lung is fucked. Kat is still pinned inside due to a tree limb. The ambulance shows up for Eugene. Rory just saves this one kid’s life. A news van shows up, hits a jagged rock, punctures the gas tank, and gas is now leaking, down a drain or pipe. Rory gives his keys and wallet to Kim to get rid of the drugs and porn so that it doesn’t break his mom’s heart. While trying to free Kat, this rescuer triggers the airbag, and her head gets impaled on a pipe. The gas leak causes an explosion that sends a piece of fence at Rory and slices him into pieces. Clear, Kat, Burke, and Isabella are the remaining survivors. Kim just had a vision in a hospital, with a nurse/doctor named Kalarjian, trying to kill Isabella.
Eugene is still alive, so that’s good. The room’s door closes. Vents are closing, the bed is moving, and the oxygen tank tubes are coming undone. A little silly. They need to do a C Section and call up the doctor from Kim’s vision. The plug is slowly getting pulled from the wall. Burke and Kim are trying to find Isabella, and Clear is looking for Eugene. His buzzer is out of reach. Uh oh. The umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby’s throat. Burke stops Dr. Kalarjian. The baby survives and is born. As Eugene is choking, the emergency battery kicks out to save his life. Kim and Burke are super pumped. They think it’s over. Kim, now she sees a premonition about Isabella never supposed to be dying and sees the water, and there’s bloody hands. Clear is looking for Eugene. Clear opens his door, and because all of that oxygen was leaking and the vents were sealed, once the machine was unplugged, it caused a spark, and Eugene and Clear got roasted in a fiery explosion, and Kim and Burke just barely survived. Kim’s hands are bloody, and she sees the machine from her vision, and now the lake, the white van, it’s all coming together. She decides that she has to die in order to save them. She tells Burke to get Kalarjian. Burke tries to follow, but the door seals so he can’t follow fast enough. She steals an ambulance and drives into the lake. Yeah. Burke is running, dives in the lake and is going for the rescue. He finds her and the van, but the door won’t open. Burke is trying to break the glass. She decides to just close her eyes, but he is trying to break that window. We are treated to like a recap of the film with Kalarjian trying to resuscitate Kim, in her wet bra. OK, they held out, but some eye candy. Burke says that thanks to her, they cheated death. That must be a push-up bra because laying down, her tits look huge.
Now we are at a cookout with the family where the explosion happened, where Kat and Rory died. The boy Brian, he talks about how Burke saved his life. And Brian goes to check on the grill, and he explodes.
End Film
Final Thoughts – This wasn’t a bad movie. There are cheesy elements to it, but this is horror, so you can’t be too self-righteous about certain things. They did at least tie things back to the previous one, and I kinda insulted that, but it was the right call, and I applaud them, despite me finding it silly. Most of the things here made sense given the premise, and everything tied together at the end. I didn’t really like Kim as a lead, and Burke was only adequate. Eugene would have been better as a lead. That’s where I have to really deduct some points, the characters weren’t all that fun. They aren’t going to be crafted incredibly well, but I want to like people before they die, or loathe them. I don’t want to feel indifferent. At least with the first film, I liked a lot of the main characters, or was excited about their impending death. The elevator death was my favorite.
Rating – 6.2 as it was an honest effort, and I enjoyed various chunks of it, and I would watch it again.
All the pictures used in this blog are for review purposes. They are the property of:
- New Line Cinema (presents)
- Zide-Perry Productions (as Zide/Perry)
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