Last Destination 2

For every beginning, there is an end. -Last Destination 2 Tagline

Last Destination 2 is the second installment theatrically and the third installment chronologically of the Final Destination series released in 2003.

Despite a lukewarm initial critical reception, it has since gained recognition as one of the more critically acclaimed films of the franchise. The tagline was "You can't cheat Death twice".

Plot

One year after the explosion of Flight 170, Kieran Coralia is going on a vacation to Nightona Beach for spring break with her three friends, Sahana, Daniel and Frank. While waiting on the entrance ramp to Route 36, she has a horrifying vision of a deadly pile-up, caused by a truck carrying metal pipes. She stalls her car to block the road and prevents eight of the intended victims from entering on the highway. Officer Thomas Burk comes and asks Kieran to get out of the car due to her erratic behavior. As the people being blocked get out of their cars to complain, the pile-up occurs. An 16-wheeler truck drives into Kieran's SUV, just as vision predicted, killing her friends and annihilates them, but Thomas manages to save Kieran from being killed when he pulls her out of the way at the last second as Kieran cries over the blasted highway.

Back at the police station when Officer Burk is talking to the survivors, Kieran mentions the curse of Flight 170, which Ellen tells the group about. The other survivors of the pile up do not believe it and they all leave. Later that day, lottery winner and pile up survivor Lucas Edwin dies after being impaled by the fire escape ladder on his building after an attempt to escape from an apartment fire. Kieran seeks help from the last one remaining surviving member of Flight 170, Diana Oceans.

Diana refuses to help Kieran, saying that if Kieran was smart she would forget about the others and save herself. Before Kieran leaves, Diana tells her that noticing death's signs can mean the difference between life and death. Kieran then realizes that the next to die is Zachary Carpenter, and pigeons will cause his death. They arrive at the scene, but are too late when Zachary chases some pigeons, which causes a construction worker to drop a glass panel that obliterates the body of Zachary and crushes him. Once this happens after Zachary's loss, Kieran and Thomas call a meeting with the rest of the survivors.

Diana eventually decides to help Kieran and meets her shortly after Zachary's death. They go off to see Xavier Bloodlost who informs them that "only new life can defeat death", giving them a quest to find Isabella Hudson, a survivor of the pile-up who is pregnant. Kieran, Diana and Thomas then go to Thomas's apartment for the survivors meeting. The grieving Nila Carpenter leaves the meeting before it is over. Ellen Dex leaves shortly after, saying they doesn't believe any of their stories about cheating death.

Once they have left Roy Parker sees a shadow that looks like a man with hooks. As Nila enters the elevator to prepare for her son's funeral, she gets her hair caught in hooks carried by a man standing behind her, but when she was attempted to leave the elevator, Nila gets her head caught in the malfunctioning doors, decapitating her. Ellen, Kate Jennings, Diana, and the man try to save her, but she is decapitated. This causes Ellen and Kate to believe Diana's stories.

Eugene has his lung punctured, and is rushed to the hospital.

It is at this point where Roy saves Bryson Gibson from being hit by a news van traveling at high speed. When the news van stops it puts a hole in its petrol tank, causing the petrol to run down a pipe past Kate's car. Fire men work on getting Kate out of the car, but when a fireman attempts to remove the log with the jaws of life, but suddenly, the airbag deploys accidentally and forces Kate's head into the large sharp pipe, instantly impaling her.

The cigarette Kate was holding drops out of her dead hand and it blows into the pipe where the petrol spilled, igniting the petrol and causing the news van to explode. The explosion sends a barbed wire that was attached to a nearby fence at Roy, cutting him into three parts and severing his left arm. Moments after Kate's and Roy's deaths, Thomas, Kieran and Diana all go to the hospital, where Isabel's baby is born. They think they have defeated death, but Kieran has another vision, and realizes Isabel was never supposed to die in the pile-up.

Diana then runs to find Ellen and finds him in a hospital room. She opens the door, which pulls the plug out of an outlet, causing a spark, and an explosion, which expands through the hallway, killing Diana to the last since deaths of Flight 170 survivors after from Timothy to Simon, and also Ellen, Kieran turns around to see the dead corpses of Diana and Ellen. Working off an earlier vision, Kieran believes that she is the "New Life", gets in a van and drives it into a lake.

She drowns in the lake but is resuscitated and recovered by Doctor Alex Kalarjian, thus making her cheat death and skipping Burk as she is the last in line. Making her and Thomas the only survivors of death's design. Sometime later, they are invited to the Gibbson' house for dinner, and they talk about how they are finally returning back to normal life. This is when Mr. Gibbson mentions how Bryson was saved by Roy. Kieran, and Burk look at each other, before the BBQ grill with Bryson in front of it explodes, entirely obliterating him and his arm lands on Ms. Gibson plate as she screams in horror.

Cast

Trivia

• The characters in this movie, are somewhat involved or witnessed, the deaths of the characters in Last Destination.
  • The original script to Last Destination 2 revealed that Simon Daniels and Diana Ocean both survived, and both decided to help Kieran Coralia save the survivors of the Route 36 pile-up. However, the idea was changed so that only Ocean survived and Simon was written out and killed off in between movies. Had he been featured in the film, it would have been the first seen instance of two visionaries meeting.
  • Kieran Coralia was originally supposed to die a year before the pile-up outside a mall, where some street thugs carjacked her mother's car. Her mother tried to fight them off but she wound up being shot dead. Kimberly, on the other hand, was too distracted watching the news about Timothy Williams's death when she should have been involved with the shooting.
  • Thomas Burk was originally supposed to die via a shootout, however he was called at the last minute to clean up the remains of Billy who was originally meant to die on Flight 170.
  • Kate was originally supposed to die via a gas leak at a hotel she was meant to stay at, however it was postponed due to the fact the bus she was traveling along hit a girl, which was a survivor of Flight 170.
  • Ellen Dex was a teacher who was originally meant to be murdered by one of his students. However, he was called to replace another teacher, who just died. The teacher he replaced was Mr. Lawthon, who survived Flight 170 and taught at Mt. Abraham High.
  • Roy Parker was originally meant to die at a play in Ville de L'Amour when the theater at which the play took place collapsed. However, he returned home after seeing a man being crushed by a sign. The man was who again, was a survivor of Flight 170.
• Last Destination 2's opening disaster is referenced in the opening credits of Last Destination 5 by logs crashing into the screen.
• This movie has the largest amount of explosions. There are five individual scenes in the movie with explosions. This is significant because the explosions in each scene are caused by forces independent of each other.
• When Kieran blocks the off ramp, she sees a road works sign reading 'Next 180 feet'. The car crash at the farm occurs next to the 170 marker (according to the cop reporting it). These are both references to Flight 170, the plane that crashed in LD1.
• In the morgue, one can see Zavier Bloodlost wearing Evan's diamond studded Rolex. How he obtained the watch is unknown, but no one took off his watch prior to the autopsy.
• It is a common misconception that Death only realized Isabel was never going to be in the crash when Kieran did. She was never targeted at all. It is likely that Death just made it look like she was so that Kieran and the others were off guard and easier to kill.
• The tagline "You can't cheat death twice" is rather nonsensical considering Diana Oceans has cheated death multiple times. For example, her death on Flight 170 and electrocution death in Final Destination were both intervened by Simon Daniels. Her actual death is at least the third life threatening situation that she had been in. This could be justified by the ending of The Last Destination, Death always intended for her to die in the Hospital explosion. However, this proves the concept of "Cheating Death" completely moot.
• All of the main characters (with the exception of Kieran) appear in the ending credits of Last Destination 5.
• This is the only film where the survivors manage to cheat Death completely as Kieran drowned herself and was resuscitated, giving her new life, saving both herself and Thomas.
• When Kieran tried to drown herself, Thomas was actually the next person in the list, so Death should not have allowed Kieran to intentionally kill herself. This means the flying trolley was only meant to kill Thomas, not her; If this is the case then after Thomas avoided the trolley, he was skipped, making Kieran the next person in which death could now allow her to kill herself.
• This is the only film that after the time-skip, there are only 2 survivors instead of 3 like other films: Simon, Diana and Carter In LD1: Warren, Alex and Janet In LD3; Nicholas, Lina and Jane In TLD; Sean, Marry and Max in LD5.