The ‘Final Destination 2’ Highway Nightmare Still Induces Anxiety [Scene Screams]

Every entry in the Final Destination franchise kicks off with a premonition of a lethal cataclysmic event. The original film set the bar high with a harrowing plane explosion mid-air. Its direct follow-up, released in 2003, upped the ante in terror with a far more statistically probable catastrophe that hits closer to home. Final Destination 2‘s opening premonition still induces road anxiety nearly twenty years later.

Set one year after the first film’s events, 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. In usual franchise fashion, this sequence establishes the latest group to get caught up in Death’s design, all unaware that they’re moments away from meeting a gruesome demise. As the camera drifts in and out of vehicles to introduce key players, it also begins to toy with viewers and build suspense.

An unbuckled Rory Peters (Jonathan Cherry) presents the perfect example of a distracted driver, as he’s more focused on snorting coke and avoiding police detection. Deputy Marshal Thomas Burke (Michael Landes) spills hot coffee all over his lap. Meanwhile, a motorcyclist darts in and out of traffic and a very wet stretch of highway. Each one is a potential trigger for a fatal pile-up.

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.

Blood, fire, and metal spill across the pavement. Shattering glass, screeching tires attempting to swerve away from harm, piercing screams of drivers burning to death as they’re pinned in place. Director David R. Ellis slows down the lethal pile-up to capture the horror of it all through disturbing detail. That attention to detail graphically paints a picture of an everyday event that happens in the blink of an eye.

Driving is a regular part of life, and crashes happen daily. Logs cutting loose from their transport and crashing through vehicles also makes for an unsettlingly plausible scenario that’s happened before. Freak accidents happen, but the odds of being involved in a plane explosion, roller coaster derailment, or a stadium collapse aren’t nearly as high as a road accident.

This intense sequence effectively transformed the logging truck into a real-life boogeyman. Kimberly’s premonition embeds itself into your skull. Once you see Final Destination 2, it’s near impossible to shake that instant spike of anxiety that comes with driving close to a similar flatbed semi-truck transporting potential impalement cargo.

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Scene Screams is a recurring column that spotlights the scenes in horror that make us scream, whether through fear, laughter, or tears. It examines the most memorable, and often scariest, scenes in horror and what it is about them that makes them get under our skin. 

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