FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

Kimberly is off with three of her best friends on a vacation to Daytona for some relaxing and partying. Right when they’re about to get on the highway, Kimberly has a vision that a massive car accident is about to occur. Dozens are killed a fiery blaze of twisted metal after a truck’s cargo of lumber falls off into the road. Her premonition freaks her out and she skids to a stop before leaving the on-ramp, trapping all those behind her. A cop is there to see this and as she tries to explain why she accidentally blocked the road, the accident occurs just as she envisioned. All the people stuck behind her car (which gets hit) are saved. But as these people learned from watching the aftermath of Flight 180, death has a design, and this group is being painted right out of the picture.

With a new director and new writers, the series takes its own 180 and becomes a rather conventional horror flick. Except here’s the thing: it’s not scary in the least. All the fun has been sucked out of what we saw in the first one. The days of the unexpected deaths are over. In the previous film, you either didn’t see it coming at all or you saw that something was going to happen, but you never knew exactly how the fatal blow was going to hit. Everything here is completely telegraphed and so the shock factor is non-existent. There are some attempts at humor, but it hardly seems like they’re making fun of the genre anymore. Instead, too much effort is put into the incredibly pathetic story.

I don’t know what writers J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress were thinking when they put this together. For some reason they felt compelled to tie this in with the first. And I’m not just talking about the horribly acted talk show at the beginning where they discuss the anniversary of the first movie’s crash and how Devon Sawa’s character figured out death’s scheme. No, all the characters here have some sort of roundabout connection with someone who died in the previous film. It’s lame. It’s also lame that all these assorted stereotypes somehow magically get together and become instant friends in the battle against death. The real set of friends in the first one couldn’t avoid causing each other trouble and getting into it. Oh, and Clear (horribly named, badly acted by Ali Larter) is back as a self-committed know it all expert on how to beat the system.

Pacing is a huge problem for director David R. Ellis (“Homeward Bound II” and former stuntman). Sure the group buys into the main premise faster than probably half the audience, but I think there were just too many of them to keep track of. Some of the early death scenes played out over some time, but as the movie moves on it gets to a time crunch. Soon you’ll find that two are picked off at a time, which really short changes us the fun inventive deaths we came to see. What it comes down to is that I think by the end of this movie, death wins, because this one is DOA.

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