In ahorrorgenre where everymovieis concocting new ways to terrify fans, few franchises are as accomplished asFinal Destination.Created byJeffrey Reddick, this film series isrenowned for its ability to give people anxiety;each installment’s premise of Death killing people in increasingly creative ways has spawned dozens of new death methods for people to be scared of. It’s an ingenious approach to your usual slasher that has awed viewers for over two decades with the wild ways these movies decide to kill their cast. Yet while always shocking, it’s unfortunate how much this nonstop bloodshed detracts from the emotional stakes of these kills.
When you go into a movie from a franchise known for killing literally every single person, it’s hard to really feel for those being slain onscreen — which is what makes one death fromFinal Destination 2so devastating. This series is known for treating its characters more as components for deadly Rube Goldberg machines than actual people with entire lives and personalities, so it was immensely shocking when the second installmentoffered a character so sorrowfulthat viewers couldn’t help but empathize with her (even before her head was chopped off).These movies are known for their gory and graphic kills, but when it comes to deaths that truly shake watchers to their core, nothing beats Nora Carpenter’s (Lynda Boyd) elevator decapitation inFinal Destination 2.
You Are Now Approaching Your ‘Final Destination’
You’d be hard-pressed to come across a horror fan unfamiliar with the core idea of the Final Destination franchise. Introduced to the public with its first iteration back in 2000, every film begins with something you don’t often see in horror movies: people being saved from death. From exploding planes to faulty rollercoasters, each iteration sees someonehave a vision of the terrible accident and warn others, saving them all from what would’ve been their imminent demise — and upsetting the Grim Reaper in the process. What follows is “Death” stalking and killing each of the survivors in innovatively terrifying ways.
Final Destination 2is no different; it follows Kimberly (A.J. Cook) who, after preemptively rescuing a group from a deadly (and now iconic) logging truck disaster, has to try and save them as Death comes to claim the lives it thinks it is owed. Most of these deaths are the delightfully gory fare that fans are used to as the film shirks sentimentality for grotesquely hilarious kills…but then there’s single mother, Nora.While most of this film’s characters fall into simple archetypes like stoner Rory (Jonathan Cherry) or overworked Kat (Keegan Connor Tracy), Nora is granted a shocking amount of backstory throughout the film. Both she and her teenage son, Tim (James Kirk), were spared from the logging accident, with subsequent scenes revealing that the fraught mother has been struggling to adjust since her husband passed away.
Boyd offers a genuinely gripping performance in this role, with her every flinch and vocal inflection making it clear to viewers how she doesn’t care about whatever game Death is trying to play.All she wants is for her son to be okay— making it particularly horrific when she sees him get crushed by a pane of glass halfway through the film. This isn’t the first time someone has watched a loved one die in Final Destination,but viewers had never been treated to something as horrificas a mother witnessing her child be turned into a bloody paste. It establishes Nora as an inherently tragic character, not only making her subsequent death that much more distressing, but subverting the norms this franchise has already begun to develop.
‘Final Destination 2’ Offers the Franchise’s Most Upsetting Character
While every Final Destination film stresses the severity of these deaths, by the end of the first one, it was clear that these kills were less about emotional torment and more about the creators thinking of wacky, grotesque ways for their cast to die. And that’s not something the series should be judged for;in a genre now filled with “elevated fear” it’s the rare few who can offer nonstop gory fun to a modern audience.However, although these films have become renowned for their unique kills, this undeniably dampens (if not revokes altogether) any emotional weight that viewers can derive from them.
They lack the vital resonance that makes a truly disturbing movie, with the fear being so sensationalized that it fails to impact watchers on any level more than being grossed out by what’s happening onscreen. It’s a kind of horror that, even in its sophomore outing,fans had come to expect— meaning they weren’t prepared for the endlessly depressing experience that was Nora’s character arc. For once, the series forged deeper into a character than surface-level traits, plumbing the depths of her traumaand making viewers empathize with the hardships she’d experienced.It even had her be one of the few to accept their fate, as Nora decides going to the afterlife with her husband and son is better than trying to live without them. This causes the audience to forge a tangible emotional connection with her — and then the movie punishes us for it by making us watchher get her head ripped off by an elevator in the movie’s third act.
‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ Is About To Pull Off an Incredible Retcon of the Entire Franchise
You’ll never watch the franchise the same way again.
Many Final Destination deaths are minutes-long affairsfilled with the person struggling through whatever gory foolishness Death throws at them. Still, none have ever been as simply heartbreaking as watching Nora beg not to die as the elevator begins to bite into her throat. A cavalcade of misunderstandings sees her get caught by her neck within a set of elevator doors, an accident that has the other characters search for a way to save her while the widow, finally confronted with her gory demise, shrieks in pain and begs not to die. It’s a stunningly quick death, with the film using visceral sound design to make audiences feel as each jerk of the elevator begins to tear into Nora’s neck.
But beyond being visually scary, the horrors of this moment come from viewers' understanding that not only did Nora have a life of nonstop pain, but even her acceptance of dying was robbed from her as she realizes no heartfelt reunionis worth the utter agony this kill will be.It’s a combination of mental and physical anguish that the series had never pulled off before (and really hasn’t since) that unnerved watchers not only with what they were seeing onscreen but also the intimate knowledge of what this person was thinking as they died. It offered a kind of resonant fear that most movies only strive for, and it gave this franchise acclaimed for shocking kills its most devastating one ever.
This ‘Final Destination 2’ Death Was the Series’ Saddest
While Nora’s death inFinal Destination 2is certainly tearjerking, there are many other contenders for the most agonizing deaths in this long franchise. From the similarly maternal Samantha (Krista Allen) inFinal Destination 4orthe shocking twist in the finale of the franchise’s fifth installment, the franchise has taken the time to imbue many other kills with emotional elements to unnerve audiences. These are all successful to varying degrees, but it’s undeniable that none even come close to the immense amount of time put in to make Nora’s deathone of the most breathtakingly torturous of this entire series (if not this entire genre).
The movie ignored its own routines to create someone who was not only relatable but contained a multitude of pain and hope. It then degrades the latter as its plot confronts her with more and more atrocities, adding a layer of empathy that the plot twists to its worst potential as it subjects herto a truly disturbing (but of course, very creative) death. It’s one of the true stand-outs in this series as it manages tocombine the cringe-inducing effect of body horror with the haunting dread of psychological torture.And now we only have to wait less than two months to see if the long-awaited sequel,Final Destination: Bloodlines, can top it.
Final Destination 2
After narrowly avoiding a deadly highway collision thanks to a premonition, a group of survivors must confront a new reality where death relentlessly pursues them. As mysterious fatalities begin to claim them one by one, Kimberly must uncover the means to disrupt the lethal chain and secure their survival.
