Final Destination 2 Analysis

   The blackout at the beginning focuses you on the spoken words – telling you that these are the main focus before the picture comes in. The sinister talking with eerie music behind, along with the dark, instantly puts across the horror/thriller genre of this film.

   Bars are used behind the presenter to represent entrapment, which is common thriller iconography.
   The whole set is very cold – dark eerie blue, making us think of death, cold blood.

   We are shown a photograph of the main character with a friend through a magnifying glass – which focuses us on who the main character is – she is the one being singled out of the photo.

   There is a blade laying over her, very close to the photo, it is close to hurting the picture of her which suggests the fact that something bad is soon going to happen to her.

   Darkroom contact prints are used, as they are in many films and their openings that I have seen like Se7en. They are very often used to give an eerie effect to photographs.

   Shadows, (typical thriller iconography) are highly defined when the puppet is moving, on its own – which is strange and suggests a supernatural force.

   Puppets are a typically scary object, they are wooden, old, and clowns and puppets are often used to scare people – for example the puppet from the saw films.

   We are shown the cover of a book, which we presume says ‘ROAD TRIP’ but the ‘T’ is covered up, so that it appears ‘ROAD RIP’ which hints that something bad will happen on this trip, probably death as RIP stands for rest in peace and is a term used for the dead.

   The Turkish eye is used on the key-ring covering the ‘T’. The Turkish eye is supposed to be all knowing, suggesting that it knows what is going to happen and these people are going to die. It also represents another thriller narrative – that they are being watched, the eye is following them.

   The camera moves over the girl, from an extreme close-up of her face and then down along her body. We are getting a very close and personal view that is quite intruding. Again this suggests that something is watching her/ close to hurting her, she is a victim – which is a typical thriller character.

   The TV starts loosing signal, this is something out of the girl’s control, there is a more powerful source controlling it, possibly supernatural? Or maybe to suggest that she cannot control what is about to happen to her?

   When the TV signal fades, an eerie red is used to hint to blood and death – a typical thriller narrative.

   Through this whole beginning scene, little lighting is used so that the setting is very mysterious and the whole dark/horror theme is portrayed. However, lighting is used to create shadows which is iconography commonly used in thrillers.  

   In the scene after the opening, the girl we saw previously nearly crashes her car; she then drives past a bus where the people on it are shouting ‘pile up’; she turns on the radio which mentions the anniversary of the plane death, she switches channels and the song ‘highway to hell’ is playing. All of these things strongly hint towards a major accident happening on the road – probably a pile up.

   The people about to die then loose their innocence, as they typically do in all thriller films, so that we feel they have deserved to die.

   Kimberly doesn’t check the car when told it is leaking fluids. The boys laugh at the old lady who drops her cans and they smoke weed. Another woman is talking on the phone and smoking while driving. A recent lotto winner is driving immaturely, focusing on the hot girls in the car and not on the road. A motorcyclist is driving way too fast and taking over cars. Another sign of a crash is then used – a little boy is playing with car toys, one of which is a truck like the one that kills everyone as the logs fall off, and a red jeep like the main characters are in. He is bashing them together, hinting that they will crash. One man’s exhaust is emitting really bad fumes and he’s doing drugs while driving, as well as steering his car with his knees! There is a mum with a teenage boy who is messing about, bashing water bottles on the dash board. A policeman has coffee in an unsecure place that could (and does) spill. He also has his laptop out and doesn’t keep his eyes on the road after the coffee is spilt.

   All of these characters have shown careless, risky driving here, or have demonstrated dislikeable traits about them like taking drugs and laughing at old women, so we now feel that they all have put themselves in this risky situation and we will no longer feel they are innocent when they die.

   I could not find the actual opening scenes un-edited on youtube as distripution of films like that is not allowed. This clip has music over the top that isn't used in the film, and only shows a few clips of things I have mentioned, but should hopefully help you to get an idea of what the film is like.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv2nlrXSMt8