Final Destination 3 was released in 2006. The film doesn't have any characters from the previous films returning, but Flight 180 and Kimberly Corman along with Thomas Burke are mentioned in an alternate ending. Also Tony Todd, who played the mortician in the first two films, returns as the voice of the Devil's Flight devil and the subway conductor. In terms of reviews, this is considered the best reviewed movie in the series, scoring an average 41 on the Metacritic website, the second highest rating of any Final Destination movie so far. The first is Final Destination 5.
Plot
Six years after the Flight 180 explosion, Wendy Christensen and her friends are at a amusement park, celebrating their graduation from high school. Her friends decide to ride a roller-coaster called Devil's Flight. Before boarding, Kevin Fischer and Jason Wise have a coin toss to see who is in the front and who is in the back. Kevin get the back with Wendy and Jason is at the front with Carrie Dreyer, Wendy is afraid to ride it until she is encouraged to by her boyfriend, Jason. Upon getting on the ride, Wendy has a premonition of the roller-coaster derailing and everyone onboard, including her, dies. Wendy wakes up then screams to get off. The attendants open the back cars, letting Wendy and her friend, Kevin off. A furious Lewis Romero starts a fight, forcing him and several others off the ride. The attendants then start the ride, just when Wendy realizes that Jason is in the front cars. Wendy desperately tries to stop the ride, but it is too late and Wendy's fears are confirmed as she sees the cars fly off the tracks.
One day later, a glum Wendy carries her books out of her school. Kevin tries to cheer her up, but she refuses to go to graduationKevin tells Wendy about the Flight 180 tragedy.. Two of the survivors, Ashley Freund and Ashlyn Halperin, also try to cheer her up by inviting her to a tanning salon. Wendy walks off to her car, but is stopped by Kevin, who then tells her about the events of Flight 180. As he tells her that this could be the same thing, she responds "Fuck you, Kevin" and drives off. When she gets home, Wendy looks over the photos she took with her camera on the night of the accident. Meanwhile, Ashley and Ashlyn attend to the tanning salon. Wendy then sees ominous things in the photos, just when Ashley and Ashlyn are killed when they are burned to death in their tanning beds. After the funeral, Wendy confesses that she now believes that Death, once again, has come back for the lucky ones of the roller-coaster. Wendy and Kevin learn that Frankie Cheeks is next since he sat behind Ashley and Ashlyn on Devil's Flight. As they pull into a fast food drive-through, a giant truck 100 yards behind tKevin and Wendy horrified when they see Frankie's dead body.
hem starts rolling down a hill and is heading straight for them. Wendy and Kevin escape from the car before the truck collides with Kevin's car, causing the motor to lunge forward to the car ahead and the fan belt slices a man's head in half. Wendy and Kevin look in horror to see a half-headed Frankie as the driver. Wendy and Kevin learn that the clues to the survivors' deaths are hidden in Wendy's photos of the night of the roller-coaster. Wendy and Kevin learn that Lewis is next and finds him at a weight room. Lewis refuses to believe that Death is after him for he claims that "Death fears him". While working with weights, two model swords cut the safety wire. Lewis is unaware of the severed safety wire and lifts the two weights without something holding them and the two weights fall and compress Lewis' head, spraying blood on Wendy and Kevin. Afterwards, Wendy realizes that Ian McKinley is next. Ian and his girlfriend, Erin Ulmer, are working at a hardware store and Wendy and Kevin arrive to warn them. Ian and Erin scoff at the idea, just when Wendy figures out the clues to Ian's death and pushes Ian out of the way before he is impaled by plywood. After Ian is saved death moves on to Erin as she falls back into a nail gun, activating it and shooting nails through her head, killing her. Later, Kevin works as security at the 300th Anniversary McKinley Tri-Centennial Fair. Wendy, at her house, tries to look for clues to Kevin's death and her death. While searching through more photos, she is horrified to discover that her sister, Julie Christensen was on Devil's Flight and is next. Kevin finds her at the fair when a white horse becomes loose and the rope on its neck wraps around Julie's neck. The horse gallops, dragging her. Julie is nearly killed by a cannon's underside, but Kevin intervenes. Julie after she is saved from being impaled on a Harrow.
Wendy arrives at the scene and asks her who was sitting next to her on Devil's Flight. Wendy's question is answered when Julie's best friend, Perry Malinowski, is impaled by a flagpole launched by a rope from the horse. The people at the fair pIan, blaming Wendy about Erin's death.
anic and leave at the gruesome sight. Death then moves on to Kevin, but his death is intervened as Wendy pulls Kevin out of the firework's path, nearly burning his face. As the remaining crowd flees, Ian McKinley emerges. Wendy then realizes on the night of the roller-coaster, she was wearing a McKinley High School shirt, leading her to believe that Ian causes her death. Wendy tells Ian to stay away. However, Ian, believing that he is safe that Death skipped him, wants it to end on Wendy. Wendy then sees that the fireworks are actually going to kill her. She somehow figured out her clue and ducks under the fireworks which pass Ian and hit a giant cherry picker. Ian laughs as he is invincible. He shouts "I'm not gonna die! It's you, Wendy! YOU'RE DEAD!" As the words leave him, the cherry picker begins to lean. Ian looks up and the cherry picker falls on Ian, crushing him in half. As Ian dies, he flips off Wendy. Wendy about to be run over by a train in her last vision.
Five months later, Wendy is on a subway and begins to see signs of Death's malicious approach. Julie and Kevin then meet Wendy on the subway, making Wendy suffer another premonition of the subway crashing, killing everyone. Wendy then wakes up and tells Kevin about the doomed train. She and her friends try to escape but it's too late, the train is already in motion. Wendy's panicked face is shown through a window seconds before the screen goes black and the train derailment is heard. The events of the vision occur.
If the viewer chooses Tails, after the premonition Wendy snatches the coin while it's in midair and freaks out, not even getting on the coaster. Jason, Carrie and Kevin follow her out, then the coaster crashes. Some text comes up explaining what ultimately became of all of them (none dies) and then the movies ends.
Alternate Ending and Deaths
Alternate Ending
As seen on the "Choose Their Fate" feature on "Thrill-Ride Edition" of FD3, there was an alternate ending in which Ian is fully crushed by a cherry picker. Wendy, Kevin and Julie slowly get up and walk towards the camera. Julie tells Wendy that she didn't take any pictures. Wendy throws the camera and stomps it. She tells Julie that its broken and asks Kevin if everything is alright.
Kevin calmly confirms that everything is under control. Then, all three slowly proceed to safety, with Julie and Wendy carrying injured Kevin. As police sirens are heard in the distance, the view pans to the camera, which comes to life and snaps a final picture of Wendy, Julie, and Kevin, implying they will still die. It is presumed the photo would suggest their deaths on the subway.
Alternate Deaths
Ashley being electrocuted in her alternate death.
By choosing to have Ashlyn set the temperature in the tanning room to 76 degrees, an alternate scene is played where she gets out of the booth, but is knocked out by the board, which still traps Ashley inside her booth. Ashlyn frees her, but as she grabs her hand, Ashley falls through the bed and is electrocuted, transferring the current to Ashlyn, killing her as well. By having Wendy choose to honk the horn again at the drive-thru, an alternate scene is played where Frankie turns around and sees Wendy and Kevin. Kevin manages to pull Frankie to safety. In the next scene, he is being carted off in a stretcher, happily declaring he is going to sue for what happened and became rich. Later, when Kevin and Wendy leave the Police Station after the Department Store scene, Frankie is pulled out of a police Choose Ashley and Ashlyn's fate.
car for soliciting an undercover ofChoose Frankie's fate.
ficer. The option as to whether or not he was worth saving appears, and if yes is selected, a 10 minute clip of Frankie's exploits with his camera before, during and after the carnival is played, including how he got arrested. If no is selected, the film continues as normal.
If Wendy looks at Lewis' carnival picture again, an alternate scene plays where Kevin and Choose Lewis's fate.
Wendy are walking on the field, discussing how they are going to convince Lewis to believe them. Once inside, Lewis is already using the machine that kills him in the original cut. He yells out "Fisher! What the fuck are you doing here?!" and then his head is crushed just as it was in the original cut.
By choosing to have Ian fire a warning shot at the pigeons, the hardware store scene is slightly altered. Erin is still killed by the nail gun, but this time she loses h
er balance when the pigeons (who didn't leave because Ian didn't kill any of them) fly in her face and cause her to stumble backwards. The scene ends showing a pigeon pecking away at Ian in the photo Wendy took at the carnival.
If Ian is killed normally, the film continues. If Map is selected, an extra scene, where a newspaper blows off of a homeless man who was using it as a blanket, is inserted. It reveals that the survivors of Final Destination 2 were killed and the viewer is given the option to read the paper and get the details. Kimberly and Thomas were sucked into a faulty wood chipper owned by the farmer of the second film, after they tried to escape a runaway car that was owned by Evan Lewis from the prev
ious film. The death certificate was given by the doctor who was pregnant in the previous film and thought to be the key to surviving death's plan. They had met at the area by coincidence and according to the article, were haunted by the whole incident, with Kimberly dropping out of school and Thomas being sent down to desk duty. After the newspaper sequence, the film ends as normal, except that the train wreck ends the film, with the final shot being Wendy getting smashed by the oncoming train.
Posters
There is only one poster, which features the cast on a roller coaster, but the color change and the roller coaster reverse make 2 different versions. Both posters have a red and blue color. The original poster
The reversed version poster
Both posters feature 10 characters, From left to right, first row to last row, in the reversed version, the characters are: Wendy, Kevin, Ashlyn, Ashley, Ian, Erin, Frankie, Lewis, Jason and Carrie. The poster features the cast on a roller coaster with the track visible in the background. Similar to one of the posters from the first movie, Final Destination, the cast has half of their face as a skull. It should be noted that two passengers of the roller coaster who are chased by Death in the movie. Julie and Perry aren't featured in this poster since the poster is trying to hide the fact that they were on the roller coaster. Julie and Perry are replaced by Jason and Carrie on the poster, who were killed during the opening disaster. The movie's name "Final Destination 3" is at the bottom of the poster with all capital letters in the original version, but it's on the top of the cast in the reversed version. There is also a tagline above the movie name in the original version: "This ride will be the death of you", but there is no tagline in the reversed version. This poster is mainly dark blue with a little bit of white, except the cast is in their normal color. In the reversed version, the poster is mainly dark blue and somewhat dark red.
Trivia
Final Destination 3 has only 1 poster, the least of the series.
Since Frankie is pulled off of the coaster, many viewers are confused as to how the crash still took place, as Frankie dropping the camera seemed to trigger off the event. This is incorrect; the actual cause of the accident was the hydraulics rupturing after Lewis's harness is forced down (this took place before the premonition, so it still counts in "real life") the camera only causes the hydraulics to be damaged further, causing the ride to crash. While Kevin, Lewis and Ian are fighting after Wendy has her premonition, the hydraulics are still rupturing, so by the time the ride restarts, there was no need for Frankie's camera - the hydraulics were damaged enough by then.
The opening sequence is a foreshadow to a few of the deaths in the movie. The pinball-like game shows a picture of a woman with nails in her face (Erin), twin "electric sisters" (Ashley & Ashlyn), and daggers/swords (Lewis).
Notice how on the final subway they pass Booth street (a reference to John Wilkes Booth who killed Lincoln) and are supposed to get off at Oswald St (referencing Lee Harvey Oswald who assassinated Kennedy.)
In the scene where the truck reverses into the car at the drive-thru, it is a truck that advertises Hice Pale Ale. There is also a truck in Final Destination 2 that also has the same livery.
Director James Wong noted that two characters were composited into the script. Two boys sneak onto the coaster, while Wendy and Kevin sit behind them; the boys are then removed by a ride attendant, leaving an empty car between Wendy, Kevin, Julie, and Perry. This was done to give Wendy and Kevin a reason not to know who was sitting in front of them, and to give a sense of relief that two innocent lives were saved from the crash.
Kris Lemche(Ian) had to take forklift driving lessons for two days to learn how to drive one.
Mary Elizabeth Winstead(Wendy) had to have a stunt double for the scene where she drives away from Kevin.
The scene taking place in the tanning booth was a closed set. Only the camera operators were in the same room with Chelan Simmons and Crystal Lowe and black curtains were draped to keep onlookers out.
There is a sign at the entrance of the roller coaster that says "I'll see you soon" which is what Tony Todd's character says to Clear and Alex in Final Destination.
The ending was re-shot, reportedly because of unfavorable reactions at preview screenings. This also happened with the two previous films in the series.
Reception
Critical reviews
Final Destination 3 has received mixed reviews from critics. Rating site Rotten Tomatoes reports that the film holds a 45% approval rating, based on 122 reviews. The consensus is, "Final Destination 3 is more of the same: gory and pointless, with nowhere new to go." BBC film reviewer Stella Papamichael described the reference to the 9/11 attacks as tasteless and gave the film a rare 1 star out of 5, after awarding the first installment four stars and the second three. Most critics agreed that the film was "running out of ideas", that there was nothing new the series could offer, other than the theme of death. Positive reviews praised the death scenes, such as the tanning bed and nail gun deaths, describing them as "gruesome" and "painful". Most of the critics praised Winstead's performance, stating: "...the real tragedy is that promising young actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead must endure this torture." In terms of reviews, the movie is considered the best reviewed movie in the series, scoring an average 41 on the Metacritic website, the second highest rating of any Final Destination movie so far. The first is Final Destination 5 with 50%.
In the year 2003 the second installment of Final Destination was released. Final Destination 2 was accompanied with the tag line "Death is like a boomerang, it keeps coming back". It did have a better reception, claiming that it had better special effects and more inventive deaths than the first. But on the other hand it also got said that it was "an average sequel to an average movie". All the same, fans of the first film were happy to see a sequel.
Plot
One year after the explosion of Flight 180, Kimberly Corman was going on vacation to Daytona with three of her friends. While waiting on the entrance ramp to Route 23, she has a horrifying vision of a deadly pile-up, caused by a Truck carrying Logs. She stalls her car to block the road and prevents a number of intended victims from entering on the highway. Officer Thomas Burke comes and asks Kimberly to get out of the car due to her erratic behaviour. As the people being blocked get out of their cars to complain, the pile-up occurs. An 18-wheeler truck drives into Kimberly's SUV killing her three friends, but Thomas manages to save Kimberly from being killed as well. Back at the police station when Officer Burke is talking to them, Thomas mentions the Flight 180 explosion, which Eugene Dix tells the group about. The other survivors of the pile up don't believe it and all leave. Later that day lottery winner and pile up survivor Evan Lewis dies after being impaled by the fire escape ladder on his building after an attempt to escape his apartment fire. Kimberly then realizes that the next to die is Tim Carpenter, and pigeons will cause his death. They arrive at the Scene, but are too late when Tim chases some pigeons, which causes a construction worker to drop a glass panel on Tim, crushing him. Once this happens, Kimberly and Thomas call a meeting with the rest of the survivors. Kimberly goes to contact Clear Rivers at the mental asylum where she was voluntarily in, Kimberly eventually convinces Clear to come and help them cheat death, they go off to see William Bludworth who informs them that "only new life can defeat death", giving them a quest to find Isabella Hudson, who was at the scene of the pile up and pregnant. The grieving Nora Carpenter leaves the meeting Kimberly called. Once she has left Rory Peters sees a shadow that looks like a man with hooks. As Nora leaves to prepare for her son's funeral, she gets her hair caught in hooks carried by a man, but when she attempts to leave the Elevator, she gets her head caught in the malfunctioning doors. Eugene, Kat Jennings, Clear, and the man try to save her, but she is decapitated. This causes Eugene and Kat to believe. On the way to the hospital to find Isabella as she has gone into labor, Kimberly mentions how death is working backwards, Eugene, Kat, Rory, Thomas and Kimberly all mention how they have already avoided death once, and because of the reports of the deaths of the Flight 180 survivors, Clear realizes that death is trying to "seal the rift", as they should have been dead anyway if it wasn't for the late deaths of the Flight 180 survivors. There is suddenly a van coming up quick, KatClear, Thomas, Kimberly and Rory helps Eugene get into the hospital. swerved and so did the van (which had Isabella in), Kat's car swerves off the road a log impales the car trapping Kat, the car spins backward and a large sharp pipe narrowly misses Kat's head. Kat and the pipe that missed her head.Eugene although has had his lung punctured, and is rushed to hospital. Its at this point where Rory saves young man Brian Gibbons 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 Kat's car. Fire men work on getting Kat out of the car, but when a fireman attempts to remove the log with the jaws of life, the airbag is released, forcing Kat's head into the large sharp pipe, instantly impaling her. Dropping the cigarette she was holding , it blew into the pipe where the petrol was, causing it to ignite, and blowing up the news van. The explosion from the van sent some barbed wire in Rory's direction, cutting him into three. Thomas, Kimberly and Clear all go to the hospital, where Isabella's baby is born, thinkiBurke and Kimberly after Eugene's room blows up.ng they have defeated death, but Kimberly has another vision, and then realizes Isabella was never supposed to die in the pile-up. Clear then runs to find Eugene, 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. The explosion nearly kills Burke when a shelf flies in his direction, but is skipped when Kimberly pulls him down. Kimberly turns around to see the dead corpses of Clear and Eugene. Working off an earlier vision, Kimberly gets in a van and drives it into a lake, when she believes that she is the "New life". In the lake, she drowns, thus skipping Burke as she is the last in line. Doctor Ellen Kalarjian resuscitates hers, thus making her cheat death. Making her and Thomas the only survivors of deaths design as Kimberly cheated it. Invited by the Gibbons' to their house for dinner, they talk about how they are returning to normal life. This is when Mrs. Gibbons mentions how Brian was saved by Rory, Kimberly, and Burke look at each other, then the BBQ with Brian in front explodes, with his arm landing in front of Mrs. Gibbons. Then the credits roll.
The original movie was supposed to end with Kimberly and Officer Burke embracing in the hospital after Kimberly is revived.
Posters
There are 2 different posters, one featured the cast's face, and the other one is a cast poster. The first poster
The second poster The first poster featured 6 characters, from left to right: Kimberly, Eugene, Clear, Nora, Kat and Thomas. At the middle of the poster, right under Clear and Nora, there is a car with it's light flashing on a road. The car and its shadow makes it looks like a skull with its eyes flashing. There also a tagline at the top of the poster:"For every beginning there is an end". The movie's name "Final Destination 2" is under the cast, with all capital letters. This poster is mainly in black, except the cast's face are obviously over white.
The second poster is a cast poster, which also featured 6 characters, from left to right: Eugene, Kimberly, Clear, Thomas, Rory and Kat. Nora from the first poster didn't appear in this poster, and Rory replaced her. There is a skull face at the top of the background, and there are lighting too. Several buildings are seen next to Eugene and Kat, and the cast are seen standing on a road. The movie's name "Final Destination 2" is at the middle of the poster, with all capital letters. There also a tagline under the movie name: "You can't cheat death twice". This poster is mainly in dark blue and black, except the cast are in their normal color.
Trivia
The characters in this movie (with the exception of Shaina, Dano, Frankie, Evan, Tim and Nora), are somewhat involved or witnessed, the deaths of the characters in Final Destination.
The original script to Final Destination 2 revealed that Alex Browning and Clear Rivers both survived, and both decided to help Kimberly Corman save the survivors of the Route 23 pile-up. However, the idea was changed so that only Clear survived and Alex was written out and killed off in between movies.
Kimberly Corman 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 Tod Waggner's death when she should have been involved with the shooting.
Thomas Burke was originally supposed to die via a shootout, however he was called at the last minute to clean up the remains of Billy Hitchcock who was originally meant to die on Flight 180.
Kat Jennings 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 Terry Chaney, a survivor of the Flight 180.
Eugene Dix was originally meant to die via getting stabbed by a student, however, he was called to replace another teacher, who just died. The teacher he replaced was Valerie Lewton, the teacher who survived Flight 180 and the teacher of the students.
Rory Peters was originally meant to die when a play he was supposed to attend, collapsed, however he was too distracted by a sign that fell on a guy, the guy was Carter Horton who again, was a survivor of Flight 180.
This movie has the largest amount of explosion numbering five times of explosive scene.
Before Evan dies there are lots of signs showing how he will die, for instance: the doll in the hallway is missing its right eye, the fridge magnets spell out H-E-Y-E, and the H (signifying the ladder) falls off, leaving the word "eye" and lastly he has just bought an 'i' mac computer.
When Kimberly blocks the off ramp she sees a road works sign reading 'Next 180 feet'. The car crash at the farm occurs next to the 180 marker (according to the cop reporting it). These are both references to Flight 180, the plane that crashed in FD1.
In the morgue you can see Tony Todd wearing Evan's diamond studded Rolex.
When the people are on the on-ramp, you can see Eugene turn off his motorcycle and look at his keychain. It is an unlucky thirteen.
When Kimberly leaves the room that Clear is locked up in one shot shows her in the video camera giving Clear the finger, if you look at the rest of the hallway it looks like a road.
At the beginning of the movie, notice when the camera is scanning over all of Kimberly's belongings on her desk, there is a book that says 'Road Trip" with a keychain over the T reading 'Road rip'.
In the beginning, when Kimberley wakes up suddenly, listen carefully. You can hear Tony Todd (the guy at the morgue) saying "Kimberly".
When Tim is about to get crushed by the pane of glass if you'll look the pattern of bricks he is standing on form a giant X that he is ironically standing right in the middle of.
At the beginning, in the scene in Kim's bedroom, the plane on her bed side table is the same one from Alex's bedroom in the first Final Destination.
In the beginning, Kimberly and her friends pass a bus in her car. The people in the bus are yelling 'pile-up,' which foreshadows the imminent car crash.
Just before Nora goes into the elevator, the floor light shows a down arrow and a 3. Unlucky 13.
If you listen to the song playing in the elevator, it is Rocky Mountain High by John Denver, the song from FD1.
The anchorwoman on the news is in real life a news reporter for a Vancouver TV station. (Final Destination 2 was filmed in Vancouver.)
Death only realized Isabella was never going to be in the crash when Kimberly did. Not true, she was never targetted at all, Death just made it look like she was so that Kimberly and the others were off guard and easier to kill.
Glitches
In Kimberly's vision of the pile-up, she turned on the radio to the station 104.9 that mentioned a memorial for the Flight 180 tragedy. After her vision ends, Kimberly turns on the radio to hear the same thing she heard in her vision; except now it's 94.9.
After Kimberly has the vision of the pile-up, she pulls her car across the on-ramp. She is still behind the concrete separator, so how did the truck actually hit her car later on? There was no evidence that the concrete was ever there. The truck got her cleanly.
When Evan is going to die, the beer bottle he takes out of the fridge moves all over the place. It even vanishes a couple of times.
When Rory gets cut into thirds, in the background you can faintly hear someone cheer and say beautiful, perhaps because the stunt went so well.
In the final scene where the gas grill blows up, the arm that falls to the table in front of the mother is not from a teenager - it is nearly twice as large as the young man's arms (as previously seen in multiple scenes). Some people say it's a leg, but if that's so it's a bit odd having fingers on the right side of it...
When Timmy gets killed by the falling plate glass watch carefully and you will see the foam representation spring back up.
When Evan comes into the flat and walks towards the window, pay attention to the sink, there is a red cup or something in it. However when his arm gets stuck in it, there is nothing red in the sink, and there was no time for him to take anything out of the sink.
When the officer is looking at the pictures of the Flight 180 survivors and their deaths afterward, notice that Todd is shown still struggling at the ropes and looking into the camera. Apparently the media thought it would be better to take a picture of Todd as he was committing "suicide". A similar incident occurs with the bus accident picture. The girl is obviously splattered in the first movie, but appears to have mostly leg damage in the pics.
When the camera shows the coffee cup in the cop's car, you can see the ignition is in the off position.
Flight 180 was due on May 13. In FD-2, when the survivors of the car accident are reminiscing how they had managed to cheat death in their past, Kat Jennings says that last May she was supposed to die at some hotel of the gas leak but she didn't get there as the bus she was on hit Terry Chaney. It couldn't happen in May, because Terry was present at the memorial opening which took place 39 days after the air crash. So she couldn't die earlier than in June.
When you see Clear take off her wristband in her padded cell she drops it on the floor. If you look very very closely at the date on the top right of the newspaper, it says Friday March 15. If that were the day before it would have been March 14 which would be the exact year after 180 crashed. In the first film in the opening credits, Alex's flight ticket says 13 May.
When Kat is driving the survivors and they crash into the field, they slow to a stop while spinning - there is no way the car would travel backwards with the speed that it appears to in the next shot.
During the highway pile-up Rory's car barrel rolls in slow motion over an unmanned camera, during this shot you can see the cannon on the bottom of the car used to flip it. Then in the very next shot you see the car barrel roll from a different angle and the unmanned camera from the first shot is visible. It doesn't look like a typical camera, its disguised as debris, but it would not be there had the slow-mo shot not been filmed.
The cop has a badge, but New York state police don't wear badges.
In the pileup scene, Kimberly drives for several minutes for a very long distance. But after the vision, the pileup appears to be only a few miles away. This is because, in Kimberly's premonition, she attempted to pull into the right lane (A cop had been behind her) and she almost rammed into the log truck, so the truck would have a couple of more miles to go before the logs fell out.
The film received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reports 47% of critics gave the film positive write-ups based on 107 reviews, with an average rating of 5 out of 10. It's consensus is, "This sequel is a little more than an excuse to stage elaborate, gory scenes of characters getting killed off." While most praised it for its special effects and inventive death sequences, some dismissed it as being 'an average sequel to an average movie'. Nevertheless, this film has received the second highest score amongst the five films in the franchise on Rotten Tomatoes, the first being Final Destination 5 with a score of 61%. In Metacritic website the movie scored an unfavorable 38 based on 25 reviews and the third highest rating of Final Destination series. The First is Final Destination 5 with 50% and Final Destination 3 with 41%.
The film has landed on many "best car crash/accidents" lists including one by New York Magazine which cited the highway pile-up scene as the greatest car crash in movie history, calling it "the new gold standard for car-related chaos in cinema". Even acclaimed director Quentin Tarantino was quoted as saying that the opening scene was "a magnificent car action piece". The highway pile up was nominated for "Best Action Sequence" at the 2003 MTV Movie Awards.
