The 'Final Destination' Log Truck Scene That Haunts Millennials To This Day
Final Destination 2 was perhaps not the most well-received horror sequel in history, but there is no denying that the log truck scene is iconic. It's about three minutes of death and explosions that all begins with one simple, and not unbelievable, thing: the rope holding the logs to a truck snaps, sending them rolling off the back of the truck and onto the highway.
The scene of Kimberly's premonition, as well as the pile-up that occurs after it, feels as realistic as it is horrifying. Anyone who spends much time on the internet would be hard-pressed to say they had never seen a log truck scene meme, and Millennials typically tweet about it any time there is an accident in real life that even remotely involves a truck carrying logs.
The Final Destination log truck scene is arguably one of the best in the franchise. Many even call it one of the scariest horror movie scenes of all time - but why is this particular scene so unshakable?
The Route 23 Pile-Up Premonition
Final Destination 2 begins with a premonition, much like the original does, except that this one involves a massive pile-up instead of a plane explosion. The iconic horror scene begins with Kimberly making a series of not great, but mostly innocuous observations that lead her to feel uneasy. But things really go wrong when Kimberly's friends get scared after seeing a cop car behind them, because they're smoking weed in the car. She tries to quickly cut into a different lane, but almost runs into a giant truck carrying wood. In a moment of panic, her friends toss the still-lit joint out the window. It lands on the car of another woman - who is already distracted smoking and talking on her cell phone while driving - and it ignites the dried leaves in her windshield.
The state trooper ends up driving right behind the truck full of giant, heavy logs, and when his hot coffee spills, he isn't looking up in time to see the cord holding the logs on the truck snap, sending them flying right into his car. In one of the most brutal scenes in the film, a log flies directly into the state trooper's windshield, coming out the other end, taking pieces of him with it. Then a motorcyclist is killed by his own bike, before another man's car is absolutely eviscerated by a semi-truck crashing right through it.
The business woman's SUV flips upside-down after running into one of the fallen logs, and then a teen boy screams at his mother to hit the breaks, but she cannot, and they crash into another car. The lot of them burst into flames. Another man crashes his loud sports car into a truck in the middle of the road, and it explodes, but doesn't immediately kill him. Kimberly's truck also flips after running into a log, and she and her friends are trapped, upside-down, still strapped in with their seatbelts. Unable to move, she cries watching the man in the sports car screaming and desperately trying to take off his seatbelt to escape the flames in his car. Finally, another massive semi-truck flies through, crashing into and killing them all.
The Clues In Kimberly's Vision
There are a number of clues before the crash, in addition to the ones Kimberly sees in her premonition. Let's break them down.
When Kimberly is pulling out of her driveway, you can see that her car was leaking transmission fluid on the ground, and it looks like a pool of blood. Kimberly comes to a quick stop, breaking hard, at one point, and her friend teases her, “Easy Kimmy - first year driving?” Her father tries to warn her, but she and her friends brush it off. Next, a school bus of athletes drives by with a sign that says "Demolish The Mustangs," with the word "demolish" highlighted in red. The boys are chanting, “Pile up! Pile up!”
Then Kimberly turns on the radio, and the first thing she hears is a broadcast about a candlelight vigil marking the one-year anniversary of the explosion of Flight 180 (which was the accident Alex Browning avoided in the first film). She tries to skips to a new song, and "Highway to Hell" comes on. She's briefly distracted by a blonde guy in a sports car who drives by revving his engine loudly, showing off.
When Kimberly tries to cut over to the right lane, she almost hits the log truck, forcing it to swerve, perhaps leading to the snapping of the support cord. She wants to pull over and check the car, because the check engine light comes on, but her friends just think she is being paranoid because her dad was. However, she continues to feel uneasy as she notices that the man driving the Hice Pale Ale truck next to them is drinking a beer.
What Ends Up Happening In The Route 23 Pile-Up
Kimberly snaps back to reality after her premonition, just to hear her friend say, “Easy Kimmy - first year of driving?” just as he had in her vision. The school bus full of athletes passes them again, chanting, “Pile up! Pile up!” Those were enough signs to make Kimberly freak out. But her friends don't believe her, so she turns on the radio, and agains hears the news about the candlelight vigil. When she changes the station, it again plays “Highway to Hell.”
Her friend tells her, “green means go, Kimmy,” and she starts to, but only to turn her SUV so that she can block anyone from getting off the on-ramp and onto the highway. This garners the attention of the state trooper, who is saved from that ghastly demise by Kimberly's blockade. He makes her step out of the vehicle, and at this point, everyone thinks she is crazy. The log truck that started the accident passes by, and Kimberly says it's going to cause a big crash - which it does. When she sees the “180” lit up on a flashing road sign, Kimberly knows she is right. That is the same number of the flight that exploded in Final Destination. The state trooper manages to pull Kimberly away, right before the semi-truck crashes into her SUV, killing all of her friends. A news broadcast later confirms that the pile-up killed 18 people.
What Makes This Scene One Of The Scariest In Horror History?
The brilliance of Final Destination, the reason it is so frightening as a premise - aside from the fact that you can't fight death - is that many of the fatalities stem from accidents that hypothetically could happen. There may not be a large chance of them occurring, but of all of the catastrophes that start Final Destination films, a massive pile-up on the highway caused by a log truck definitely could, and has.
It's become a popular internet meme, because there isn't a millennial who has seen Final Destination 2 who doesn't immediately think of that scene whenever they see a truck carrying logs. The two most common memes are images of cars driving behind a log truck, with a caption like, "I haven't seen Final Destination 2" and ones talking about how deeply the scene affected viewers, with captions like, "It's crazy how Final Destination 2 made an entire generation of people terrified of driving behind logging trucks."
In a reddit thread with over two thousand comments, and more than six thousand up or down votes, the OP asked, "Has any single kill in a horror movie had more real-life impact than the log truck kill in Final Destination 2?" The only other film mentioned with any frequency in the responses was Jaws, which made people afraid of sharks, oceans, etc.
The scene is so well-done because unlike any of the wild deaths in Final Destination 4 - like a woman having a rock shot through her eye socket by a lawnmower - the highway collision is not that unlikely. Driving a car on a highway is also an activity that is a lot more common for a lot more people. Not everyone goes to auto racing tracks or theme parks, drives on bridges with any regularity, or can afford the luxury of international travel, but most people drive cars. It's also not uncommon to see large trucks on the road, some of which carry logs. Of the many ways to go in horror movies, this is one of the more realistic ones.
The scene also lingers on each victim. The premonition sequences are typically quick, and they're always brutal, but you can't always see everyone's faces, or watch them struggle to unbuckle their seat belt while engulfed in flames. The log truck scene still moves fast, but every action makes sense. Every flip of a car has an obvious action before it that led to that happening. It's just all so... plausible.
This piece was originally published on Ranker.com.
