‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ Is A Gorily Good Time

It’s been 25 years since Final Destination started traumatizing the world’s moviegoers with the dangers of daily life. These films are responsible for instilling many primal fears in millennials and Gen-Zers: see the harrowing plane sequence from the very first film, or the infamous logging truck scene from Final Destination 2 that’s wormed its way into the cultural consciousness.

Like many horror franchises, it’s easy to predict what’ll happen in a new Final Destination film. A character will have a horrible premonition of mass casualties and escape it, causing the never-seen but always malevolent entity of Death to show how easy it is for everyday objects to become Rube Goldberg machines that turn people into viscera.

The latest entry in the series, Final Destination: Bloodlines certainly doesn’t do anything to radically change the structure the series is known for. Yet by shifting its perspective from the usual random group of teenagers to an extended family, Bloodlines has a surprisingly strong thematic throughline, even if its story is still ultimately a vehicle for creating absurd scenarios for people to die in.

Stefani (a great Kaitlyn Santa Juna) is a straight-A college student wracked with a terrible vision of death that she thinks features her estranged grandmother Iris at a young age (Brec Bassinger). As she starts investigating her vision, she discovers that her dream is the same premonition that Iris had that helped her save hundreds of people from an early demise in a tower accident.

It turns out Death has been eventually tracking down everyone who was supposed to die in that accident throughout the years, as well as their descendants. After reconnecting with and then witnessing her now elderly grandma’s death, Death turns its gaze to the rest of Stefani’s family.

New story, same Final Destination approach

The family angle is what sets Final Destination: Bloodlines apart from the rest of its franchise, having a surprising amount to say about how we’re our parents’ children. After Iris saves all those people from their dooms, she becomes obsessed with avoiding death to the detriment of her children Howard and Darlene, who is Stefani’s mum.

That knocks on into Stefani’s life as Darlene abandons her and Charlie (a surprisingly good Teo Briones), her brother. Only in the literal face of Death is this family able to reconnect and be honest with one another as they’re picked off one-by-one by forces out of their control.

Speaking of, the excellent kills in Final Destination: Bloodlines are both highly creative and gruesome in their execution. It’s amazing how much tension this franchise can build out of characters simply being alive, with every moment they exist in the world showcasing another way they could die horribly.

Bloodlines is no different in this regard. The first major setpiece in the past with young Iris preventing a major tower accident is one of the most acrophobic bits of filmmaking I’ve ever seen, while the deaths in the modern day focus particularly on modern domestic anxieties.

Highlights include a family BBQ rife with potentially fatal consequences, a hilarious sequence in a tattoo parlor and an absurdly entertaining hospital ward scene that shows off the creativity of directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein.

Bloodlines doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but improves upon it

But despite having an uncharacteristically strong script for one of these films, Final Destination: Bloodlines makes no excuse about prioritizing creative kills above all else. As a result, it inherits the abjectly nihilist viewpoint of the franchise; a fact that could be a massive draw or turn-off depending on your own interests.

The late, great Tony Todd (a Final Destination veteran as William Bludworth) makes his final film appearance in a cameo midway through the film in a scene where he tells Stefani and her family to enjoy the time that they have left. While a genuinely poignant scene thanks to the context of Todd’s recent passing, it echoes the grim thesis of these movies that everyone dies when they’re supposed to.

That theme might be what you love about Final Destination, that Death is inevitable even if you stave it off for a while. But the way the films conclude with that message can leave me personally feeling a bit unsatisfied or bummed out, and Bloodlines doesn’t change that.

Still, you can’t knock the latest Final Destination for sticking closely to its franchise modus operandi. Bloodlines is a gorily good time that doesn’t seek to reinvent the wheel but improve upon it by shifting its perspective to a completely new set of characters… and slaughter them in a variety of newly gnarly ways.

★★★

Final Destination: Bloodlines is in cinemas now.