'Final Destination Bloodlines' Paints the Series' Silly Kills on Their Biggest Canvas Yet
The dark comedy franchise makes a welcome return after a 14-year absence.
The Final Destination movies are like skipping straight to desert. They’re slasher movies except the slasher is Death, and it’s so an unseen force who likes to take out his victims through elaborate Rube Goldberg-like projects where a series of little mishaps leads to a victim’s demise (or to a fakeout where the victim then dies suddenly in an unexpected way moments later). While the previous five installments have varied in how successful they’ve been in executing this premise1, it’s a concept that’s oddly evergreen because you’re not worried about mythology. It’s all about the kills and keeping the tone darkly comic. Final Destination Bloodlines understands what makes these movies work and then uses a bigger canvas to make the installment feel unique while never losing sight of the series’ zany charms.
In 1968, a young woman named Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger) has a vision of the newly opened SkyTower restaurant collapsing and killing everyone inside. Her glimpse of “death’s design” allowed her to save the hundreds of people on site. Cut to the present day, and Iris’ granddaughter Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is having nightmares of the SkyTower’s destruction. Unable to focus at college due to the nightmares, Stefani comes home looking for answers and discovers that over the decades, Death has killed not only everyone who was supposed to die in the SkyTower, but their descendants who never should have existed. The Grim Reaper has finally arrived at Iris’ family, and Stefani must race to save her brother, mother, uncle, and cousins before they’re brutally annihilated.
Similar to Final Destination 5, Bloodlines is well aware that having a comic approach makes these movies shine. Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein understand that while the characters may be terrified, the audience is there to be amused. We’re currently in an era where there’s no shortage of horror films designed to genuinely unnerve the audience (thanks, A24!), so it’s nice that we have Final Destination around to relish the splatter rather than searching for pathos. Although some action movies have taken up the mantle of memorable kills, nothing can quite compare to the elaborate ridiculousness of a Final Destination movie, where somehow a penny can lead to the deaths of hundreds of people.
That kind of bombast extends to the plot this time around. These movies have a loose set of “rules” in that Death comes after his victims in the order they were supposed to die, and Bloodlines applies that logic to a family tree, but it’s more interesting simply to change up the formula where our victims are not people who directly adverted disaster, but merely trespassed by existing. The big SkyTower disaster at the start of the film is as good as the memorable traffic collision from Final Destination 2, not only in the sense of unrelenting mayhem, but because transplanting the action to a different era makes the whole endeavor feel fresh and exciting. Similar to how Prey was able to give a much-needed jolt to the Predator franchise, there’s something to be said for doing more than bumping off a bunch of young, attractive people in the present day, even if that’s where Bloodlines eventually takes us. Should these movies continue, it would be nice to reset the entire picture to a period setting since Death isn’t constrained by time or place.
Thankfully, the picture keeps humming after the prologue with no shortage of creative kills. There are times when the whole plot feels a bit belabored as Stefani tries to convince her family that Death is coming for them, they brush her off, then a horrible kill happens, and then there’s more discussion before moving on to the next thing. I’m all for having connective plot tissue, but it should be noted that the previous five installments ran around a fleet-footed 90 minutes, and Bloodlines is almost two hours. The movie’s not a drag, but there are also places where it could tighten up a bit.
Still, it’s tough to mind a series that has reached the point where it can pause and respect the audience it has built over the last 25 years. That moment of recognition comes to a surprisingly emotional moment when our characters cross paths with the Bludworth (Tony Todd), the sinister mortician who appeared in three of the previous five movies. Todd, a horror legend not only from Final Destination but the Candyman movies, sadly passed away last November, and this was his final film. It’s weird for a series that can be so silly to hit a poignant moment, but it’s nice to see Todd receive a moment to basically take a bow before exiting stage right.
Given its popular legacy combined with a delightful little twist, I’m a little baffled that Final Destination took such a long hiatus, but Bloodlines shows there’s plenty of juice left in this series. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait another fourteen years for the next installment. As Bloodlines shows, Death knows how to stay busy.
2 and 5 are the best of the bunch, 1 and 3 are alright, and 4 is bad.