It’s now 25 years since Fly 180 departed JFK airport bound for Paris and promptly blew up above the New York skyline. In the interim, countless unfortunate souls have perished at the hands of the Final Destination franchise in myriad creative ways. Logs, lifts, pool drains and tanning beds are just a few of the unlikely culprits for some of the most memorable on-screen deaths in New Line Cinema’s long-running death-obsessed series, which last received an instalment in 2014. But the sick souls who love watching death at work can finally rejoice: he’s back and more bloodthirsty than ever.
Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein serve as co-directors – a duo hitherto best known for their work of 2018’s indie thriller Freaks and, er, the live-action Kim Possible film. But they’re joined by Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor on script duties, with Busick having had a hand in numerous recent horror smashes including Ready or Not, the 2022 Scream reboot, and last year’s vampire home invasion breakout Abigail. But for all the slight unknown quantities at play with Bloodlines, there was one green flag from the off: the return of franchise totem Tony Todd, who sadly passed away in 2024 from cancer, after production had wrapped.
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Todd returns as William Bludworth, the baritone coroner who has a storied history with death, one of the few people within the Final Destination universe who understands the rules of the sick and twisted game. His role here is small, but brings with it a sense of poignancy, not least because it seems like a fitting tribute to a horror icon (and decidedly more than he was afforded by the Academy during this year’s Oscars In Memorium).
But from the old to the new: Bloodlines opens on a sky-high restaurant in 1968, as a young couple attempt to score a table. If you know anything about Final Destination, it’s that the opening scene of the film will always unravel into gory chaos, and that’s very much the case here. (No prizes for guessing how a restaurant with a glass floor atop a needle-thin tower might be a prime setting for some carnage.)
We smash cut to the present, as college student Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) awakens screaming from a recurring nightmare. Deeply disturbed by her hyperrealistic gory dreams, she sets out to uncover some tragic familial history, alongside her younger brother Charlie (Teo Briones) and cousins Erik (Richard Harmon), Julia (Anna Lore) and Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner).
Let’s not beat around the bush. If you’ve seen any (or all) of the Final Destination films, you probably know that they follow a certain formula. The perverse pleasure that comes from these films is rooted in their familiarity. Death is always coming, when just don’t know how or when. As the Final Destination films have piled up like so many bodies, so has the Rube Goldberg machine quality of their executions. Here even a humble leaf blower becomes a harbinger of doom.
There’s no hope of Final Destination: Bloodlines converting any franchise agnostics – this is a supersize portion of what fans have come to know and love. Yet somehow, where fan service is usually considered a negative, here it feels affectionate and satisfying. There’s no Marvel-esque attempt to spin Final Destination out into various sub brands, and the humour remains as sick and twisted as ever. The acting too is ropey at best (aside from standouts Todd and Richard Harmon, as the sardonic tattoo artist Erik) but even that seems to work within the context of this schlocky delight. Be warned, though: you may never look at an MRI machine in the same way again.
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