Final Destination: Bloodlines (dirs. Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein)
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 110 mins
UK Distributor: Warner Bros
UK Release Date: 14 May 2025
WHO’S IN FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES?
Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Anna Lore, Gabrielle Rose, Rya Kihlstedt, Alex Zahara, April Telek, Tinpo Lee, Tony Todd, Max Lloyd-Jones, Brec Bassinger
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (directors), Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor (writers), Toby Emmerich, Dianne McGunigle, Craig Perry, Sheila Hanahan and Jon Watts (producers), Tim Wynn (composer), Christian Sebaldt (cinematographer), Sabrina Pitre (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A family finds itself stalked by Death and its meticulous methods…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES?
If the Final Destination franchise has proved anything in its six films over the past twenty-five years, it’s that Death is kind of a meticulous prick. It’s one thing to off certain people who avoided its grasp thanks to some oddly specific premonitions, but to do so in the most elaborately complex ways that often border on pure Wile E. Coyote cartoon machinations seems like literal overkill. In that sense alone, Death arguably outperforms many other iconic slasher villains like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger because not only does Death almost always get away with it, but its perfectly timed methods make it that much more of a sadistic dickhead.
Yet even Death has a way of outdoing itself, for its grand return to the big screen in Final Destination: Bloodlines features perhaps some of the franchise’s nastiest moments, made even more so by the fact that it isn’t just high school kids it’s messing with this time, but an entire family – and nobody, not even the youngest possible victim, is safe. Which, in a lot of ways, also makes it one of the most sadistically entertaining entries to date.
The film, from directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, follows the familiar Final Destination formula almost down to a tee, with the inciting incident this time taking place in the 60s, when young Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger) has a grim vision of her and several others plummeting to their deaths from an accident-ridden skyscraper, which she manages to prevent in the nick of time. Cut to several years later, when Iris’s granddaughter Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) begins having nightmares of that very unrealised incident, and upon returning home from college to find answers she discovers that Death has put her and her family – who were never supposed to exist – on its extensive hit list. And boy, does it follow through in the cruellest and goriest of fashion.
Even for a franchise that prides itself on its over-the-top kills, Final Destination: Bloodlines contains death scenes that go well beyond the realm of ridiculousness. The standout opening sequence alone is relentless in its brutality, with not even children being safe from a whole variety of death traps from being set ablaze to being squashed by falling pianos, and it doesn’t stop there as you’ll come away with new fears of body piercings, MRI scanners and garbage trucks, to name a few. However, to the credit of both Lipovsky and Stein, as well as screenwriters Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor, they seem well aware of the fact that it’s all one big gory cartoon. The writers inject a knowing sense of dark humour amidst the carnage that’s in keeping with some of the other sequels, particularly the third one with its sitcom-esque characters and somewhat hilarious tanning bed demises, which the directors handle with an equal amount of self-awareness that only occasionally stops to wink at the camera, particularly whenever a reference to previous entries passes by.
Unlike most other Final Destination entries, there’s even a bit of heart to it – albeit one that’s slowly rotting like a piece of mouldy fruit. Since there is much more of a familial connection between the characters this time round, as opposed to them simply being another bunch of high-schoolers whose obnoxiousness almost makes you want to root for Death instead, the stakes feel rather personal, as you don’t necessarily want to see anyone here lose a father, or a cousin, or an estranged mother or grandmother, or anyone that would cause severe long-term trauma in this family should they be gruesomely offed. You feel their bond as they interact with one another as siblings or cousins tend to do, which makes it all the more emotionally painful when Death does indeed inflict its justice on them for the sole crime of merely existing, something that the filmmakers are keenly aware of and exploit as much as they can for the sake of morbid entertainment.
As a brief aside, there is also a truly moving send-off to the late Tony Todd as the mysterious James Bludworth, the franchise’s most recurring character and provider of much-needed exposition, who here does his job – the actor’s last, before his passing late last year – and exits with one hell of a final bow. Beyond the fact that it’s very emotional to see this genre icon flex his coolness one last time, the film even taps a little bit into the character’s backstory, which is sure to confuse the theorists who saw him as Death’s physical form but adds a neat little bit of franchise continuity, as well as giving this character and his actor a well-handled and genuinely respectful farewell.
As ever, not everything works. Some developments are predictable, especially if you’re familiar with these movies and the formula they’ve been working with for a quarter of a century, which can tamper with your overall enjoyment since you can see clear as day where certain things are going. A few of the characters also get a little irritating, particularly the ones that make decisions so bad that they end up make Death’s job a lot easier, and it doesn’t help that a couple of the performances aren’t especially great, though a handful certainly give it all they’ve got. Plus, as outrageous as the big set-pieces are, a lot of them are undermined by some glaring CGI gore that can distract from how legitimately gruesome they can get.
But any long-time Final Destination fan will certainly feel at home as the film doubles down on what they want to see in this series – namely a bunch of intricate Rube Goldberg killing machines ensuring people’s deaths in the most hilariously untimely of manners – and it might even win over some new viewers who may well have a thing for delightfully mean-spirited gore. Or, if nothing else, to watch Death be the colossal prick that he is.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Final Destination: Bloodlines revives the supernatural slasher franchise with some of the nastiest and meanest gore it has yet offered, and the grim ridiculousness of it all offers some morbid fun with even a touch of twisted heart.
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