Until yesterday, my favorite moment in the entire Final Destination series came in Final Destination 2, when Rory (Jonathan Cherry), a fairly stereotypical drug-addled burnout, asks Kimberly (A. J. Cook) to clear all of his drugs and porno out of his apartment when he almost inevitably predeceases her. “Anything that might break my mom’s heart”, he tells her. It’s a startling moment of vulnerability and truth in what’s basically a horror-comedy series, an acknowledgement that in the world of the film, these hilarious deaths, whether by logging truck, roller coaster, or malfunctioning escalator, are happening to real people with lives and loved ones.
The interesting thing about this is that the newest entry in the franchise, Final Destination Bloodlines is that moment, expanded over an entire film to the point that it balances all the wacky, gruesome deaths with actual emotion.
It worked for me (and if you like the series I think it’ll work for you) but it’s interesting that in our era of Tragic Origin Stories, morally-complex antiheroes, and Villains with Trauma, we get a Final Destination movie that feels like a real movie. The acting is great across the board, the relationships feel lived in, you care about the characters, and there are consequences. You can kind of see how the surviving characters will have to continue their lives around all the death.
This creates an interesting conundrum. The fun of Final Destination is cheering for Death. It’s watching all the Rube Goldberg machinations play out until a person dies in a way so brutal, so over-the-top, that the idea that they’re afraid or in pain becomes irrelevant. How can it work when you don’t want the characters to die?
In this case, the filmmakers doubled down on the deaths. These are some of the most complex, brutal deaths the series has ever given us—which again, in an era where some parts of the culture seem to be trending neo-puritan, it felt cathartic as hell to cackle with glee along with all the other people who were able to make it to a 3pm IMAX screening. (A surprising number of people!)
I don’t want to give anything away, obviously, but go in knowing that the elaborate tattoo parlor scene that was used for the initial trailer is like someone peacefully passing away in their own bed surrounded by loved ones compared to most of the deaths in the film. People are burned, impaled, squished, eviscerated, impaled some more… you know, the more I write about it the more I like it? Oh and they now hold the record for “oldest person set on fire for a movie”. My beloved colleague Natalie commented that the deaths had maybe gotten too gory for her, “too squishy”—on this we disagree, because I thought some of the deaths reached the heights of Fina Destination 2’s Logging Truck Extravaganza. (The logging truck is referenced in this one!) But it’s important to remember that there’s something wrong with me.
As for plot, Bloodlines slightly subverts some of its usual structure. Not by messing with the timeline/our heads, as some past entries have, but by building family history into it. There is of course a fabulous, horrifying multi-death setpiece early on in the film, as is standard for the series. But this isn’t a group of hapless teens or young adults thrown together by destiny: this is a family, with all the history, grudges, fissures, fierce love, and annoyances that come with that word.
This ups the stakes considerably as Stefani Reyes, the one person who can see Death’s design, races to protect loved ones, who don’t always believe her visions—and in some cases are actively hostile to her.
At least one character had what can only be called a cheeky and irreverent relationship with Death itself. (I desperately hope that this is a vision of my own future.) One of my only problems with the movie is that I think they could have used this element more—there are two characters who seem to have these relationships, where somehow they can see through the matrix coding and understand what Death is doing, and I think the movie would have been even stronger if they’d run with that idea more.
This entry in the series was written by Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor, working from a story they developed with Spider-Man director Jon Watts, and was directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, who apparently got the gig after staging an elaborate death prank during a Zoom call with the producers.
As I said, the acting is great across the board. Kaitlyn Santa Juana is an excellent lead, balancing Stefani’s plucky defiance of Death with her realistic trauma remarkably well. The prickly sibling relationship she creates with Teo Briones as her little brother Charlie is the heart of the film. Also shockingly sweet is the relationship between Stefani’s cousins, deadpan tattoo artist Erik (Richard Harmon) and much-more-uptight Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner), with Erik trying to protect his little brother from Death at all costs. Brec Bassinger and Gabrielle Rose are both fabulous as the younger and older versions of the family’s estranged matriarch.
And of course another thing that’s important to mention—carefully, so I don’t spoil it—is that this is one of the last performances the icon Tony Todd gave us before he passed away in 2024. (His appearance is my new favorite moment in the series.) The movie treats William Bludworth and his legacy in a startlingly real and emotional way, and I’m pleased to say that both his first appearance, and the film’s dedication to him, were met with applause in my theater.
This has been a surprisingly good year for movies already, and I’m delighted to tell you that even among a crowded field, Final Destination Bloodlines is a standout for a great time in the theater.