Title: Final Destination: Bloodlines
How Many “Final” Destination Movies Have There Been? Including this one, six. Which is still ten fewer than the number of Final Fantasy games.
Describe This Movie In One Final Destination 2 Quote:
BLUDWORTH: You can’t cheat Death. There are no escapes.
Brief Plot Synopsis: A warning about the consequences of defunding OSHA.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 3.5 Prince Alberts out of 5.
Tagline: “Death runs in the family.”
Better Tagline: “Technically, doesn’t it run in *every* family?”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: College student Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) has a recurring nightmare, in which her grandmother Iris (Brec Bassinger) attends the grand opening of the Space Needle SkyView tower, only to plummet to her death (along with everybody else) when it collapses. Understandably troubled, she learns from her uncle that Iris is living as a recluse. Stefani visits her and learns that while the tower did collapse, Iris’s premonition saved everyone there, and Death has spent the last few decades taking out the survivors and their descendants. And guess whose family is next on the list?
“Critical” Analysis: Of all the horror franchises asking the question: “what if there was an evil parallel universe version of Rube Goldberg?” — Final Destination is my favorite.
The formula for these is — as is the case with most horror series — a familiar one. First, you open with our apparent protagonists escaping an eye-catching disaster set piece like the collapse of the Skyview Tower (it doesn’t beat Death By Logging Industry from Final Destination 2, but it’s still a good one). Next, follow a pissed-off Grim Reaper as he picks off the survivors in innovative and gruesome ways. The remaining unfortunates will likely visit coroner William Bludworth (Tony Todd) before embarking on scheme to cheat Death that has a 99 percent chance of failure.
If you’ve seen even one of the previous five movies, none of that is spoiler territory.
Bloodlines introduces an interesting wrinkle to the usual chain reaction shenanigans; not only will Death go after your ass for escaping, but he’ll hunt down any offspring resulting from your survival. So in addition to being a real asshole, Death apparently has a lot of time on his hands.
The intent is to add actual emotional stakes we may not feel when dealing with what are usually a bunch of punk-ass teens. And to an extent, it works. Stefani’s family are sometimes hit — little brother Charlie (Teo Briones), cousin Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) — and sometimes miss — cousin Erik (Richard Harmon), mom Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt), who bailed when Stefani and Charlie were kids. Even so, some of these nigh inevitable deaths are more of a bummer than others.
What remains a mystery in this series is what exactly are Death’s limitations. Grandma Iris’s doomsday prepper cabin is somehow impervious to Death, except it really isn’t. Obviously, the more elaborate kills are more entertaining (and surprisingly goopy here), but the Reaper isn’t above simply dropping a pole (or a window, or a tree) on you.
The solution, at least as far as the directors (Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein) and writers (Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor) see it, is to engage the audience with out-of-nowhere kills that toe the line between hilarity and horror. Quite a few deaths in Bloodlines will elicit nearly as many laughs as gasps.
There’s more humor in other ways as well (as far as I remember, FD5 came out 14 years ago). Iris treats and talks to Death like an annoying roommate, while cousin Erik has an unorthodox response to being informed his family is doomed. Lipovsky and Stein also throw in a few red herrings in to go along with some semi-obscure callbacks.
Which brings us to the late, great Tony Todd.* His character, Bludworth, has an unexpected connection to Stefani’s family, and it’s worked into the story in a way that actually makes sense. Despite not appearing in the third or fourth movies, Bludworth is basically the heart of the Final Destination franchise, and they do right by him here.
Like its predecessors, Final Destination: Bloodlines makes the best out of a lack of big-name stars (does Brec Bassinger count? My perspective may be skewed because my kids were big Bella and the Bulldogs fans) and modest budget (it, like The Final Destination and Final Destination 5, cost $40 million). If it performs like previous installments — and there’s no reason to believe it won’t — Bloodlines likely won’t be the “final” entry.
*Todd completed filming his scenes before his death from stomach cancer in 2024, and the movie is dedicated to his memory.
Final Destination: Bloodlines is in theaters today.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
