The walk home after a Final Destination movie is rife with anxiety. Is that jagged beer can in the street about to be catapulted into my neck by a sudden breeze? And why is that construction worker up ahead… carrying a power tool?!
Originally an X-Files spec script by Jeffrey Reddick — inspired by a news story about a woman that got off a plane after her mother had a premonition — each Final Destination film revolves around a bunch of foolish kids trying to outrun death’s devious dice rolls. While predictable and gawky in that 2000s teen horror way, the series has always thrived on its paranoia-inducing formula: turning the seemingly mundane into the murderously absurd.
If 2011’s Final Destination 5 brought us full circle to the first film, directing duo Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (Freaks, 2018) take us back to where it all began, with an ambitious sixth instalment that’s dutifully disgusting.
We begin in 1968, where a primped and pregnant Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger) and her partner Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) arrive at the newly opened Skyview Restaurant — a space age skyscraper resembling a UFO balanced on a terrifyingly tall Tam Tam stool. We already know this won’t end well…
Never one to be subtle, death soon sets its plans in motion as windows rattle, glass floors begin to crack, and an insufferable little kid chucks a coin off the roof. The result is all-out fiery carnage in which everyone — including Iris — gruesomely perishes.
But unlike the franchise’s usual opening premonitions, we next wake up in 2025, as Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), a college student plagued by recurring nightmares about her estranged grandmother (Gabrielle Rose). After tracking Iris down at a remote safe house in the woods, she learns that her visions are not just echoes of Iris’s past, but also a symptom of a family curse that won’t stop until their entire bloodline is wiped out.
At a time when generational trauma has become a hallmark of horror, you might be tempted to question: have the premonitions always been symbolic of our self-fulfilling cycles of fear and destruction? But don’t over analyse this — all Final Destination: Bloodlines really asks of us is to cheer at some heads getting splattered and have a good time.
Indeed, this might be the most self-aware franchise entry, with Lipovsky and Stein leaning into the previous films’ tropes to pay homage, subvert expectations, and ramp up the gore and goofiness. Central to this are the “new fear unlocked” death traps, and they’re played out here in creatively sick fashion — one involving a super-magnetic MRI machine and nipple piercings easily enters the canon of all-time great Final Destination deaths.
The best thing about Bloodlines, however, is its period-set premonition that develops into an interconnecting, lore-expanding premise. You see, when Iris saved everyone at the Skyview Restaurant on that fateful day, it created one hell of a list for death. Those traps? They take time. And during that time, the doomed survivors had families, and those families had families — some of whom died from plane crashes and log trucks, wink wink.
We also get long-awaited context for mortician William Bludworth, played with delicious drawl by the late Tony Todd in his final role. After explaining to Stefani’s family that their only options for survival are to take another’s life, or to die and be resuscitated, he snarls: “If you fuck with death and lose, things can get very messy.” Everyone should see the film for this scene alone.
But Bloodlines’ bold ideas are also its downfall. The plot moves at such a hurried pace to contain it all, the opening spectacle quickly dwindles into slushy shenanigans and rushed exposition — at one point Stefani devours Iris’ big scrapbook filled with potential deaths (only one book — seriously?) to create a Pepe Silvia-style timeline of events.
By the third act, it feels like death has lost all inspiration, as janky CGI deaths are crammed in quick succession to no real satisfying conclusion.
Then again, the strength of a Final Destination film has always rested on the creativity of its death play, and it mostly excels here. It’s also always been a very silly franchise — a quality that Bloodlines fully embraces by intensifying death’s slasher persona while acknowledging the ridiculousness of navigating the world as a trap: “Stay away from that tree trimmer!”
It’s also bolstered by the characters of cousins Bobby (Owen Joyner) and Erik (Richard Harmon), who have some of the funniest asides in the movie — like sipping from a mug that says “show me your kitties”. Honourable mention must also go to Paco the micro turtle and his stellar pineapple eating.
Much like the victims of the films, horror franchises rarely recognise when their number’s up. This year alone we’ve got revivals of I Know What You Did Last Summer, Saw XI, and Idle Hands. But Bloodlines at least tries to do something new while paying fan service, reminding us there’s still plenty of laughs (and groans) to be found in its anxiety-inducing chaos.
After all, sometimes you just want to scream with an audience at a man’s head being chewed up by a lawnmower — because, as William Bludworth reminds us: “Life is precious. Enjoy every second. You never know when…”
Final Destination: Bloodlines is out in cinemas now.
