Movie Review: ‘Final Destination Bloodlines’ Depicts Death As A Birthright

Directors: Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein
Writers: Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor
Stars: Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Tony Todd

Synopsis: Plagued by a violent and recurring nightmare, a college student heads home to track down the one person who might be able to break the cycle of death and save her family from the grisly demise that inevitably awaits them all.

Marcus Aurelius was dead long before the Final Destination franchise was even a scribbled note in creator Jeffrey Reddick’s notebook, but his idea that “death smiles at us all” is an unofficial pillar of the horror mainstay that has entertained audiences for the better part of 25 years. What’s missing is the idea that “all a man can do is smile back,” for as one or more characters in the series’ now six films love to say, “Death doesn’t like it when you fuck with his plans.” The Grim Reaper himself, hood and scythe and all, isn’t so much a character in these gory romps as he is a constant, the idea of a shadow lingering over his next many victims rather than a literal shadowy figure. But his ploy tends to be the same: Cheat death, and you’ll soon meet your maker, always in the order that was initially intended when your plane fell out of the sky, or your roller coaster came undone at its hinges, or the bridge on which your corporate retreat bus sat was moments away from crumbling beneath you.

The franchise’s newest feature, Final Destination Bloodlines, is not only the first in almost 15 years, but the first flick out of the lot to change up its tried-and-true formula, if only just. What tends to occur in the opening scenes of a Final Destination film is a massive calamity that takes the lives of most, if not all of the main characters we’ve been previously introduced to through overwritten banter and vague flirtation that hints at who’s in a relationship with who, only to reveal that said disaster was a premonition. One of the characters has inexplicably seen the future, and it’s not bright; they then do their best to remove their pals from the soon-to-be dire situation, typically succeeding and leading to the disruption in Death’s chain of kills. At the onset of Bloodlines, we’re transported back to the late 1960s, where Iris (Brec Bassinger) and her boyfriend Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) are hoping to enjoy a fancy dinner at the Skyview, a new restaurant that – you guessed it – sits in the sky, as if the Seattle Space Needle had a fine dining establishment on its top floor. A series of troubling signs stick out to Iris, including a creaky elevator, 50-too many dancers on the restaurant’s glass floor (on which they stomp to the tune of the Isley Brothers’ “Shout!,” and a chandelier that looks all-too eager to fall from the ceiling. 

The only difference here is that the ensuing carnage isn’t so much a premonition as it is a nightmare, one that Iris’ granddaughter, Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), has been repeatedly jolted awake by, much to the disdain of her roommate. What Stefani can’t seem to figure out is why exactly she is plagued by this recurring terror; it’s only later that the gaps in our knowledge are filled in, most notably the fact that Iris’ night atop the Skyview actually happened, and though she saved a number of people prior to the disaster, Death eventually made up for lost time, killing them in the same order they were meant to die during the rooftop’s collapse. We get to see the event in full, thankfully; after all, this is a Final Destination movie, and one of those can’t go too long without a number of grisly kills, hypothetical or not. But that it didn’t happen as advertised in Bloodlines’ prologue is precisely what starts the domino effect of the film’s real-time tragedies, each passing one more grisly than the last. 

Bloodlines’ trailers and marketing materials have teased a number of setpieces – from a backyard barbecue gone wrong to one character’s closing duties at the local piercing parlor becoming more than he bargained for when he took the job – but there’s plenty more to enjoy, depending on how sick your taste is (and how much you can withstand before getting sick all over the theater floor). This, of course, has always been the draw to Final Destination, the aggressive, ridiculous nature of its many deaths and accidents. But where Bloodlines finds its true stroke of brilliance is in how it views death as a birthright, a genuine form of generational trauma that waits for the opportune time to strike. Iris escaped death, and has continued to avoid it for decades, not least because she’s spent most of that time hidden in a hut, estranged from her family. That doesn’t mean her family members will be so lucky.

As ever, the actors that play these sons, daughters, grandchildren, and nieces/nephews aren’t exactly worldclass, but the point of the Final Destination franchise is that they don’t have to be. The main attraction has always been (and will forever be) the gore-filled hijinks, like when blood spurts from a face that has been chewed up by a lawn mower or a metal rod goes flying through one’s eye socket. (These movies tend to love a good decapitation, or something adjacent and still involving the skull.) Credit to co-directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, the former of which being a special effects artist whose insight on that front have clearly been put to good use here despite the overreliance on digital blood and guts, a frustrating trend in modern horror that persists here. Nevertheless, they take what Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor have laid out on the page and bring it to splattered, bone-crunching life, often in ways that previous Final Destination entries have failed to explore. 

Where the franchise’s other films were more interested in how easily dimwitted high schoolers could be lured into Death’s clutches – whether they came in the form of a tanning bed or a public pool drain – Bloodlines is curious in multiple ways, from how a magnetic MRI machine could become a death trap to what it might actually look like for a group of people to come together in a collective effort to stop Death in his tracks. (The late, great Tony Todd also plays a part in furthering their unenviable quest, a fitting send-off for an actor whose sinister demeanor was always a calling card.) That said group is a family makes Bloodlines’ proceedings much more intriguing; not only does it provide us with something worth investing in, but it makes the characters inherently invested in one another. The teenagers and 20-somethings from past Final Destination offerings have almost always eventually given up on one another, either by rejecting the main character’s psychic episodes or by prioritizing their own survival over the inevitable demise of others. When it’s your brother or cousin on the chopping block, the stakes are higher. Even Bloodlines’ black sheep, the tattoo-covered Erik (Richard Harmon), becomes a sympathetic figure, one who is as eager to ensure his brother’s safety as he is to tempt Death at every turn.

And though it’s likely that no one who finds these flicks entertaining is itching for them to contain some heart, Bloodlines offers just enough of that thematic device to add an interesting, unforeseen wrinkle to its narrative. Final Destination’s emotional stakes tend to start and stop with the unconvincing relationships between its vaguely-attractive D-list stars, but to ask “wouldn’t you be scared if your family member was guaranteed to perish in a matter of days?” is as much a feat of genius as the franchise’s willingness to send a log through a character’s face when you least expect it. Lipovsky and Stein clearly understood their assignment here, that being to add a few new gadgets to its wheel, not to reinvent it. In that sense, the co-directors are a bit like Death: The way he strikes comes in various ways, but the result is always the same. Ditto for Final Destination; this execution, though, should be the blueprint moving forward.

Grade: B