Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)
Directed by: Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein
Premise: The sixth film in the Final Destination franchise. A contemporary college student (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) suffers repeated nightmares of a high-rise tower collapsing in 1968. She discovers that the dreams are a premonition shared by her grandmother.
What Works: The Final Destination series is a special effects show. The conceit of survivors stalked by death is mostly a framework to justify outrageous and gory set pieces. In most of these films the initial premonition scene is the signature piece and Final Destination: Bloodlines has one of the best of these. Set in 1968, a high-rise tower restaurant with a glass floor collapses in spectacular fashion. This is one of the most elaborate set pieces of the franchise. The sequence impresses not only in its carnage but also in the cinematic qualities of the scene. It’s well shot, exploiting fears of both heights and enclosed spaces, and the scene is effectively edited to draw out the suspense. Most of the Final Destination movies are about teenagers or young adult characters and while that’s true of the leads, Bloodlines adds novelty in its focus on a family. The grandmother evaded her fate and generations later death is still course correcting. Bloodlines also sees the return of series regular Tony Todd in one of his last on-screen performances before his death in 2024. Todd was clearly ill during the making of the film and his scene is actually quite poignant especially for an actor who was a fixture of this genre. The Final Destination films are technically horror but they also have an undeniable slapstick comedy element which Bloodlines plays up.
What Doesn’t: A lot of horror franchises follow a recognizable pattern such as the Saw, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, but the Final Destination series is even more nakedly formulaic than that. A few minor innovations aside, Final Destination: Bloodlines is more of the same. These movies are special effects shows and as that Bloodlines succeeds but there’s not much more to it. The repetition of the Final Destination films is a little harder to take because of the nihilism of the series. As the title implies, the Final Destination films are about fate and the inevitability of death. Nobody ever really survives and while there is truth in that nihilism, the sixth installment is still hitting the same beats. The series hasn’t developed any of its ideas since the first movie debuted twenty-five years ago.
Bottom Line: Final Destination: Bloodlines delivers what audiences look for in this franchise. It doesn’t do any more than that but Bloodlines is one of the better, and maybe the best, iteration of the Final Destination formula.
Episode: #1050 (June 1, 2025)