In recent months, I’ve gone back to catch up on a few long-running franchises that are getting new entries later this year. I didn’t bother for that with the Final Destination series. I watched the Kill Count videos and called it good.
I didn’t feel the least bit compelled to actually watch all the prior movies ahead of Final Destination: Bloodlines because continuity has never been a huge priority for this franchise. The only recurring character is William Bludworth (more on him later), who only pops in to briefly serve as the “creepy and foreboding guy who knows stuff” archetype. Aside from him, pretty much everyone in this series is either dead by the end of their movie or dies at some point in the next one.
Yes, there is one notable exception who gets name-dropped in the latest entry, but given the franchise track record, it’s highly unlikely she lived for much longer.
True to form, Final Destination: Bloodlines is very much a self-contained film that follows the established formula: Someone foresees a terrible calamity, deaths are averted with the knowledge of the premonition, and Death itself works through elaborate traps and improbable accidents to kill everyone who would’ve died and in the order they would’ve died. There are secrets and lies and retcons, everyone is dead by the end, and the more unlikeable characters aren’t killed nearly soon enough. Moreover, this one is self-contained to the point where the all-important Flight 180 never even gets a mention. Aside from the aforementioned passing nod to Final Destination 2, anyone could come into this movie with no prior knowledge of the franchise. And anyone who had already seen the first five movies could predict every plot beat with comfortable accuracy.
In the broad strokes, this is more of the same. But there are some neat little surprises in the fine details.
Our big opening premonition this time happens all the way back in 1968, with the opening of the Skyview Tower. What we’ve got here is a luxury restaurant/dance club with a mile-high view of the city. Trouble is, corners were cut in getting the place open five months ahead of schedule. The whole tower would’ve blown up and killed hundreds if it wasn’t for Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger), who saw the catastrophe in advance and arranged for everyone to get out of the tower.
Cut to the present day. Enter Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), the maternal granddaughter of Iris. Except that Stefani never met her estranged grandmother, and her mom walked out when Stefani was 10. And now Stefani is inexplicably having the same recurring nightmare… of Iris’ premonition.
Yeah, there’s something new.
For the uninitiated, there was this theory early on that death could be permanently cheated if a survivor went on to have kids (i.e. create new life). This was the premise for the deleted original ending of the first movie, and a failed attempt to beat Death in the second movie. Now, in the sixth movie, it’s firmly stated once and for all that idea was never going to work.
Turns out that in the intervening decades, Death has been killing off everyone who would’ve died in the Skyview disaster, and then killing off their progeny in turn. (Hundreds of people would’ve died at Skyview, so getting to them all took a while.) And after so many paranoid decades of seclusion, Iris (now played by Gabrielle Rose) is next on the list. Which means that as soon as she dies, it’s open season on her kids and grandkids.
In previous movies, the victim pool was pretty tightly limited to friends, coworkers, and the like. This time, we’ve got a Final Destination movie centered around a family unit. That changes everything. It means higher stakes by way of closer and more palpable connections between the characters, for one thing.
More importantly, it introduces so many fascinating themes of generational trauma and shared grief. It’s old hat in horror cinema for the other characters call our protagonist crazy, but when it’s Stefani’s blood relatives calling her crazy — as Stefanie herself and everyone else shunned her mother and her grandmother before her — there are so many additional layers of history and pain.
Best of all, this premise works nicely as a greater examination of security. In past entries (most notably the first), we’ve seen characters go to extreme lengths to try and make everything as safe and death-proof as possible, at the cost of their own sanity. Iris serves as the ultimate example of that, such an OCD paranoid shut-in that she’s been written off by her own family and all the rest of the world.
But now we’ve got that notion applied to the concept of parents who want to keep their children safe. And in these unthinkable circumstances, these parents and loved ones have to try and figure out how far is going too far in the interest of safety. Poignant stuff.
Which brings us to Mr. Bludworth. The late great Tony Todd is visibly ill throughout his brief appearance this time, and everyone involved clearly knew this would likely be the last time Bludworth (or Todd himself, for that matter) would appear on the screen. So while Bludworth only appears for a few short minutes, the filmmakers went all-out. They gave Bludworth a long-awaited origin story while also writing him out of the series in a classy and honorable way. The filmmakers even went so far as to let Todd speak directly to the fans for his last few lines of dialogue, and the end result is suitably heartbreaking. Keep on kicking ass in the afterlife, good sir.
Unfortunately, we’re still left without any answers as to what’s going on with the premonitions and why Death has been playing this game for so long. Yes, the unknowable mystique is part of the appeal, but it’s been six movies of the same repeating formula. At this point, we’re owed some answers. To paraphrase a wiser man, I don’t expect the filmmakers to tell us everything about what’s going on, but they can’t keep on telling us nothing!
The formula has grown so stale at this point that the characters are becoming self-aware. Seriously, that’s Iris’ whole deal. She devoted her life to micro-analyzing every possible way that anything could be fatally dangerous, and she passed all her notes on to Stefani. The upshot is that now we’ve got a protagonist who keeps actively looking for and (accurately) predicting every possible death trap. You know, as if she’s already seen all the previous movies!
I can appreciate how Final Destination: Bloodlines is a welcome shot in the arm for the franchise. I love how the elaborate deathtrap kills are still inventive and gory and fun to watch. I appreciate how the film is self-contained enough to welcome new viewers. I appreciate how the one-dimensional hate sinks are only limited to one or two and not the entire cast. Most of all, I love how the premise is used to explore death and grief and mortality in genuinely poignant and thoughtful ways.
My one major disappointment is in how rigidly it sticks to the same tired formula. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the previous five movies will know exactly how everything goes, and there’s nothing new here in terms of lore or backstory to satisfy the franchise faithful. (Except the origin story for Bludworth, and even that doesn’t really affect much in the bigger picture.)
That said, if the producers move ahead with any sequels, it’s a guaranteed certainty that something will have to change. We don’t even have to take the producers’ word for it — the one steadfast recurring character has been taken off the table. These new filmmakers brought something new and heartfelt and thought-provoking to the franchise, and I’d love to see if they can keep doing it with future entries. In the meantime, this is a fun little slasher in its own right and I’m happy to approve it.