Final Destination Bloodlines (dir. Adam B. Stein, Zach Lipovsky)

Director(s): Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein
Country: United States
Author: Guy Busick, Lori Evans Taylor, Jon Watts
Actor(s): Tony Todd, Brec Bassinger, Richard Harmon

Written by Tom Augustine

The best Final Destination film of the series’ initial decade-long run is Final Destination 3 (although, blasphemously, I haven’t seen 5), one of a handful of films that can genuinely be considered ‘post-9/11 cinema’. A cornerstone of the noughties, the series’ diabolical, Rube Goldberg-style exercises in bloodletting were a firm sleepover staple — nasty enough to generate that frisson of horror naughtiness, but cartoonish enough to avoid the X-rated notoriety of darker, more sadistic fare like the Saw and Hostel series. The Final Destination films were plenty mean in their own right, of course, but always with a cheeky wink to the audience, which invited them into the pleasure of the spectacle, rather than subjecting them to it. Final Destination 3 benefited from an exceptional lead performance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who has always deserved to be a bigger star, and one of the series’ most famous sequences, the uniquely horrific ‘tanning bed’ sequence that needs to be seen to be believed. It also, in its finale set in a rubble strewn subway accident in New York City, hearkened directly to the images seared into its audience’s brains from a few years previous. In its mournful despondence and characters loveable enough that we were sad to see them go, it was as close as Final Destination ever got to meaning something more than what it sold on the tin. Now, the best sequence of the Final Destination series is from the film previous, Final Destination 2 — the visceral logging-truck disaster sequence responsible for a generation’s-worth of nightmares (and the reason I still change lanes if I’m driving behind one on the motorway). Astonishing in its scale, brutality and shock-value, it captures all the things that make Final Destination tick in a tight five-minute package that will likely never be bettered.

At least, I believed that until I saw Final Destination Bloodlines, as exemplary a reboot of an existing franchise as I can remember, one that not just embraces what made the original films great but regularly improves upon them, while always maintaining that breezy-nasty alchemy in just-right proportions across a deeply satisfying two-hours of runtime. Granted, it is the first Final Destination I’ve had the pleasure of watching in a cinema, with a packed audience, which is an absolute essential for maximum enjoyment of the many gory surprises lurking within; but the fact that Bloodlines manages to at once feel utterly fresh and refreshingly old-fashioned is enough to leave me confident in my assessment that it is the series’ new high watermark. Part of what makes Ready or Not scribe Guy Busick and co-writer Lori Evans Taylor’s superb, circuitously-plotted script function as an affectionate throwback is the slightly different approach to the mechanics of death — as suggested by this edition’s subtitle Bloodlines. This time, instead of a group of friends being pursued by a nameless, faceless force beyond our conception, it is a family enduring a generational curse. With a deft hand, Bloodlines navigates themes of familial trauma and social anxiety, themes that have become heavy-handed shortcuts in lesser horrors, so that they feel seamlessly integrated into the fabric of the text, rather than overtly signposted. 

Kaitlyn Santa Juana stars as Stefani, who is the victim of recurrent nightmares of the almost-experiences of her family matriarch, long-absent grandmother Iris (Gabrielle Rose in the present, Brec Bassinger in the past), who narrowly escaped a terrible disaster atop a giant sky-needle in her twenties. Naturally, the way she escaped it was through a divinely-ordained premonition, in which she saw a brief glimpse of Death’s gnarly, gory grand design, as the needle’s under-foot reinforced glass splinters just as an air conditioning failure results in a huge gas explosion. Her intervention, saving the lives of countless people who then went on to reproduce and continue bloodlines that were never meant to exist, it is inferred, is the genesis of the Final Destination series itself (there are numerous ties and callbacks to other key facets of the franchise, best left uncovered here). As the wily Iris has long been able to evade Death’s clutches, her own family, which includes mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt), younger brother Charlie (Teo Briones), uncle Howard (Alex Zahara) and cousins Erik, Bobby and Julia (Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner and Anna Lore),  have been spared the incoming carnage — that is, until Stefani, sleepless with the visions she’s receiving, is compelled to reestablish contact with her mysteriously absent grandmother. 

Breathing new life into a long- dormant franchise, Final Destination: Bloodlines makes an exceptionally strong case for a new era in the iconic noughties horror series. A rock-solid script and likeable performances ensure a fresh take on the series’ established rules — all the while maintaining the essential mean streak that makes a Final Destination film such a devilishly good time.

Thus kicks off a slow twisting of fate, and fans will shiver with recognition at the return of the long-established visual language of Death’s presence in the lyrics of songs, gusts of wind, the passing of billboards or news headlines that portend doom, or the sudden pricking of a finger on the thorn of a rose. Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, best known for their small-scale horror film Freaks, keep a tight hand on the methodical release of carnage, rarely overplaying their hand or yielding to audience expectation. Bloodlines is aware that it’s the sixth in a well-established series, one whose reputation has ripened with time, and cannily avoids going where you think it will. Along the way, some truly spectacular bloodletting is in store, starting with that horrific, operatic opening sequence, which is sure to go down in Final Destination history in spite of occasional less-than-convincing visual effects. One of the most enjoyable aspects of a Final Destination film is the lull of quiet that comes after a massive kill, when the audience can only laugh or gasp in disbelief at what they’ve just witnessed. I’ve never been more acutely aware of that than after the opening scene of Bloodlines, which orchestrates a mass casualty event like a grandiose symphony, or perhaps like a hunter using every gory part of the carcass for sustenance. As the sky-needle disintegrates before our eyes, some plummet to their deaths, others burst into flames. Some are crushed by falling debris; others skewered by flagpoles, degloved by jutting nails, crushed by charging pianos. 

It is utterly merciless, a jaw-dropping throwing of the gauntlet that you may think couldn’t possibly be matched by the rest of the film. Fortunately, Bloodlines does somehow manage it, through that aforementioned commitment to subverting expectation, but also in the strength of the performances. There are no standout performances, but a consistent level of strength across a large ensemble, who are given unusually well fleshed-out characters, down to the smallest and most insignificant members of the family. This is a film that is willing to pay careful attention to the emotional circumstances of Stefani’s aunt Brenda (April Telek), spared from Death’s mission by lack of blood ties, but who must nevertheless witness her family begin to disintegrate around her. Characters that would be absolute cannon fodder in lesser hands are given shades of empathy, from loose-cannon black sheep Cousin Erik to sweet doofus Bobby, ensuring that every kill tempers our sadistic glee with a pang of regret. Most moving is the final appearance of series regular (and horror icon) Tony Todd as delectably macabre mortician-oracle William Bludworth, filmed soon before the actor’s own passing.

Then there are the kills: even by Final Destination standards, some of the visual gags at play here are gobsmacking. Witness the death-by-MRI machine midway through the film, which makes hilarious use of some inopportune body piercings; or a death sequence explicitly predicted by Stefani that still manages to surprise us. All the while, the characters’ lacquered, almost plastic-seeming lifestyles within manicured suburbs feel beamed in from a different era — the noughties, to be exact. Bloodlines feels at once quietly topical in its depiction of aimless youth drift and post-pandemic paranoia, and just slightly out of step with the times, adding to the affectionate, quiet thrum of nostalgia that never rises too high as to be cloying. Naturally, imperfections arise — it’s not damning with faint praise to concede that Final Destination is happy to play to the cheap seats — but what is never skimped on is the craft or attention to detail, which secures one of the most uproariously vicious, gleefully mean-spirited experiences I’ve had in a cinema in years, one that left me grinning from ear-to-ear. The imperfections are, after all, what makes something cinematic, and damn if Bloodlines isn’t bloody cinematic. 

Final Destination Bloodlines is in cinemas now.