Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025) – Dead Perfect

Released: 15th May
Seen: 24th May

The Final Destination franchise has straight up ruined an entire generation of people. Don’t believe me, find a person born roughly around 1985-1990 and put them on a highway with a single log truck within their field of vision and I can guarantee you they will have a panic attack and pull the car off the road because they vividly remember the opening of the second movie. For years the Final Destination series was a Horror movie joyride, a franchise built around the idea of one person having a premonition of a major accident with a death toll in the hundreds and getting their friends and a few strangers out in time to avoid it. Naturally, death would take out those remaining victims in a very specific order using Rube Goldberg devices of death that would end in some truly insane sequences. For 5 films between 2000 and 2011, audiences were treated to a glorious wave of catastrophic carnage but it felt like that was going to be it. Sure there were talks about reviving the franchise for years but it never happened so it became a nostalgia property for a specific generation of people… and now thanks to Final Destination: Bloodlines, this campy little franchise is back for more and it’s truly glorious.

Final Destination: Bloodlines begins with college student Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) who has been experiencing weird nightmares for the last several months, nightmares involving a horrific accident in 1968 at something called the Skyview restaurant. Turns out this was a premonition, but not Stefani’s premonition. No, this was the premonition that her grandmother Iris (Gabrielle Rose) had that she prevented from happening, saving the lives of everyone at the Skyview that day. Being a Final Destination movie this meant that Death needed to come up with some other way to kill everyone in the Skyview, however because it takes a really long time to come up with 100+ insane methods of death, some of those people had families that shouldn’t exist so those family members had to die too (I PROMISE this makes sense in context), and now it’s the Reyes/Campbell families turn to have death chasing them. Stefani has to prevent her entire family from dying while also dealing with the generational trauma that comes with having a grandmother who believes she literally can see death about to happen.

Final Destination: Bloodlines is a trickster of a film and I respect it for playing the audience so perfectly. As a franchise, Final Destination is pretty set in stone. You have the initial incident, no one believing the main hero for 95% of the film, a bunch of elaborate deaths and then the ending where either it’s implied some people live (The first two movies did this) or everyone dies (the last 3 did this). If you know the franchise, you know the tropes, the expected jump scares or what each close-up could mean. Bloodlines knows these tricks too and decides it’d be cute to fuck with them as much as possible, starting right at the end of the opening premonition where it does a time jump and gets the audience off-kilter. Once it does that, good luck trying to work out where anything is going. It’s one step ahead at all times, you can certainly try to work out how they’re going to dispatch the next person on the list, but chances are good you won’t and that’s half the fun. Just seeing the elaborate ways that this film has come up with delivering it’s brutal bloody punchlines (because frankly a lot of these deaths are played as grim jokes and they’re pretty damn hilarious) is just a great way to spend a few hours.

It also helps that the entire main cast is just fun to be around, this doesn’t suffer from “You’re a useless asshole and I hope you die” syndrome like a couple of other entries in this franchise have had to deal with. These people are smart and funny, have a really strong bond, AND have all been through some pretty intense family trauma. That means when they have their arguments, it’s completely understandable. Hearing the horrific story of what Iris’ kids went through because their mother became completely paranoid just breaks your heart because, despite Iris doing what she thought was best (to be fair to the fictional character, death has literally been trying to kill her and her entire family since 1968) her actions were straight up abusive to her children and that created a cycle that has done damage to the entire family. While the film certainly doesn’t spend too much time diving into this dark topic of generational trauma brought on by abuse (and it shouldn’t, no film where people fall to their deaths while “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” plays should try to dive into topics that dark), it does touch on them in a way that gives the family a lot of depth.

Between all the darker moments, and there are a lot of those, it also helps that Final Destination: Bloodlines is just insanely funny. It’s the kind of film that will lay out the stupidest method of death you could think of, call out how stupid it would be for that thing to happen, and then do that exact thing dead seriously without skipping a beat. While there are some deaths designed to shock and horrify, most are just straight up hilarious and will result in uproarious laughter from any audience who is willing to go along with this insanity. Even in its final moments, Final Destination: Bloodlines‘ ability to know what the audience expects and then swerve creates one of the heartiest laughs that a fan of this genre can experience. It’s pitch black comedy at times, pushing the boundaries of taste quite often, but the film has its tongue so firmly planted in its cheek that it’s hard to be upset by any of it.

Among all the laughter, death and mayhem, there is one scene where the film quite wisely takes a moment to be serious, and it’s the scene where we get the last appearance of the legendary Tony Todd. For anyone who isn’t a horror fan, Tony Todd is an icon of the genre thanks to his work as Candyman, which led to him being in more horror films than I would dare count. This appearance was filmed towards the end of his life as Tony was dealing with the disease that would end up taking him from the world, and it’s genuinely touching to see him still delivering a great performance. It’s a single scene, but it’s one that the fans will love because it feels like an old friend saying goodbye, knowing they won’t be able to say hello again later. It’s probably the most heartwarming scene just thanks to the context. It also helps that Tony Todd had such an undeniable presence that he’s even good sitting in a chair delivering a monologue. Also, finding out the last thing he says in the film is an improvised line that Tony came up with when asked “What would you want to say to the fans?” makes it that much more heartbreaking.

It must be mentioned though, even though a lot of the carnage and gore is a lot of fun, it’s also got a ton of CGI that just stands out in the worst way. Look, I’m not some purist who thinks that all gore should be practical (though the Terrifier franchise does make a pretty fantastic case for how much can be done with nothing but practical gore) but I do believe it should at least blend well with whatever was shot and there’s a lot of times when you can just see the green screen or the digital blood. So many times a character will be covered in it and it looks so fake you wonder if the Actor even got a little moist from the spray. I get that this is basically a cartoon of death, I saw a piano drop on a person so I get what kind of film I’m watching but it’s hard to deny that there are a lot of times when the CGI gore just straight up looks bad and it pulls you out of the moment.

Final Destination: Bloodlines took an old, tired and possibly worn-out franchise and revived it with fresh blood. It twisted the formula enough to create a truly interesting take on it, presented a batch of characters you want to see survive even knowing that they probably won’t, littered it with dark twisted comedy that hits more often than not and put it all into a film that is just a quick breezy good time full of blood and gore, just the way it should be. It’s the perfect example of how to revive a franchise in a way that honours what came before while taking things in a new direction. There’s no limit to what the next Final Destination can do and hopefully it’ll be able to be as joyous and silly as this one was.