Final Destination: Bloodlines Dir: Zach Lipovsky & Adam Stein (13th Floor Film Review)
Final Destination: Bloodlines is a worthy addition to the franchise that gave us all an irrational fear of household objects and a fitting swansong for the great Tony Todd.
Starring Tony Todd, Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Rya Kihlstedt, Anna Lore, and Brec Bassinger
It seems hard to believe that it has been 25 years since a generation developed a phobia around broken airplane tray tables courtesy of Final Destination (2000), followed three years later by a FOLT – Fear of Logging Trucks, courtesy of Final Destination 2.
Over the next nine years the franchise added rollercoasters (that one is perfectly rational!), speedway tracks and suspension bridges to the list of things that made our hearts pound out of our chests with pre-emptive terror.
Frankly it’s amazing that anyone who has been a movie-goer since 2000 ever leaves the house, not that staying in is particularly safe either, given that a character is, literally, killed by a kitchen chair in the very first instalment.
This year marks 14 years since Final Destination 5 was released and although this is the sixth instalment in the Final Destination series it is, in fact, written as a direct sequel to The Final Destination (2009)
Holy convoluted timelines Batman!
Not that that really matters because you do not have to have seen its predecessors in order to enjoy this soft reboot of the franchise as a standalone.
Directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (Freaks) and written by Guy Busick (Ready or Not, Abigail) and Lori Evans Taylor, based on a story developed by them and Jon Watts, this version comes out of the gate with some serious tongue in cheek horror pedigree.
Relative newcomer Kaitlyn Santa Juana stars as Stefani Reyes, who, instead of inheriting an ugly dinner or a pair of silver sugar tongs, has inherited the exact same premonition of impending doom that her grandmother had in 1968. A premonition which allowed her to cheat death at the opening of the Skyview Restaurant Tower and go on to have a family of her own thus circumnavigating her predetermined destiny.
Half a century later, her granddaughter Stefani wakes in a cold sweat after a very bad dream that had nothing to do with all the cheese that she ate before bed.
As members of her family are picked off one by one, she embarks on a mission to enlist the help of her reclusive grandmother to save the rest of her family from the guy with the big scythe. who is still pretty p!ssed about being cheated of the opportunity to take Granny out (and not for dinner and a movie) back in ’68.
Speaking of which, the opening set piece at the Skyview, is a real doozy.
The building itself is oddly reminiscent of the restaurant tower recently featured in “Drop” despite the two movies being nearly 50 years apart in their scene setting.
The developing theme for 2025 is starting to look like, “movies about very bad things that can happen in glass domes a long way from the ground”. I am not sure that Sky City will be loving the trend but certainly makes for a superlative opening number for a movie about all the things that can potentially kill you.
We have vertigo inducing height, we have glass (so much glass), we have a restaurant with open flames all over the place, what could go wrong?
As is always the case, the greatest enjoyment lies in the bait and switch. We already know that at least 90% of these folk are all doomed from the beginning, which means that the real fun lies in trying to detect which component of the elaborately designed kill scenarios will be the one to ultimately send our various protagonists to the big movie franchise in the sky.
The false alarms are the things that really keep the heart pounding, and they keep on coming with satisfying regularity until the film’s gasp worthy and surprisingly emotional conclusion.
All the usual thrilling shenanigans aside, there is another layer here in terms of how unresolved trauma is passed down through generations. Perhaps because of the family dynamic at play, the characters feel more connected to one another than in some previous iterations and this allows for a slightly deeper level of audience engagement then the usual “don’t get too attached to anyone because they will not be sticking around for long” dynamic.
Which also allows for this, albeit clumsy, segue…
It would not be a Final Destination outing without a turn by the masterful Tony Todd in his final screen appearance, as Death’s man in the middle, William Bludworth
For Bludworth’s final monolog the directors threw out the script and allowed Todd to directly address the camera, reminding the audience to live the life they have left while they can, a speech made even more poignant knowing that the beloved actor was really saying goodbye to his audience through his onscreen alter ego. It is a lovely tribute to one of the greats and a real lump in the throat moment for his many fans.
If this is your first taste of the Final Destination phenomena then I do highly recommend watching them all in the order in which they were originally released. I say this even though you may feel an urge to wrap yourself in three layers of bubble wrap and transform your home into a nice safe padded cell afterwards.
I can assure you that it will be worth the effort. This iconic series really is the most fun you can have watching people being permanently retired from a state of aliveness in a succession of elaborate and mind bendingly clever ways.
Jo Barry
Final Destination: Bloodlines opens in cinemas tomorrow. Click here for tickets and showtimes.
