Scare Value Award Winner – Best Kill
Top 10 Film of 2025
Final Destination: Bloodlines review
Final Destination rises from the ashes after a 14-year break…just as solid as ever.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Final Destination: Bloodlines
Directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein
Screenplay by Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor
Starring Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Anna Lore, Gabrielle Rose and Tony Todd
Final Destination: Bloodlines Review
It’s often been said that a great horror kill is like a joke. The suspenseful build is the setup…the gory resolve is the punchline. The Final Destination franchise quickly learned how to play with those setups…knowing that it always had one Hell of a punchline to end with. It didn’t take long for the series to start making a meal out of the usual suspense filled lead up to deaths. Viewers were invited to participate in a sort of “whatdunnit” as an increasing number of dangerous gags filled the screen. Flashes of an impending bus were soon replaced with large scale Rube Goldberg-esque death traps. The fun of Final Destination films has come in equal measure from the near misses and the memorable hits. Back in theaters for the first time in nearly 14 years, Final Destination: Bloodlines delivers that unique mix after what feels like too long a wait.
Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is suffering from an impossible recurring nightmare. She dreams of a premonition her grandmother Iris (Brec Bassinger in 1968, Gabrielle Rose in modern times) once had. Iris saved hundreds of lives preventing an accident…and death has spent over 50 years trying to collect. With its work almost finished…death turns its attention to Iris…and her descendants who should never have existed.
First and foremost, it feels good to have Final Destination back. The series largely punched above its weight throughout its original run. It’s been away longer than the time between the release of the original and its fifth installment. Bloodlines understands what makes the series work…though it doesn’t feel beholden to the feel of every little moment. It takes longer to setup its gags…finding the humor in between the notes and letting moments breathe while viewers attempt to spot the next danger. It might be too patient at times. More than one of the leadups to a kill drags on a bit too long. Even the opening scene, while doing a lot of heavy narrative lifting, feels several beats longer than necessary. At least in relation to the relative breakneck speed of its predecessors.
Final Destination: Bloodlines aims to be different…while paying respect to the series that came before. It has a larger focus on story than any Final Destination before it. There’s a sprawling, generation spanning, family drama at the heart of Bloodlines. One of the worries fans of the series had when a new installment was announced was how it would fit into a franchise whose first five movies formed a perfect circle. There’s nothing to worry about in that regard. Final Destination: Bloodlines doesn’t hurt any of the symmetry that the secret prequel Final Destination 5 created. It takes its story further back…allowing it to find an ending to both the new threads that it creates…and a couple that the original series left dangling.
If you’re a fan of the original series…the last bit is probably of the most interest to you. The long debated fate of characters from Final Destination 2 is set to bed. There’s no cameo or flashback here…it’s mentioned as part of the bigger revelation that Bloodlines provides. Namely, the final performance of the great Tony Todd as recurring series character William Bludworth. We finally learn who Bludworth is, how he knows so much, and how he ties into all this. Like his appearance in the 2000 original, Todd is here for one key scene in the story. That it is his final scene lends his words even more gravitas than usual…something horror fans would have rightfully considered impossible. Final Destination: Bloodlines allows Todd a graceful exit from both the series and the genre he helped to elevate so many times in his career. It’s a moving, fitting finale for one of the best to ever do it.
Bloodlines also happens to be a very funny movie. A character who initially doesn’t buy into any of what Stefani is selling about death repeatedly, and hilariously, avoids disaster until he has no choice but to believe. There are a few funny sequences involving the character that shows the 25 year old series still has new tricks up its sleeve. Hopefully it won’t take another 14 years to revisit the concept. Bloodlines feels like even more closure to an era than the start of something new…but, as this movie proves, there’s always a way to return to death’s design.
Scare Value
Time has been kind to the Final Destination franchise. If you don’t believe that…take a look at critics’ reviews from the original series compared to this one. Your favorite installment received mixed notices at best…Bloodlines has garnered series best acclaim. That’s not because Bloodlines reinvented the wheel. It’s because contemporary critics during the original run were asleep at it. The series has (almost) always been a winner. Final Destination: Bloodlines is its victory lap.
4/5
Final Destination: Bloodlines Link
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