As witty and ingenious as the best of its predecessors, Final Destination: Bloodlines revives the old franchise after a 14-year hiatus, number six in the series keeping faith with an idea originating in a script for The X-Files that was killed off before making it to the screen.
Which is appropriate, since the Final Destination franchise is all about death. Capital D Death, who will not be cheated when he comes for you. And should you by some chance manage to elude him, he’ll be back to reap his grim harvest, going to elaborate lengths to achieve his goal if necessary. We never see Death, so he could be a she or an it or a they.
It’s essentially a series of scenarios ripe for disaster, which directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein introduce with an “What on earth could go wrong here?” flourish. First, a vertiginous skyscraper made almost entirely of glass, full of revellers stomping on a dancefloor through which you can see the ground way below. Later, a family barbecue with gas bottles looking like obvious vectors of an untimely demise. Later still, a tattoo parlour, full of needles that could inflict terrible damage and fluids that are an obvious fire hazard. And on it goes, like an extremely serpentine and cautionary health-and-safety film. The deaths are extravagant teases designed to provoke a laugh, a groan, a round of applause or all three at the same time.
Between these disasterscapes things are less compelling but there’s enough going on to hold the whole thing together. A college student, Kaitlyn Santa Juana’s Stefani, trying to track down the source of a recurring nightmare. It turns out her grandmother (Gabrielle Rose) is the reason for it. She evaded death decades before thanks to a gift of prophetic foresight. She has lived a fortress-like existence ever since, fending off death with ceaseless vigilance. Skipping a generation, the gift has now landed on Stefani and is her only defence against Death, who is working his way through her family in age order – oldest first. As well as a sharp sickle, Death clearly also has OCD.
Talking of Death, here’s Tony Todd in his last outing, looking painfully thin (stomach cancer) but mustering that old Todd gravel as an ad hoc loremeister who gives Stefani chapter and verse on what Death is about before shuffling out of the movie, and shortly afterwards out of life too. As well as four outings as Candyman, Todd did four Final Destinations and he’s a welcome and familiar (if shocking) presence, his farewell speech to Stefani et al a heartfelt injunction to enjoy life.
Otherwise this is a troupe of nobodies, and that’s as it should be. Everyone has been cast because they bring little or no baggage, which adds a frisson of “who’s going to get it next?” to the story, until the “strictly in age order” element is introduced and even then there are enough little wrinkles to keep the “Bloodlines” aspect from ruining all the fun.
The deaths – Rube Goldberg (or Heath Robinson if you prefer) in their cascading mad ingenuity – are what it’s all about, rather than the personal problems of the brother, the mother, the father or various cousins. And here is where Lipovsky and Stein excel. They got the gig after their Zoom pitch meeting to execs at New Line ended with one of the directors minus a head – faked – which put them, er, head and shoulders above more than 200 other candidates to direct the film.
They’ve done a great job and haven’t forgotten that, in this franchise at least, Death is meant to be fun.
Final Destination: Bloodlines – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
