Final Destination: Bloodlines

The Final Destination series returns after a 14-year break and sees a whole family needing to evade death. 

Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is suffering from a recurring nightmare about a disaster in the 1960s. The woman who survived (Brec Bassinger) is called Iris, and Stefani believes she might be her estranged grandmother, so she returns home from college to get answers, However, this leads to opening family scars and awakens Death’s wrath. 

The Final Destination series had been financially successful, but critically much more divisive. Final Destination: Bloodlines has received the best reviews in the series, deservedly so. This film had some more prestigious writers: Jon Watts of the MCU Spider-Man films co-wrote the story, and one of the credited writers was Guy Busick, a writer who worked with Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, the team behind Ready or Not, Scream 5 and 6, and Abigail. 

Busick’s presence was felt in the sixth entry. It was a darkly funny and gory film, whilst also having much more substance than previous entries. Final Destination Bloodlines was about mental health and generational trauma. Stefani’s nightmares had detrimental effects on her, since she was sleep deprived and her college grades were slipping. She inherited her grandmother’s (Gabrielle Rose) and mum’s (Rya Kihlstedt) paranoia; they were unable to live their lives, and Stefani’s family thought she was losing the plot. Mental health themes have been in vogue in recent years, with characters inheriting their parents’ issues, like Hereditary, Last Night in Soho, Smile, and Talk to Me. Final Destination: Bloodlines did this in a more mainstream, popcorn manner. And it was a bloody fun popcorn experience. 

Stefani was a likeable presence, and her family run the gamut of being nice to arseholes. Since all the potential victims were related, they had more of an emotional connection. Even if one of the members of Campbell clan was a dick, the rest of them didn’t want them to die. Making the potential victims related was a genius move to help shake up the series’ formula, and one character was given more significance than originally thought. Fans of the series will enjoy all the references and Easter Eggs to the previous films. 

The themes enhance the film, but the appeal of the Final Destination films is the deaths and gore. Final Destination: Bloodlines offered plenty of that. The Final Destination movies have been part-disaster film, part-gore fest, and Final Destination Bloodlines continued that tradition. There’s a sadistic glee when watching people die in an overly elaborate way and seeing bad people getting crushed, set alight, and impaled. As the film series progressed, the filmmakers became more self-aware, and Final Destination: Bloodlines had a darkly funny approach to all the deaths and carnage. I was grinning and laughing like a psychopath when watching the sixth entry. 

Final Destination: Bloodlines was one of the entertaining films in the series, and the best in story quality. Who would have thought the sixth entry in a series about death could breathe new life into the series?