Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025) New Line/Horror RT: 110 minutes Rated R (strong violent/grisly accidents and language) Director: Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein Screenplay: Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor Music: Tim Wynn Cinematography: Christian Sebaldt Release date: May 16, 2025 (US) Cast: Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Rya Kihlstedt, Anna Lore, Gabrielle Rose, Tinpo Lee, April Telek, Alex Zahara, Brec Bassinger, Max Lloyd-Jones, Tony Todd, Brenna Llewellyn, Yvette Ferguson, Mark Brandon, Noah Bromley, Natasha Burnett, Jayden Oniah, Travis Turner, Panou.
Rating: *** ½
“Death doesn’t like to be cheated.”
This is the basic lesson drilled into our heads by the five Final Destination movies. If you mess with his plan, Death will eventually come for you. This is proven true yet again in Final Destination: Bloodlines, the sixth chapter of the series that we thought breathed its last breath more than a decade ago. It’s been brought back to life by Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (Freaks) and it’s never felt more alive. It’s not just a mere retread either. It’s a fresh new start (or reboot if you prefer) with its story of a doomed family bloodline. It unfolds a little differently this time around. It takes a slightly different route to get to the good stuff, what audiences have really come to see. I’m talking, of course, about the death scenes. Final Destination: Bloodlines outdoes it itself. They are simply ingenious.
Final Destination: Bloodlines opens not with a premonition, but a nightmare involving a premonition that saved many lives several decades earlier. College student Stefani (Juana, The Flash) hasn’t been sleeping lately. She’s plagued by bad dreams starring the grandmother she’s never met. In it, young Iris (Bassinger, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged) is on a date at a newly opened restaurant atop a towering building when she has a vision of a terrible tragedy that claims the lives of everybody in the place. It’s a tour de force of small incidents that come together to form a perfect storm of grisly deaths amid a huge catastrophe. When she’s jolted back to reality, she gets everybody safely out before disaster strikes. Unfortunately, her act of heroism is going to cost her and her family dearly in the long run. That’s where her granddaughter comes into it.
Stefani comes from a fractured family. Her mom (Kihlstedt, Home Alone 3) left when she was 10. She’s been estranged from her younger brother Charlie (Briones, Chucky) since she left for college. Her cousins- Erik (Harmon, The 100), Bobby (Joyner, Julie and the Phantoms) and Julia (Lore, They/Them)- aren’t crazy about her either. She gets a frosty reception when she comes home with questions about her grandmother. Both her father (Lee, The Curse of La Llorona) and uncle (Zahara, Horns) tell her to leave it alone. She’s crazy and there’s nothing to gain by stirring up bad memories.
Naturally, Stefani persists and learns that Iris (Rose, Virgin River) lives in a fortified cabin in the middle of nowhere. It’s a safe place designed to keep Death away from her. Stefani drops by looking for answers. The reunion is an uneasy one marked by Iris’ erratic, paranoid behavior. She has a book in which she’s documented all the tragedies that have befallen the survivors of that near-disaster in 1968. It’s basically a blueprint of Death’s design. Iris gives the book to Stefani about a minute before she’s impaled through the face by a weather vane.
Stefani does the map and figures out that Death is coming for the whole family. Because Iris was supposed to die in the tower, none of them should have ever been born. They shouldn’t exist. Now they have to pay the price. They are all doomed to die in the order in which they were born. Naturally, nobody believes Stefani, not until they start dying gruesome deaths in elaborate accidents. It’s on her to figure out how to stop Death from collecting its dues.
It’s just not a Final Destination film without a consultation with William Bludworth, the death expert played by the late Tony Todd (Candyman) in his final role. He filmed Final Destination: Bloodlines while he was gravely ill with stomach cancer. He has only one scene, but it’s a powerful one. He delivers his monologue like he’s imparting final words of wisdom to series’ fans before making a graceful exit to whatever comes next. His emaciated appearance might be the most unsettling sight in the whole movie. It’s heartbreaking seeing him like that. It’s right up there with Donald Pleasence in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995).
So you probably want to hear about the death scenes in Final Destination: Bloodlines, don’t you? Well, I’m not going to tell you. I don’t want to ruin the fun of watching the elegant, elaborately staged accidents come together. I will say they’re all GREAT! They look like something designed by cartoonist Rube Goldberg. They have immense shock value and they’re quite bloody. A couple of them actually elicited applause from the audience at the Thursday night preview.
I’m going to forgo the usual comments about the acting and such. None of it really matters in this case. Final Destination: Bloodlines isn’t about Oscar worthy performances or pristine writing or any of the qualities of what’s considered fine cinema. Sure, it touches on deep stuff like metaphysics, karma and the inevitability of death, but it never gets bogged down by any of it. Mostly, it’s a fun horror ride with wicked cool death scenes. Lipovsky/Stein inject humor into the proceedings with needle drops of wildly appropriate songs like Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” and the Air Supply cover of “Without You” (“I can’t liiiiiiiiive!!!!!”). There’s also a great running bit involving a penny. It buys more than thoughts, that’s for sure!
I’m going to go out on a limb and say Final Destination: Bloodlines is the best of the Final Destination movies. It’s wickedly funny and surprisingly intelligent. It delivers a few nice jolts. It’s just pure horror movie fun. It even leaves the door wide open for future installments. Take note of the newspaper articles about other tragedies shown in the end credits sequence. I’d like to see what happens at the water park. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if Death comes around again.
In memory of Tony Todd. Thanks for your great work, sir. Rest in power.
