{"id":11914,"date":"2025-05-17T16:43:37","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T20:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=11914"},"modified":"2025-06-21T22:49:43","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T02:49:43","slug":"final-destination-bloodlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/05\/17\/final-destination-bloodlines\/","title":{"rendered":"Final Destination: Bloodlines"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Final Destination: Bloodlines<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Line\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 110 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violent\/grisly accidents and language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Tim Wynn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Christian Sebaldt\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 16, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u201cDeath doesn\u2019t like to be cheated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0This 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<\/strong>, the sixth chapter of the series that we thought breathed its last breath more than a decade ago. It\u2019s been brought back to life by Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (Freaks) and it\u2019s never felt more alive. It\u2019s not just a mere retread either. It\u2019s 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\u2019m talking, of course, about the death scenes. Final Destination: Bloodlines<\/strong> outdoes it itself. They are simply ingenious.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Final Destination: Bloodlines<\/strong> 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\u2019t been sleeping lately. She\u2019s plagued by bad dreams starring the grandmother she\u2019s 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\u2019s a tour de force of small incidents that come together to form a perfect storm of grisly deaths amid a huge catastrophe. When she\u2019s 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\u2019s where her granddaughter comes into it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Stefani comes from a fractured family. Her mom (Kihlstedt, Home Alone 3) left when she was 10. She\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019s crazy and there\u2019s nothing to gain by stirring up bad memories.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Naturally, Stefani persists and learns that Iris (Rose, Virgin River) lives in a fortified cabin in the middle of nowhere. It\u2019s 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\u2019 erratic, paranoid behavior. She has a book in which she\u2019s documented all the tragedies that have befallen the survivors of that near-disaster in 1968. It\u2019s basically a blueprint of Death\u2019s design. Iris gives the book to Stefani about a minute before she\u2019s impaled through the face by a weather vane.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Stefani 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\u2019t 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\u2019s on her to figure out how to stop Death from collecting its dues.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s 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<\/strong> while he was gravely ill with stomach cancer. He has only one scene, but it\u2019s a powerful one. He delivers his monologue like he\u2019s imparting final words of wisdom to series\u2019 fans before making a graceful exit to whatever comes next. His emaciated appearance might be the most unsettling sight in the whole movie. It\u2019s heartbreaking seeing him like that. It\u2019s right up there with Donald Pleasence in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995).<\/p>\n

\u00a0So you probably want to hear about the death scenes in Final Destination: Bloodlines<\/strong>, don\u2019t you? Well, I\u2019m not going to tell you. I don\u2019t want to ruin the fun of watching the elegant, elaborately staged accidents come together. I will say they\u2019re all GREAT! They look like something designed by cartoonist Rube Goldberg. They have immense shock value and they\u2019re quite bloody. A couple of them actually elicited applause from the audience at the Thursday night preview.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m going to forgo the usual comments about the acting and such. None of it really matters in this case. Final Destination: Bloodlines<\/strong> isn\u2019t about Oscar worthy performances or pristine writing or any of the qualities of what\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201cRing of Fire\u201d, \u201cRaindrops Keep Fallin\u2019 On My Head\u201d and the Air Supply cover of \u201cWithout You\u201d (\u201cI can\u2019t liiiiiiiii<\/em>ve!!!!!\u201d). There\u2019s also a great running bit involving a penny. It buys more than thoughts, that\u2019s for sure!<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m going to go out on a limb and say Final Destination: Bloodlines<\/strong> is the best of the Final Destination movies. It\u2019s wickedly funny and surprisingly intelligent. It delivers a few nice jolts. It\u2019s 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\u2019d like to see what happens at the water park. I guess we\u2019ll have to wait and see if Death comes around again.<\/p>\n

In memory of Tony Todd. Thanks for your great work, sir. Rest in power.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Line\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 110 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violent\/grisly accidents and language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Tim Wynn\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Christian Sebaldt\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 16, 2025 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Rya Kihlstedt, Anna […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Final-Destination-Bloodline.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11914"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11923,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11914\/revisions\/11923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}