“Bloodlines” is the sixth film in the “Final Destination” franchise. It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly fourteen years since the last. The series started trending downwards after the first two entries, with terrible effects and dull characters. Thankfully, this break has given the writing team some fresh ideas, making “Bloodlines” one of the best in the franchise.
Each film opens with a convoluted mass death event that reveals itself to be a premonition. Until now, none have matched the impact the log-hauling semi had in the second film. “Bloodlines” opens in 1960 with a trip to the grand opening of a skytower restaurant, similar to the Space Needle or Stratosphere. The night is a surprise for Iris (Brec Bassinger) whose boyfriend (Max Lloyd-Jones) managed to pull a few strings to get them on the guest list. To say that “everything that could go wrong, does” would be a gross understatement. This opening is one of the most epic, gory, Rube Goldberg designs by death that we’ve seen. The twist is, when the premonition ends, it turns out it was a dream, had in present time by Iris’s granddaughter Stephanie (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) Both Stephanie’s mom, Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt), and her grandmother, Iris (Gabrielle Rose), have been estranged from the family since she was a child. After learning that the tower in her dream was once a real place, Stephanie returns home to confront her family, desperate to learn what happened to her grandmother and make the recurring nightmares stop.
The remainder of the movie plays out as we’d expect. Exposition, discovery of Death’s plan, attempts to cheat Death, all punctuated by anxiety-inducing foreshadowing and carnage. Co-directors Zach Lipovsky & Adam B. Stein take everything that worked in the previous films and kick it up a notch. The characters are (mostly) smarter, and everyone leans into the ridiculousness of the concept. In early films, music by John Denver was a sign that death was just around the corner, but in “Bloodlines” every single song on the soundtrack is a hilarious reference to what is about to happen. The movie has fun teasing the audience with the potential for death around every corner. Sometimes we’re right, and the “accident” happens as predicted. Other times the film yanks the rug out from under us and surprises us with something completely different. There’s even one brilliant death that mimics the logo from one of the previous movies! Further teasing us is the marketing. Both trailers imply certain characters die in certain scenarios that don’t occur in the movie.
The biggest flaw, if it can be called that, is that after the highs of the big kills, the exposition parts of the film feel too low and slow at times. It’s a necessary part of the story, but the lulls are definitely felt. It’s a small complaint in one of the best legacy horror sequels to date.
- Final Destination: Bloodlines
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