Final Destination: Bloodlines

Released 2025. Directors: Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein

THIS COULD BE TAKEN IN THE WRONG WAY BUT I must confess that now and then, I enjoy seeing people die. Only in the movies, of course. I’m not psycho.

No doubt there’s a lot of you out there who share the same perverse fascination as we’ve now reached the sixth instalment of the Final Destination movies, a series built entirely on killing off its characters in the most bizarre, elaborate, twisty and let’s admit it, laughably graphic manners only seen in movies like these.

There’s only just the one idea that keeps repeating itself: you can’t cheat death. If your time is up but you somehow manage to escape by the skin of your teeth, death will come after you with OCD precision and tenacity. And when it happens, it won’t be pretty. In every FD movie, one smart person would see a pattern and figure out a plan to outrun their scheduled demise. Good luck with that.

Since the first Final Destination came out in 2000 (the work of James Wong and Glen Morgan, showrunners of The X-Files), the subsequent movies have tried to provide more than a gallery of accidental deaths (plane explosion, highway pile-up, bridge collapse, roller-coaster malfunction, and so on) by building on the connections between the victims. In a rather clever move, the fifth movie even managed to loop itself all the way to the start of the first one.

Bloodlines takes the story back to the 1960s. At the opening night of Skyview Tower (resembling the Space Needle in Seattle), a series of small incidents build a domino effect culminating in its calamitous collapse, killing scores of revellers including teenager Iris and her boyfriend Paul. This sequence is done in the recognisable Final Destination style, creating suspense with close-ups and slow-motion shots directing our attention to tiny details, such as the trajectory of a penny in the air, cracks in the glass floor, buckling mechanism in the elevator and so forth.

Also taken from the Final Destination playbook (in which premonitions feature prominently), this turns out to be a recurring nightmare for Stefani, who is convinced her visions has a deeper meaning. To get to the bottom of this Stefani will need to find her Grandma Iris (who escaped death, unlike in Stefani’s scary dreams). Problem is, paranoid grandma lives in a doomsday bunker somewhere and is shunned by her family for all the crazy stuff she believes in and seeing death traps everywhere.

Speaking of which, a movie like this cannot go 10 minutes without someone dying horribly so the plot rushes and Stefani locates reclusive grandma just like that. Ding dong, grandma, it's Stefani the granddaughter you've never met, let me in. Stefani barely has enough time to inherit a stack of grandma's papers on death's tricks and games before the old lady meets her grisly end. You knew better not to step outside, Iris, so why did you?

Stefani becomes a full believer, having witnessed death’s mysterious ways and baptised in Iris’s blood. She joins the dots and figures out the sequence of death for her extended family. You see, if Iris wasn’t supposed to have survived the Skyview Tower collapse, then none of her offspring is meant to exist. So they all must die, simple as that. You cannot mess with what’s destined to be.

Does anyone believe her? Of course not. The family merrily sets up a barbeque in the backyard, grilling meat, mixing drinks, jumping on a trampoline and having a good time. What could go wrong? Plenty, going by the litany of red herrings involving broken glass, a metal rake, a lawnmower, frayed trampoline netting, gas canister and just general slippery hazard.

After five movies assembling similar set-ups, we’ve seen a lot. Maybe I’ve been desensitised but this time it’s just not as suspenseful anymore. Perhaps the filmmakers are tacitly acknowledging the repetitive nature of the premise and if they can’t improve on the template, they might as well just have some fun with it. The death scenes are more cartoonish (especially the very last one) and the visual effects emphasise the bone-cracking and skull-crunching squishiness than an attempt to make any of them look realistic. This time, the list includes a garbage truck, vending machine, derailed freight train, nut allergy, lamp post and an MRI machine.

For fans of the series, Tony Todd’s monologue about the preciousness of life is an uncharacteristically affecting moment because it’s the actor’s final screen appearance. As the only returning actor across four previous instalments, Todd braced himself for one short scene while being gravely ill in real life. In what would otherwise be a hollow display of platitude, it’s morbidly fitting that his last role would speak about cherishing every moment because you never know if this might be your last day.

Just like Mr Todd, the Final Destination series should be laid to eternal rest. The franchise has run its course over a quarter of a century, spanning generations of characters and serving up scores of creative and grisly ways to kick the bucket. How much more story is there to be squeezed out of a compilation of gruesome (albeit occasionally comical) death scenes? Bloodlines is the most successful movie in the series in terms of box office takings, having grossed US$286 million so far. So you can bet your last dollar that the Grim Reaper will be back to show off his freakish resourcefulness. Death, we'll meet again.

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