FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES (2025)

Studio:   New Line Cinema
Director: Adam Stein, Zach Lipovsky
Writer:   Guy Busick, Lori Evans Taylor, Jon Watts
Producer: Craig Perry, Sheila Hanahan Taylor, Jon Watts, Dianne McGunigle, Toby Emmerich
Stars:    Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Rya Kihlstedt, Anna Lore, Brec Bassinger, Tony Todd

Review Score:

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Summary:

A cursed family becomes caught in a cycle of gruesome deaths connected to a catastrophic event 60 years earlier.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

As part of his plan to propose marriage, Paul Campbell surprises his girlfriend Iris by bringing her to dinner at the opening night of the massive Skyview Tower in the 1960s. Among odd events that occur throughout the evening, a popped cork causes a fallen chandelier crystal to crack the glass dance floor, and a troublemaking child throws a penny from the observation deck that ends up jamming a fan in the ventilation system.

Paul proposes to Iris outside on the deck. Iris reveals she is pregnant, which delights Paul since he wants to start a family.

Iris and Paul return inside to dance. A deadly combination of weight on the floor and backed-up gas caused by the stuck penny creates a catastrophic structure failure and fiery explosion. Employees and patrons, including Paul, die gruesome deaths in various ways, with many falling to the ground far below.

Iris becomes one of the last two survivors along with a little boy, the son of a singer participating in the evening’s musical entertainment. However, Iris loses her grip on a ledge and falls with the boy. Iris dies from impalement.

The entire ordeal turns out to be a vivid nightmare in the present day suffered by Stefani Reyes, a gifted math student in danger of losing her college scholarship because she has been disturbed by this recurring dream for two months. Connecting that the woman in her dream has the same name as her estranged grandmother Iris, Stefani returns home to learn more about her family history in hopes of stopping the dream from returning.

Since her mother Darlene left when Stefani was 10 and her father Marty is unhelpful, Stefani and her younger brother Charlie visit their cousins Erik, Bobby, and Julia. Stefani asks her uncle Howard about his mother Iris, but Howard only advises that Iris is a disturbed woman obsessed with death as he recounts how the family cut ties after the state took away Iris’s children.

Stefani convinces her aunt Brenda to give her Iris’s address. Stefani finds her grandmother living an isolated life in a heavily fortified cabin in a remote forest.

Stefani tells her grandmother about her recurring nightmare. Iris tells Stefani that the dream is actually a premonition Iris had back on that fateful night when Skyview Tower collapsed. Iris explains that after she saw a vision of the deaths and destruction while Paul was proposing, what actually happened was she stopped the boy from throwing the penny and convinced everyone to leave the dance floor before it shattered.

Iris further explains that although she prevented the disaster, Death still found ways to eventually kill everyone who was supposed to die that night, including her husband Paul. Ever since she discovered what was happening, Iris has been obsessively avoiding Death by anticipating his moves. However, Iris was diagnosed with cancer two months ago, which is the same time when Stefani started having her dream.

Believing her grandmother to be crazy, Iris leaves in a hurry. Despite the danger, Iris steps outside her cabin to give Stefani a book of her notes and research on how their cursed family can stay safe from Death. To prove her warnings are true, Iris allows herself to die in a series of events that causes a metal weathervane to impale her head directly in front of Stefani.

Following Iris’s funeral, Uncle Howard hosts a barbecue for the family back at his house. Everyone is surprised when Stefani’s estranged mother Darlene shows up. Concerned after reading through Iris’s book, Stefani arrives at the BBQ in time to see a series of events trigger a lawnmower accident that kills Howard.

Following this second death, Stefani becomes fascinated by Iris’s book of research, which includes the handwritten note, “JB found someone who survived.” Stefani sits down her father Marty, Darlene, Charlie, Aunt Brenda, Erik, Bobby, and Julia and tries to show them the pattern of death Iris wanted to warn them about. Stefani explains how Iris saved numerous lives of people destined to die at Skyview Tower. Death had been killing the survivors ever since, but because it took so long, those survivors went on to have families they never should have had, so Death comes for them too. Based on their ages, Stefani warns that Erik is next in line to die, followed by Bobby, then Julia on that side of the family. Stefani and her brother Charlie will also die in order after Darlene. The family members dismiss Stefani’s claims as a conspiracy theory.

A series of strange events causes a deadly fire at the tattoo shop where Erik works. Unexpectedly, Erik survives.

The next day, Stefani and Charlie find Erik walking safely down the street. To illustrate her theory that he is still in danger, Stefani looks around and points out how a leaf blower, soccer ball, and passing garbage truck could combine to kill Erik. Erik does not die according to Stefani’s scenario, but Julia does when she goes jogging and ends up crushed in the trash truck’s compactor.

With the rest of the family now heeding Stefani’s warnings, Stefani blames herself for Julia’s death because she thinks she got the order wrong. But Aunt Brenda reveals Erik is not Uncle Howard’s biological son, as he was born out of wedlock during a rough patch in their marriage, which is why he didn’t die.

Bobby realizes he is slated to die next. With Stefani unsure of how to help her cousin, Charlie reminds her how she accurately predicted the events that killed Julia. Stefani says she sees Iris’s book like an equation, and her talent for math enables her to see probable patterns. Darlene assures her daughter that their family can stop the deaths with Stefani’s insight.

From the note found earlier, “JB” is identified as William John Bludworth, who works at Hope River Hospital. Stefani, Darlene, Charlie, Bobby, and Erik set out in Darlene’s mobile home to meet with JB at the hospital. On the drive, Darlene apologizes for abandoning her children by explaining how Iris’s seemingly mad rantings made her afraid of ruining her own kids’ lives.

At the hospital, JB identifies himself as the little boy Iris saved at Skyview Tower. Since he would have been the last to die, he tracked down Iris later in life and they collaborated on research into escaping Death’s machinations. JB tells everyone there are only two ways to break the cycle: kill someone else to take the time they had left or die and be resuscitated like Kimberly Corman once did.

Erik and Bobby sneak away from Stefani, Darlene, and Charlie to enact a plan to kill Bobby through his peanut allergy and have him revived by nearby ER doctors. Unexpectedly, a series of events magnetizes an MRI machine, which pulls at a wheelchair and Erik’s piercings, causing Erik to be painfully mangled to death as he’s propelled into the machine. Magnetization also kills Bobby by launching a vending machine coil into his head.

Deeming Iris’s fortified cabin as the safest place for them to be, Stefani, Darlene, and Charlie drive the RV to Iris’s cabin. Along the way, the penny Iris took from the little boy in the 1960s falls from Iris’s book and is recovered by an old woman.

Stefani, Darlene, and Charlie arrive at the cabin, but an explosion triggers Darlene’s death while submerging Stefani underwater. Charlie ultimately rescues his sister by pulling her out of the water and resuscitating her with CPR.

Sometime later, Stefani and Marty Reyes accompany Charlie when he goes to pick up his girlfriend Jenny for a date. Marty introduces Stefani to Jenny’s father, Dr. Reddick. Stefani mentions how her brother saved her life. Dr. Reddick counters that Stefani wasn’t actually dead, merely unconscious, causing the two siblings to become suddenly concerned.

Meanwhile, the old woman from the hospital inadvertently drops the recovered penny, which then bounces onto nearby train tracks. The penny causes a disastrous train derailment. Stefani and Charlie successfully outrace the runaway train, but they are both killed when a truck involved in the crash launches logs that smash each of them into the pavement.

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Review:

Attending horror trivia on a monthly basis regularly reminds me that my memory for movies isn’t what it used to be. Part of that has to do with an increase in other interests along with a diminished attention span, leaving less room in my head for filing away fright films. Related to that, perhaps a bigger part has to do with more movies being made as disposable streaming content, making many of them not worth remembering in the first place.

One moviegoing experience I can still recall vividly is seeing the first “Final Destination” in a crowded Santa Monica theater back when the movie debuted in 2000. What I remember most is the palpable tension you could feel in the auditorium during each scene’s buildup. The camera had an uncanny knack for cutting to conspicuous closeups to inject a bunch of horrible possibilities into our heads. Then we watched the spark burn down a figurative fuse into a gloriously gory explosion, sometimes literally. Before cellphones brought out the worst in moviegoers, you could hear giggles of giddy anticipation mixed with nails burrowing into seat cushions, and you were glad you could watch everyone excitedly erupt from those devious domino lines that became an unmistakable signature of the series’ style.

Subsequent sequels continued that format with varying degrees of success, but “Final Destination: Bloodlines” represents better than of any of them how to apply the first film’s mindset for delivering distinctive deaths to create an entry that deftly swirls freshness into the franchise’s familiarity. Maybe the long layoff between the fifth film and this sixth installment recharged the IP’s batteries. Maybe the makers just had a lightning strike of unique inspiration. Whatever the reason, “Final Destination: Bloodlines” triggers those same synapses as the original with a no-fat diet and smart structuring that defies its origin as popcorn entertainment for mass consumption.

“Final Destination: Bloodlines” builds a delightfully demented experience by knowing what it is and what it is not. The film features only as much story as necessary, and only enough family drama to give light weight to the characters for minimal motivations and audience empathy. Exposition, which often comes in heaps whenever multiple people have to come to terms with complicated scenarios like they do in these movies, gets delivered breathlessly, or comes couched in moving moments like a Tony Todd monologue that takes on surprisingly sentimental meaning in the wake of the actor’s passing.

The basic plot involves three generations of a family that’s been haunted by a toppling tower tragedy ever since the 1960s. The grandmother lives like Laurie Strode in “Halloween” 2018, becoming so sure Death is determined to destroy her for surviving the tower’s collapse, she’s resigned to isolation in a fortified cabin where her only activity is figuring out ways to stay a step ahead of the fate she avoided decades earlier. Her granddaughter has recurring nightmares related to the tower disaster, and the mother in between them has had her life adversely affected by that event too. They have more immediate problems at hand when Death renews, with violent vigor, his determination to put them and the rest of their family six feet underground with the most macabre methods imaginable.

“Bloodlines” understands no one comes into a “Final Destination” film for the fiction, which is why its focus is firmly, and correctly, on satisfying horror-hungry appetites with suspense-stuffed deaths. Following established formula, every cutaway becomes a potential clue designed to see if your mind can predict what will happen before the movie shows you. What does the zoom into this particular prop mean? Is it important that she pricked her finger on a thorn? How will the specific placement of that beer bottle come into play? The opening scene in the sky-view restaurant runs wild on the biggest playground, but even the smaller confines of a tattoo parlor are just as tantalizing for getting your eyes to dart around looking for possible pathways a Rube Goldberg sequence can rip through.

“Bloodlines” is equally clever at toying with audience expectations. When a certain someone starts backing into a street like we’ve seen in so many similar situations, you become certain you’re about to see the common shock of a car suddenly striking that person from off-frame. Then the moment passes without any such splat, right before you remember this movie is too creative to ever do something that simple.

Like how audiences snicker at the ludicrous logic of an atomic monster movie, “Final Destination: Bloodlines” is wild in the best way possible. From the ridiculous woodland home built like a battlefield to a spectacular finale that illustrates every outrageous fable we’ve ever been told about coins on train tracks, you can practically see the filmmakers grinning with wicked glee as they concoct craziness that would be absurd for a Wile E. Coyote cartoon yet makes for excellent escapist entertainment.

Gruesome impalements. Fiery explosions. Underwater shots. It looks like there were no limits on what anyone was willing to spend or do for the sake of one more blood-soaked splash to keep upping an already-mountainous ante. “Final Destination: Bloodlines” doesn’t require viewers to have their brains at full power, not because the movie is dopey, but because the filmmakers had their imaginations operating at 100% capacity.

Review Score: 80

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