'Final Destination: Bloodlines' Review: Death Pulls Some New Tricks Out of an Old Bag

The Rube Goldberg-esque death traps are still keeping the "Final Destination" world fresh, while the stories start to turn stale

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This year marks the 25th anniversary of the first Final Destination, a still highly effective horror thriller about a group of teens literally trying to stave off Death after having a premonition about their imminent demise. The movie was aimed firmly at the Dawson’s Creek crowd (did I say it’s been 25 years?) while manifesting the existential dread the target demographic hadn’t learned to embrace…yet.

Five films later, audiences have come to fear everything from log trucks to Lasik, and those once bright-eyed teens watching are now adults who, as much as they don’t want to admit it, are starting to feel a lot closer to Death than they’d like to admit. Not speaking from personal experience, at all. Final Destination: Bloodlines reinvigorates a franchise that, at the end of 2011’s Final Destination 5, appeared finished for good. The results are an altogether mixed bag of fun and inventive kills trying to buoy up a haphazard story and selectively interesting characters.

College student Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) has spent the last two months having recurring nightmares about the same event: a young woman visits a Space Needle-esque restaurant called The Skyview in the 1960s. Once there, a series of events causes the tower to collapse and kill everyone inside. Stefani believes the woman in the dreams is her grandmother Iris and goes on a journey to find her. What Stefani uncovers is a decades long conspiracy by Death itself to kill everyone who survived the Skyview disaster, and Stefani and her family are up next.

Final Destination has prided itself on opening with a bang and Bloodlines is no exception. Young Iris (Brec Bassinger) goes on a romantic trip to the Skyview with her boyfriend, but what is meant to lead to a sweet proposal is telegraphed—via music cues and lines like “I’ll never let you go”—from a mile away as ending in disaster. You’ll never listen to “Shout” the same way again, that’s for sure. But it’s one thing to know what’s gonna happen, it’s another to see it. Complemented by Todd Masters’s expert makeup effects, the Skyview disaster enters the pantheon of best Final Destination death scenes. No one is safe, not even children, and everything from a piano smushing someone to finger skin getting ripped off is pumped full of visceral impact. Even in moments where you might think certain things are CGI—like the Skyview sunset—the practical effects are aces.

Screenwriters Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor eschew the typical Final Destination format, wherein the events are foreseen by a person directly involved in them, and take a more circuitous route of having Stefani see the premonition her grandmother saw decades ago. The technique is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it presents a great opportunity to expand the world and tie in every Final Destination that’s taken place since 1999. One big disaster unifies everyone and, if this ends up being the final in the franchise, cleanly closes the door.

But it also makes things unnecessarily convoluted. Stefani’s been having the recurring dreams for the last two months and finally starts to investigate why, leading her to a now elderly Iris living her life like she’s Gladys Cooper in the “Nothing in the Dark” episode of Twilight Zone. And because this is Iris’s premonition Stefani is seeing, the movie shows us not only that in full but also Iris stopping it. For a near two-hour movie there’s enough time spent in the 1960s timeline to justify its own feature.

It’s a tangential way to sew up the two halves but the ‘60s plot, which includes stellar production design from Rachel O’Toole and costumes from Michelle Hunter, ends up being the more intriguing of the two. It also leads to some weird plot discrepancies. If Death is coming for every member of a family who is biologically bound, why waste time with a character who isn’t actually related? This happens not once, but twice, and a line like “when you fuck with Death, things get messy” is supposed to answer that.

The group of assembled teens, siblings and cousins from the same family, are distinct but some have more personality than most. It’s hard to fault character when, at this point, the movies are about ushering everyone to their doom, but it is hard not to zone out during scenes when death isn’t on the screen. Santa Juana lacks the clear-sighted, true-believer quality of Devon Sawa’s Alex from the first film, and most of her performances falls into the “I’m not crazy. You have to believe me variety.” Some, like Anna Lore’s cousin Julia, do little more than introduce themselves before becoming grist for the Rube Goldberg death traps and, honestly, isn’t that what the Final Destination series is really about?

Richard Harmon is the movie’s MVP as the brash, tattooed, and pierced Erik. He could easily fall into the role of douchebag non-believer we’ve seen in these movies, but a reveal about his background ends up giving him a necessary shot of pathos, enhanced by Harmon’s expressive acting.

And what would a Final Destination movie be without an appearance by Death (?) himself? Actor and horror icon Tony Todd died last November, and his final appearance in the franchise is a poignant send-off, blending his ability to scare with the deep, emotional power of his acting talent and a fair bit of self-awareness of the illness that ultimately took his life. The audience finally learns how he fits into the franchise as a whole but it’s his final speech, improvised by the actor himself, that sticks with you. You can’t get closer to Death than a man already knocking on the door, and for a franchise all about fearing the inevitable, Todd’s goodbye shows him embracing what was to come, reminding us that it’s not about fearing death but making sure you live life. A bittersweet goodbye to a man who made us fear and respect him in equal measure.

But for all the individual pieces that bring a smile to the viewer’s face it’s hard not to see the seams of the story, which don’t lay flush. The second and third act, firmly placed in the present, go through the typical Final Destination formula, but the characters never give us anything compelling to watch, short of their deaths. So the viewer simply waits for the great makeup and inventive death scenes to pop up. And while there are some GREAT moments—an MRI machine is used to horrifying effect—there are just as many where everything lags.

If Final Destination: Bloodlines is where the franchise ends, it’s a fond farewell, especially since Todd is no longer a presence. The death scenes remain the star of the show, but it is becoming harder to find actors able to liven things up in between those beats. Final Destination: Bloodlines is on the lower end of the franchise spectrum, but it continues to emphasize what we love about the series: that we all end still fear the Reaper.

Final Destination: Bloodlines hits theaters Friday.

Grade: C