REVIEW: Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)
*SPOILER-FREE* From the Final Destination fan.
Final Destination holds second place in my top three horror franchises. The first being Friday the 13th.
I remember a time when I first got into Final Destination and the idea of a sixth movie was up in the air. Final Destination 4 and 5 were the weakest and people didn’t want another one.
So being a fan, I had accepted I would not see a new installment in my lifetime, or ever. But now that there is one, I have hope for a new Friday the 13th installment.
I think out of all horror franchises, Final Destination gets overlooked more often than it should. It’s not a perfect franchise by any means, but horror movies (at least older ones), have always been that way.
Final Destination: Bloodlines makes its return leaving behind the 2000s tropes in favor of pure shock and anxiety for longtime fans and new viewers.
Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is a college student who’s been having the same nightmare for the past two months: her grandmother, Iris, dying in a major incident at The Skyview Restaurant, its design similar to the Space Needle.
Her nightmare happened in real life, except Iris survived. The Skyview Restaurant fell apart and Iris saved everyone decades ago, but Death has a way of making sure everyone who survived paid their dues.
Iris has been managing to cheat death since the incident. However, when Stefani goes looking for answers to her nightmares, things go left and members of the family become a target.
Now the order of Death is not placed onto random people: it’s placed onto Stefani’s bloodline, from oldest to youngest.
If you’re a returning Final Destination viewer like I am, the sixth part is a breath of fresh air. While old tropes integral to the movie are present, it’s refreshing to see a new approach.
Final Destination tropes like the invisible villain “Death,” the order in which people die, and the premonitions main characters experience are present in their own unique way.
Iris is not the main character, but rather, haunts the narrative. She is the only one to experience the premonition, while Stefani is left to dream her premonition and pick up the pieces.
The order in which members of the family die are said, but different instances are made for people to “cheat” death or “skip over” a family member because of how they may be related to each other.
The tropes that are really left to die are the ones that every 2000s movie loved to use, and Final Destination was guilty of it. The overly sexual tones, the jock character, the nerdy character, the pervert character, the hot girl, and everyone in high school.
These were tropes especially present in the first three Final Destination films, and it’s obvious they are 2000s horror films to its core. Bloodlines adapts well to the “seriousness” of horrors in the 2020s.
Lots of horror franchises that return in the modern releases have at least one significant character return. See Sidney Prescott and Dewey Riley making their return in Scream 5.
Final Destination doesn’t have much of that as most legendary characters in the franchise have already died in the film’s universe, except for one beloved character: William Bloodworth (Tony Todd).
His return functions more as a bittersweet send-off to an unsettling force. Todd, who was very sick at the time of filming, returned in his final onscreen role, telling the family, and the audience, about the enjoyment of life.
Bludworth is the only character who appears in Final Destination numerous times, giving advice to those who were under attack from Death. Usually, they never lived long enough to be seen again.
Seeing Todd in such a frail state was emotional, and him acknowledging his sickness as a character meant that as someone who had seen Death many times, he was in a place of acceptance.
Most deaths in the franchise could usually be seen as stupid, predictable, or not believable because they were done so bad.
Bloodlines ups the ante in the creativity behind deaths. Just when you think you’ve had enough of watching Erik (Richard Harmon) have his septum piercing torn off by a ceiling fan, there’s more to it. (And that’s not his actual death).
The lead ups from death can come from anything that leaves you questioning what household object can be out to get you next. In the final death scene, that anxiety is turned up to 100.
They’re shocking, sudden, and violent. Sometimes, they can even be comedic with how horrifyingly gruesome and crazy they are.
Some easter eggs are spread throughout the movie from past deaths. The infamous log truck makes an appearance, the sudden hit by a bus bit shows up, and two deaths are done in the same hospital previous characters visited Final Destination 2.
The film’s universe expands in this film, starting as early as the 1960s with Iris. It further explains what happened to the survivors of The Skyview, how it connects to the family, and a secret connection Bloodworth has to the incident.
If you discover what happened since that day at The Skyview, you’d see Death didn’t have a plan simply because of premonitions: it’s implied that characters from the first five films have a distant connection to The Skyview incident in Bloodlines.
I gave Final Destination: Bloodlines an overall rating of 4/5. I had a fun time watching the film and enjoyed watching the series come back to life like they never left.
Having another Final Destination installment would be amazing, and I would love to see what sort of unique twist they come up with next time for Death.