‘Final Destination: Bloodlines' review: ‘Til Death does his part, with a comedian's flair

Chicago Tribune

15-05-2025

Death doesn't exactly take a holiday in 'Final Destination: Bloodlines,' the sixth in the 'Final Destination' series and the first after a 14-year break. It's more of a busman's holiday, enjoyed to the fullest by an entity truly in love with a particular line of work.
The film works likewise. It's a welcome tonal shift for this 25-year-old franchise, which is built not on any one character or actor, but on death as a fact of life.
Besides being super-duper gory, of course, the new movie is jaunty, good-looking and full of what you might call esprit de corpses. 'Final Destination: Bloodlines' has little in common with sadistic junk like the 'Saw' movies (excluding the first 'Saw,' if you're being charitable). 'Bloodlines' may be sadistic, but it isn't junk. And while the previous 'Final Destination' movies often struggled, under different directors, to resolve some warring impulses of fatalistic yuks and more conventional ick, the new one works like an existential comedy of errors, with enough finesse from directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein to take the meanness out of some pretty hideous ways to die.
For the newbies: The 'Final Destination' universe operates on the idea that certain characters have been cursed/blessed with the ability to foresee chain-reaction death spirals in nightmare premonition form. 'Final Destination: Bloodlines' opens with a ripping, amusingly disastrous 1968 prologue, set atop a new Space Needle-type attraction one character describes, proudly, as having been 'completed five months ahead of schedule!' Iris (Brec Bassinger) is a woman with a secret. She enjoys the opening-day festivities with her boyfriend (Max Lloyd-Jones), but not for long; she's hit by one of those premonitions, involving flames, falling bodies and the perils of cutting corners on high-rise construction. Have we learn nothing from 'The Towering Inferno'?
Iris is the grandmother of this film's entry-point character, the troubled college student Stefani, played with sharp instincts and a good ear for pacing by Kaitlyn Santa Juana. She's plagued by the same nightmares as the grandmother she never knew. From there, screenwriters Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor introduce Stefani's family (she's home after being placed on academic probation), including her estranged mother (Rya Kihlstedt). All have been targeted for demolition by Death, who as one character notes, prefers 'weird and messed-up' methods whenever possible.
There are serious matters afoot, parental abandonment and the ravages of cancer among them. For four very good minutes, the late Tony Todd, who died at 69 after filming his scene in 'Final Destination: Bloodlines,' returns as recurring character William Bludworth. With most any other franchise, watching a fine actor's farewell appearance — Todd knew he was dying when he filmed last year — would toss you into a serious funk and straight out of the movie. Here it's a little different; the scene in question is melancholy, to say the least, but poetically apt, and for both character and performer it's a stark reminder that Death is a fact, not an opinion.
There's a sag in the midsection of the narrative, and 'Bloodlines' is a tad longish overall. But it's a rare franchise reboot that works as a standalone, even with a few choice callbacks and links to the previous movies. Directors Lipovsky and Stein and cinematographer Christian Sebaldt know a few things about camera placement and the benefit of keeping certain shots at a middle distance. Example: After lipping off to a distraught Stefani, a secondary character takes a non-injurious soccer ball to the noggin, which topples her headlong into a garbage can, which is hoisted immediately by automatic garbage truck grabber into the trash compactor, and it's quick and nutty and clever enough to be funnier than it is cruel.
Not everything in 'Bloodlines' comes with that sort of panache, but a little goes a long way when you're dealing with death by power mower, malfunctioning MRI machine and this film's leitmotif: multiple casualties aided and abetted by errant pennies, rolling around willy-nilly, jamming fan blades or key components of railroad track, and generally turning up like the bad pennies they were born to be.
This is the film's moral: Save your pennies. The life you save may be your own.
'Final Destination: Bloodlines' — 3 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for strong violent/grisly accidents, and language)
Running time: 1:49
How to watch: Premieres in theaters May 16