Latest news with #Bloodlines'
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Charli XCX Wants To Join A Final Destination Movie After Bloodlines, And I'm Loving Her Pitch For A Sequel
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Dear readers, it just might be time to call it Final Destination summer, and I say that fully knowing that Bloodlines' spot on the 2025 movie schedule came way before Memorial Day weekend. But between Bloodlines' morbidly beautiful box office, and the rave reviews the picture has snagged, people are still going to be talking about this smash hit horror show. Singer/actor Charli XCX is one of those people, and her reaction comes with a pitch for a sequel - which, of course, leaves a prime spot for her to jump on board. Her idea rests on a key point about the Final Destination movies, and even comes with suggested castings and directors! Taking to TikTok as she prepared to see the latest entry from directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, the pop star got right to brass tacks. Showing that she probably has a Max subscription that allows her to stream all of the past installments, Charli XCX boiled down the entire Final Destination series to this premise: The reason I love these movies is that they really are just about hot people getting killed. There's no like moral backbone to the story. It's just like, they're hot, they're cursed and they deserve to die. And these films do so well, like, no matter who's in them.… It doesn't matter who's in these films, they do like, super, super well. Even though our Final Destination Bloodlines review highlights that there's more of a tenderness to this round of Death's grand plan, what Ms. XCX said above makes total sense. Much as the slashers of yore that pitted photogenic young people against the foe of the moment, putting pretty darlings through the meat grinder is a bedrock of horror tradition. Max: Plans start from $9.99 a monthStarting at $9.99 a month (With Ads), and with other tiers of premium/no-interruption streaming also available, an HBO Max subscription could be one hell of a time. Not only are all of the Final Destination movies streaming on that platform, but there are also original shows like The Last of Us that can keep the scares going. View Deal I mean, how would you explain some of the outfits and decisions made in the heat of something like the Friday the 13th series? Charli XCX gets that, and with that thought in mind, the pitch for a Final Destination sequel shared below sounds less like fan fiction and more like a viable idea. While on first glance Charli XCX's Final Destination pitch sounds like it could be the remake of The Neon Demon no one asked for, her grasp on both the genre and this particular formula sidesteps such criticism. Here now is the story pitch, as well as a pretty stacked casting list that should be reaching out to their agents ASAP: And so I was thinking, 'Shouldn't there be a sort of, 'It Girl' version to this franchise? You know? Like a Final Destination … with kind of like Rachel Sennott, Alex Consani, Gabriette, Romy Mars, Me, [Quenlin] Blackwell, Devon Lee Carlson. Maybe there's a scream queen in there, like Jenna (Ortega), maybe there's an OG scream Sissy Spacek. I don't know about the rest of you, but Death stalking a bunch of supermodels, actors, and influencers through Hollywood sounds kinda cool. The set pieces could range from a fashion show gone deadly, a pop concert leading to a huge wave of destruction, and potentially the most disastrous audition - for what else, a horror movie. Also, Charli XCX deserves a ton of credit for fleshing this idea out, right down to the inclusion of Jenna Ortega and Sissy Spacek as the 'scream queens' to hold down tradition. But if that's not enough proof of the 'Guess' singer's love of the genre, check out her list of dream directors to make it a reality: And then it's also directed by a horror auteur, like Ti West, or Coralie [Fargeat]. Or play into the B-movieness of it all and get Robert Rodriguez to do it, and everybody's getting completely massacred. ... I don't know, maybe take a big swing and get [David] Fincher to do it. Imagine. Final Destination Bloodlines showed that there's still life in this franchise yet, and who wouldn't want to throw a couple log trucks on the fire to bring it back again? I don't want to be presumptuous or anything, as my heart is still broken over Charli XCX's rumored Narnia casting not coming to pass. Still, surely one of her concerts would be the perfect venue for Death's plan to reach all of those 'It Girls' waiting to die. I hate that this is the point where I have to remind everyone that this is all merely a hypothetical scenario, and the franchise powers-that-be would need to turn the wheels to make it all happen. However, if all of this talk about Final Destination has you excited to dance with death once more, fear not. Bloodlines is still in theaters, with the rest of the series streaming on Max. Meanwhile, I'll try not to imagine David Fincher directing a mortality-filled tribute to his 'Vogue' music video, or any of the other delicious possibilities Charli XCX has now left us all to ponder.
New York Post
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
‘Final Destination: Bloodlines' coming in hot on opening weekend
Warner Bros' 'Final Destination: Bloodlines' pulled in an impressive $21 million in its debut Friday, on its way to what is projected to be a record-breaking opening weekend. Insiders predict the horror flick will breeze past the franchise's best opening weekend to date, which brought in $41.3 million adjusted for inflation for 2009's 'Final Destination 4.' 4 'Bloodlines' star Kaitlyn Santa Juana plays a college student who inherits deadly premonitions about her family. Warner Bros. Advertisement The movie is expected to put an end to 'Thunderbolts*' reign at the top of the box office charts. The Marvel movie continued to hold the No. 1 spot this week, raking in $43 million in the US, according to industry website The Numbers. 4 'Thunderbolts*' follows an unconventional team of antiheroes on a mission that forces them to confront their dark pasts. ©Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection Advertisement 'Thunderbolts*' grossed $143 million in domestic sales since it theater debuted on May 2 — and totaled $286 million across the globe. 4 'Thunderbolts*' is the latest Marvel movie. IMDB Meanwhile 'Sinners,' the musical horror film starring Michael B. Jordan, earned the second spot, earning $32 million this week. Advertisement The movie, set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932, has earned $229 million since its debut on April 17. 4 'Sinners' stars Jordan in dual roles as criminal twin brothers. ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
Chicago Tribune
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
‘Final Destination: Bloodlines' review: ‘Til Death does his part, with a comedian's flair
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
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Final Destination Bloodlines' Review: The Freak Accident Franchise Beats the Odds with Its Best Film Yet
The high-rise restaurant disaster that kicks off 'Final Destination Bloodlines' has a 'Looney Tunes' quality to it that some critics will falsely pin on a single falling piano. Yes, there is a thousand-pound string instrument that comes crashing down several stories before flattening a bratty kid in a bow tie. But that's just the cherry on top of a perfectly cartoonish opening to the best film this fiendish horror franchise from the 2000s has ever known. Delivering the most visually impressive, emotionally compelling, and quick witted 'Final Destination' to date, co-directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein work wonders with a reboot that shouldn't land nearly as well as it does. Twenty-five years since Flight 180 failed to reach Paris, New Line's freak accident series — infamous for its mass-casualty events and Rube Goldberg-inspired kill sequences — returns with an unconventional script written by Guy Busick and Lori Evans. Here, the same narrative scaffolding that brought Laurie Strode and Jamie Lee Curtis back to 'Halloween' (2018) meets the more retro side of The Conjuring Universe… but in typical 'Final Destination' fashion, there's no slasher villain in sight. More from IndieWire 'Overcompensating' Review: Benito Skinner's Basic College Comedy Works Well Enough Where It Counts Logging Trucks, Swimming Pools, and Bathtubs, Oh My! We Fact-Checked Our Favorite 'Final Destination' Deaths 'Bloodlines' is a prequel/sequel hybrid that introduces, torments, and revives a legacy final girl, who didn't exist at all before now, over the course of just one film playing opposite the invisible threat of Death. That might sound like a bad idea, but the blood-soaked series' triumphant sixth installment is better for the unexpected approach. Ambition trips up this highly detailed resurrection just a handful of times, leaving behind a feat of nimble comedic tone and cohesive pacing that's even more effective than the iconic time-loop twist that directly precedes it at the end of the last sequel, 'Final Destination 5.' 'Bloodlines' zips past the 2010s and the aughts to the same day as the plane crash from the original 2000 movie in the year 1968. Lovebirds Iris (Brec Bassinger) and Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) help their atypical 'Final Destination' setup take flight with a believable but still idyllic date night reminiscent of a romantic old ad for a luxury car brand. The dramatic radiance of AMC's 'Mad Men' contorts to resemble something more like the body horror in Shudder's 'Mad God' when opening night at the Skyview ends in a cataclysmic structure collapse. Screws pop loose, glass panels break, and open flames collide with panicked dancers for a chain reaction so fatally funny it could have happened to Wile E. Coyote. It's all triggered by a careless flick of the wrist and cinema's least lucky penny: a fitting new totem for 'Final Destination' that shines brightest the instant that crappy kid's piano flattening finally sticks. You can't cheat death without seeing your fate first, and signs have always played an essential part in the 'Final Destination' universe. Still, 'Bloodlines' pushes far past its standard premonitions to explore Death's superstitious side and its complex lore more completely. The scares continue to rely on the laws of physics, creepy atmosphere, and common objects to work their magic. (If you aren't afraid of Trash Day yet, you will be.) But filmmakers Lipovsky and Stein find their groove in a unique sort of bouncy brutality. Eyes brimming with tears, reflecting back the bright teal color of her '60s party dress, Bassinger should take the following comparison — between her performance as Young Iris and that one scene with the clown shoe in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?' — as a compliment of the highest order. Helping a toddler (Jayden Oniah) survive the Skyview carnage, Iris emerges as a fully formed, energized, and sympathetic horror heroine who seems like she's battled through her share of sequels before. Following in the footsteps of fan favorite Kimberly Corman (the 'Final Destination 2' lead played by A.J. Cook, who gets a solid shout-out in 'Bloodlines'), new girl Iris Campbell seems to meet her sky-high maker when a piercing scream suddenly jolts 'Bloodlines' into the present. Waking up confused in the middle of a college lecture hall in 2025, Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) has been having recurring nightmares about her estranged grandmother for months. 'Iris.' One of several delightfully melodramatic reveals, that's the first clue this 'Final Destination' puzzle won't operate like the earlier ones did. Soon, Stefani is speeding back to her childhood home, demanding answers about Iris and the bizarre fine-dining disaster she endured decades ago. How did Iris escape the certain doom foretold to her by that 'Shout!' needle drop? And could that terrible night have something to do with why her only daughter, Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt), abandoned Stefani and her brother, Charlie (Teo Briones), years later? After a rushed reunion with her dad, Marty (Tinpo Lee), Stefani wastes no time contacting even more of her relatives about uprooting the planet's most fucked-up family tree. Haunted by his disturbed mother and her mysterious history, Uncle Howard (Alex Zahara) doesn't want to talk about it. His wife, Aunt Brenda (April Telek), isn't related to Stefani anyway. And as for Erik (Richard Harmon), Julia (Anna Lore), and Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) — the coolest cousins to grace a major horror sequel since Alexandra Daddario hit 'Texas Chainsaw 3D' — the siblings are mostly loyal to each other. They like their parents. They like Charlie. They even love Bobby's pet turtle, Paco. But when it comes to Stefani and her crazy theories about Grandma Iris (Gabrielle Rose), news of the Campbell family's supposed curse isn't welcome. Of course, 'Final Destination' rarely wastes time explaining itself to victims who won't listen. The rare reboot with a decent title, 'Bloodlines' uses direct confrontation between characters who know each other intimately to revitalize a torture format typically reserved for total strangers. The core cast has an infectious chemistry that improves the film's tone immensely, and even situated in a generally good plot, there are portions of the story that wouldn't fly without their buzz. It's vastly more exciting to watch relatives as they simultaneously battle Death's Design and their petty grudges than it is to see single-trait caricatures getting repeatedly yanked through a twisted public health crisis. Better still, that familiarity between actors subtly affirms the work of the two 'Bloodlines' filmmakers — conveying faith in this story, comfort with their artistic collaboration, and authority over the 'Final Destination' fanbase. Having loved these movies since the turn of the century, I'll debase myself with first-person references just long enough to admit that 'Bloodlines' gave me everything I could personally need. Ranking these films is a nostalgia-laden minefield that's more sensitive than most, and yet each chapter seems to serve a distinct purpose(*) in retrospect. 'Final Destination' (2000) delivers Jeffrey Reddick's original 'X-Files' spec script idea in its purest form, but 'Final Destination 2' (2003) enjoys the smartest arc of the first five films and has already gone down in history for its indelible highway disaster. The brilliant decision to cast Mary Elizabeth Winstead — and include that tanning booth scene — in 'Final Destination 3' (2006) make it the most entertaining chapter that's specific to aughts horror, while 'Final Destination 5' (2011) continues to boast the all-around strongest collection of kills with the most stable shelf life. (*)The purpose of 'The Final Destination' (2009) is that it is the worst one. The end. (Also known as 'Final Destination 4,' that one also has the pool butt scene, which ought to count for something.) Die-hard 'Final Destination' obsessives will find plenty to pick apart when it comes to Iris' dubious survival strategy in 'Bloodlines.' Suffice to say, Clear Rivers' padded cell has never looked smarter — and some tackier sequences near the end undercut that sparkling first impression from the Skyview. Clever enough to riff on the earlier films' spotty track record with digital effects, the newest 'Final Destination' stays a smidge too true to its era by including at least one slow-mo explosion à la Michael Bay. It's a fiery splash of nonsense that's as boring to look at now as it would have been then, but the underwhelming effect feels even more maddening in the middle of near-miss climax that needs all the help it can get. Narrowly saved by a truly genius kicker (one that's oddly reminiscent of Sam Raimi's 'Drag Me to Hell,' by the way), 'Bloodlines' is the only 'Final Destination' that doesn't play both versions of its centerpiece emergency back-to-back. It's also the first of these philosophical kill-a-thons that feels like watching a real flesh-and-blood movie. An emotional death by a thousand darkly comic cuts, 'Bloodlines' wracks up little character wins along its way to rendering an impeccable kill featuring the best-written death in the entire series. Intertwining humor, horror, and heart into a jester's crown of thorns, the magnetic actor sacrificed at the main altar of that kill should be immediately canonized a 'Final Destination' saint. Silly, delicate, sharp, and mean, 'Bloodlines' has its flaws but nevertheless confirms Death's Design as a force worthy of its own special place in the horror hall of fame. A flawless goodbye for Tony Todd, whose enduring affection for the genre community oozes from the screen like a warm hug, 'Bloodlines' should appear high on any list of the Candyman's most enchanting performances regardless of when he passed. As the sun sets on William Bludworth, the latest and greatest 'Final Destination' looks to the horizon in a rapidly expanding world that Todd helped build into an institution as big as his presence. Sketched with the same boundary-pushing meticulousness 'Looney Tunes' animators once used to make Bugs and Daffy leap off the page, 'Final Destination' could have returned with the disappointing *dink* of a 2D penny. Instead, this wonderfully weird and lyrical film — a crackling ode to the perverse operatics underpinning accidents no human can explain — lands with the full weight of a frenzied jazz band. It doesn't get much better than a rude maître d' ironically denied a life-saving spot on a crowded elevator. And yet, even falling from the top of the Skyview, 'Bloodlines' will have newcomers and lifelong 'Final Destination' fans laughing about that damn piano the whole way down. A Warner Bros. Pictures release, 'Final Destination Bloodlines' is in theaters Friday, May 16. Want to stay up to date on IndieWire's film reviews and critical thoughts? to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers. Best of IndieWire The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Final Destinations: Bloodlines' Review: Born to Die
It's no surprise that the 'Final Destination' franchise — a schlocky, spectacularly gory series of horror films that kicked off in 2000, spawning a total of five movies — has staying power. Unlike most horror properties, there's no big baddie (à la Jason Voorhees or Leatherface) — or at least not one capable of getting old and seeming played out. The villain is Death itself, and both onscreen and off, it's coming for us all, though in the 'Final Destination' movies this unseen force is a shameless showboat. That's no exception in the new, sixth installment, 'Final Destination: Bloodlines,' which begins with a terrifically tense set piece in and around a Space Needle-style glass tower in the 1950s. Iris (Brec Bassinger) is on a date with her beau on the building's opening night when she experiences a vivid hallucination of their imminently brutal deaths by towering inferno. The vision allows Iris to escape her grisly fate and save everyone around her. In this regard, 'Bloodlines' follows the template of all the 'Final Destination' movies (the first movie saw its characters escaping an airplane explosion, the second film a highway pileup and the third a roller coaster malfunction). But as things go in the 'Final Destination' universe, Death doesn't like being cheated — and it'll take its lives, one by one, in what has become the franchise's claim to fame: ingeniously choreographed kill scenes that turn everyday settings and objects into potential murder weapons. Consider some of the series's greatest hits: death by tanning bed; by head-mashing weight machine; by, uh, slipping on spaghetti and getting your eyeball pierced by a falling fire-escape ladder. 'Bloodlines,' gleefully directed by Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky, offers a compelling tweak on its predecessors by introducing — with a wink and a shove — the element of inherited trauma. The opening glass-tower tragedy, it turns out, happened decades ago and the premonition takes the form of Iris's granddaughter's nightmares. Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is flunking out of college because of these recurring visions, leading her to return home and reconnect with her long-estranged grandmother (Gabrielle Rose). Of the dozens of people who were supposed to die that night, Iris was nearly the last. Death proceeds in the intended order of the original blood bath, meaning it has taken years to work through all its victims — including the children those people were never supposed to have. Iris is now something of a doomsday prepper, having single-handedly fended off Death's wrath by sheltering in a remote cabin. Her family thinks she's nuts, but it's not long before Death works its way down the family tree, making conspiracists out of all of them. 'Bloodlines' might be the most self-consciously silly installment in the series, poking fun at its own improbable scenarios with meta-humor and Looney Toons-style gags (the boatloads of mushy, digitally-rendered blood add to this caricature effect). There's an obligatory sob story about Stefani and her mother (Rya Kihlstedt), who abandoned her and her little brother (Teo Briones) when Stefani was 10, but the emotional stakes are held well enough by the cast's charisma. Tony Todd, the franchise's only mainstay (who died last year), makes a soulfully spooky cameo; and Richard Harmon, who plays one of Stefani's cousins and whose multiple piercings and rogue demeanor make great playthings for Death, is a comic standout. But, most important, the deaths are weird and surprising; and their lead-ups are expertly paced. There's not much more a 'Final Destination' fan could ask for, but 'Bloodlines' — which at times feel more like a dark satire than a straightforward horror movie — reminds us we're powerless against the world's morbid whims. Best we can do is laugh about it.
