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NDTV
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NDTV
Final Destination: Bloodlines Review - Brutal, Bonkers And Brilliant (Sort Of)
New Delhi: They say you never forget your first Final Destination. Maybe it's the image of that doomed Flight 180 tearing itself apart in the sky. Or that logging truck sequence that permanently altered how we follow vehicles on the highway. The franchise, for all its formulaic inevitability, has always understood one thing: death, when delayed, demands flair. After a 14-year hiatus, Final Destination: Bloodlines doesn't just dust off the old playbook - it sets it on fire, dances on the ashes, and serves up a glossy, gory, generational curse with a side of stylish mayhem. Directed by Freaks duo Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, Bloodlines opens with what is arguably the franchise's most operatic set piece to date. We're in the 1960s, and the Skyview - a glittering, space needle-like skyscraper - is hosting its opening night. Jazzed-up patrons twirl to The Isley Brothers' Shout, champagne flutes clink, and a stolen coin tossed into a wishing fountain sets off a Rube Goldberg chain of doom that spirals from flambeed entrees to shattering glass floors. At the centre of it all is Iris (Brec Bassinger), whose premonition - vivid, visceral and just in time - saves several lives. Or so it seems. Cut to the present. College student Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is being haunted by relentless nightmares of the Skyview disaster. With her academic life teetering and no plausible explanation for the specificity of her visions, Stefani returns home to dig into the mystery. Her search leads her to the revelation that Iris was her grandmother - a woman whose moment of clairvoyance half a century ago set off a butterfly effect of trauma, tragedy and now, a lethal inheritance. Because in this sixth instalment, death isn't just following survivors - it's hunting down bloodlines. A skipped death doesn't just put you in the crosshairs. It puts your future generations on a hit list. Stefani's family, of course, doesn't immediately buy into her premonitions. Her mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt), frosty and haunted, prefers silence to stories. Her cousins - Erik (Richard Harmon, smarmy but likeable), Julia (Anna Lore), and Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) - fall somewhere between scepticism and alarm. Only her younger brother Charlie (Teo Briones) is truly in her corner. But belief is a luxury few can afford when the deaths start stacking up in classic Final Destination style - elaborate, gruesome and infuriatingly clever. This time, though, there's a real sense of craft behind the carnage. The MRI scene - a standout - manages to be both darkly hilarious and absolutely horrific, thanks to a pierced victim and a magnetically fatal attraction. A garbage truck sequence and some well-placed ceiling fan suspense feel like knowing winks to longtime fans. Lipovsky and Stein understand the series's choreography - it's not just about the kill, it's the anticipation. The camera lingers, the score teases and your eyes scan the frame for every possible death cue, only to be wrong, wrong again, and then violently, spectacularly right. What sets Bloodlines apart is its willingness to lean into pathos without losing its playfulness. The focus on family, not just a random gaggle of teens, brings stakes that aren't just physical but emotional. The film touches, however lightly, on inherited trauma, the burden of survival and generational guilt. Stefani, as played by Santa Juana, is more than just a scream queen - she's frazzled, determined, and grounded in a way that feels rare for this franchise. Gabrielle Rose, as the now elderly Iris, is quietly heartbreaking, living in self-imposed exile and still under death's shadow decades later. And then there's William Bludworth. Tony Todd's ever-creepy mortician returns one last time, visibly frail but magnetically eerie, offering the franchise's final philosophical nugget before departing for good. His farewell - reportedly improvised - lends the film its only truly reflective note. Not preachy, just personal. Fitting, really, for a character who's always known more than he let on. Still, Bloodlines never forgets what it's here to do. It's a high-octane horror rollercoaster with zero patience for subtlety and maximum commitment to chaos. Yes, some subplots veer into the gimmicky. Yes, the third act leans hard into lore-dump territory. But when you're juggling ricocheting coins, collapsing towers, deadly household appliances and exploding body parts, a little mess is part of the fun. It's also a film that knows its history. From visual callbacks - buses, logs, tanning beds - to a score that teases familiar themes, Bloodlines is steeped in its own mythology without being suffocated by it. Screenwriters Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor, working from a story by Jon Watts, strike a surprisingly deft balance between fan service and franchise reinvention. There's a knowingness here, a refusal to take things too seriously, that makes every ridiculous death feel like a punchline and a payoff. Final Destination: Bloodlines is not elevated horror. It doesn't want to be. It's a popcorn-drenched, viscera-slicked ballet of doom that remembers exactly why you fell in love with the franchise in the first place. It's brutal, bonkers, and - against all odds - kind of brilliant. The Reaper, it turns out, just needed a little R&R (rest and recuperation). Welcome back.
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
ABC News
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Final Destination at 25: How a slasher with no killer turned into a billion-dollar franchise
Welcome to Cheat Sheet, where we give you all the intel you need about iconic shows and films. In honour of its 25th anniversary and its new addition, this time we're looking at the deathly film franchise Final Destination. The one certainty in life is that everyone is going to die. It might be brutal, it might be quick, it might be in 100 years from now or it could be tomorrow, but death is coming. And no other franchise has capitalised on the finality and inevitability of death quite like Final Destination. Riding the wave of Scream-fever at the turn of the millennium, the first Final Destination changed the slasher game by featuring no physical murderer. It is the essence of Death itself that infiltrates everyday objects to construct some of the most gruesome demises ever put to film. Initially critically panned, Final Destination nearly quintupled its production costs by pulling in $US112 million at the worldwide box office. It would go on to spawn five sequels and a legion of dedicated fans. Now, 25 years since its inception, Final Destination is back and out for blood. Final Destination was never supposed to be a movie. Creator Jeffrey Reddick, a horror fan since childhood, penned an X-Files script in the hopes that it would attract an agent to represent him. Titled 'Flight 180', the original story was inspired by a news article about a woman who avoided a plane crash by taking heed of her mother's warning that her original flight was going to explode. The film took the bizarre real-life incident a step further by introducing a cast of characters who are saved from an air crash after a premonition of their fiery ends, only for Death to come knocking for what he was denied. Flight 180 was never submitted for The X-Files; instead, New Line bought Reddick's story and plopped it into the laps of two of the most prolific X-Files writers of all time, James Wong (who directed the first and third films) and Glen Morgan. Reddick credits Wong and Morgan with bringing the franchise's trademark Rube-Goldberg-esque set pieces to the table. The first Final Destination established the structure that has served the series for a quarter of a century. A young person has a disaster premonition in a public place (plane, fairground, speedway etc.) then corrals friends and bystanders to leave just before it hits. The rest of the run time is spent trying to figure out who is next on Death's list and how to side-step a grisly end. Final Destination has become a hugely successful franchise, bringing in $US663 million ($1.034 billion) since its inception 25 years ago, with almost every sequel bringing in over $US100 million (RIP Final Destination 2 for only grossing $US90 million). In a scene awash with fierce final girls, Final Destination stands out for its sheer brutality. It's a well worn trope in slasher films that someone survives at the end, but Final Destination chews through its protagonists like bubblegum, pioneering the shock hit-by-a-bus-style death that has not only been replicated within horror, but snaked its way into more PG fare. Final Destination also introduced a slasher devoid of a killer. While at first it was unclear how to keep capitalising on an antagonist that couldn't be seen or fought, it has become an undeniably terrifying trademark of the series. "That specific notion — that Death is an invisible force — is, I think, the thing that has allowed this franchise to continue for 20 years," producer Craig Perry told Digital Spy. "It has allowed it to travel worldwide because every country, every culture, and every religion has a particular notion about life, death, fate and destiny." But perhaps its largest impact lies outside the cinema, with the audiences that will never be able to look at everyday objects the same way. "We all have thoughts in our head of things that could go wrong," Final Destination: Bloodlines director Adam Stein told The Screen Show's Jason Di Rosso Final Destination: Bloodlines — the follow-up to 2011's fifth instalment — swaps high-school seniors for a more family affair. The big premonition scene takes place in 1968, with Death waiting decades to come after the descendants of Iris (Gabrielle Rose), the survivor of a deadly tower collapse. Directors Stein and Zach Lipovsky confirmed that Bloodlines was a return to practical, show-stopping kills. "There's one sequence where a character gets bent backwards to where the back of their head is touching their heels. We had the actor on one platform and a stunt person on a second platform right under them," Stein says. "So when they get sucked into this machine, it looks like it's one person bending backwards. That's a very, very simple, old-style, almost-magic apparatus." Bloodlines will also mark the final appearance of Tony Todd as William Bludworth. Beloved by the fanbase, the mysterious coroner pops up in every Final Destination except the third (although Todd's voice still features throughout) to lay exposition on the marked characters. Todd, who portrayed the Candyman in the 1992 film of the same name, died in November 2024 — just months after Bloodlines filming wrapped. "We all knew that he was obviously quite ill, and it was pretty clear that this was going to be the last role he would play in a movie," Perry told Deadline. "And the fact that it was one of the Final Destination movies made it that much more poignant." Warning: spoilers for the Final Destination series Tod (Chad Donella) is the first survivor to die in the whole series, and his death sets the tone for decades to come. There are a few heart-stopping misdirections: a casual nick from a straight razor; even an ominous shadow on the shower curtain that suggests a looming physical being. But in the end, Tod's demise comes from slipping and falling into a drying wire that lethally wraps around his neck. It's miles away from the viscera-filled kills of the modern films, but the true horror is in how easily you can imagine it happening in real life. Final Destination saves its more outlandish death sequences for the opening premonition, and one of the most recognisable is in the second film in the series. Multiple characters are driving on a highway and end up in a fireball crash caused by a logging truck's cargo coming loose. While all the deaths in the crash are remarkable, the best is the first: when a loose log falls from the truck and crashes through the windscreen of Officer Burke's (Michael Landes) car, eviscerating him into red chunks that fly out the back. Despite the fact Burke's death only occurs in a character's premonition it remains one of the most visceral of the entire series. Burke is one of the lucky characters who swerves his death, surviving the entire movie. Poor Ashlyn and Ashley, doomed by their ditziness and their dedication to bronzed skin and an icy drink. It's Ashley's unfinished beverage dripping onto the controls of their tandem tanning bed that causes the temperature to rise in their fluorescent tombs. Then the act of choosing some tunes kicks off a sequence of events that ends with a CD shelf sealing both their tanning tubes shut. All they can do is scream as the audience watches their skin bubble off their bodies. Just another reason to stay away from tanning beds. So often the victims in Final Destination are innocent bystanders, so it's nice when death goes after a real jerk like Hunt Wynorski (Nick Zano). Hunt is a typical sexist meathead who doesn't respect Death, thinking he's protected from its wrath by his lucky coin. After precariously placing a confiscated water gun on a pool pump at the local swimming haunt, Hunt dives in to retrieve his blessed coin only for the gun to fall on the switch that swaps blow with suck. Hunt is suctioned butt-first onto the pool's filter until his internal organs are… ummm removed and spurt out like gruesome confetti. A horrible way to go but, on the other hand, he did not respect women (or Death). Keeping with the punishment-for-perverts trend, slimy Isaac (PJ Byrne) enters the location of his death, a spa, and immediately harasses the young receptionist. It's OK though, because Issac is about to go through an ORDEAL that involves one of the most atrocious uses of acupuncture needles ever put to film. After wincing through dozens of needles in his body and his table collapsing, Isaac thinks his nightmare is over, only for an incredibly heavy looking Buddha statue to come crashing down, squashing his head like a grape. That's what you get for calling Buddha fat. Final Destination: Bloodlines releases into cinemas on May 15.
BBC News
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'Anytime I get on a plane, I think of Final Destination': The horror film that traumatised millennials
Twenty-five years ago, the first instalment terrified by making everyday scenarios into death traps. Now, after a 14-year break, Final Destination: Bloodlines is tweaking the formula. "In death, there are no accidents, no coincidences, no mishaps, and no escapes." Those are the unsettling words of all-knowing mortician William Bludworth (played by Tony Todd) in the first Final Destination (2000), a horror film without a masked killer, bloodsucking vampire or brain-eating zombies to torment its victims – just the looming spectre of death and a cruel reality: no matter how far we run, or how much we hide, it will come for us all. Back in the original film, death certainly didn't come peacefully for a group of high school kids and their teacher, who narrowly escaped losing their lives after getting off their plane, the ill-fated Flight 180, just before it exploded, thanks to one of their number having a premonition – only to find that the Grim Reaper wanted to take revenge on them for cheating its design. So for 90 minutes, audiences strapped in to watch this invisible antagonist orchestrate some of the most intricate and shocking demises imaginable for each survivor, involving all kinds of routine objects, from a clothesline to kitchen knives. Young audiences around the world left cinemas scared of everything around them. "I must have been 15, seeing it with my friends, and we were grabbing each other," millennial and filmmaker Diana Ali Chire tells the BBC. "The plane thing was just genius because anytime I get on a plane, I think of Final Destination." The brainchild of screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick, Final Destination followed in the teen horror footsteps of Scream (1996) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) to become a box office success, traumatising an entire generation of cinema-goers along with it. "[As millennials] we grew up on 90s slasher movies and they all have that similar vibe of cool, young stars of the time with a nice balance of scary and entertaining – Final Destination felt so much like it was part of that wave," Mike Muncer, host of the Evolution of Horror podcast, tells the BBC. "I remember seeing posters for it and thinking, 'This is very much my jam.'" But thanks to its grisly, nihilistic plotline, it also shifted the teen horror needle, adds Muncer. "We didn't have a masked killer anymore, there was no motive, it was just watching people die and being walloped with something entirely unexpected." The film subsequently spawned four sequels, each one keeping the same basic formula but upping the ante with even more elaborate ways to end human life, before taking a 14-year break. But now, finally, it's back this week with a sixth instalment, Final Destination: Bloodlines, whose storyline ties every previous film together. "It was important for us to thread the needle to make the movie both very clearly part of the franchise canon and part of the lineage of all the previous movies," co-director Zach Lipovsky tells the BBC. "But also [we wanted to make it] incredibly fresh and unpredictable for all the people who love these movies." From idea to screen The franchise began when a 27-year-old Reddick was reading a news article while taking a flight from New York back to his home state of Kentucky. The story described a woman who had avoided being in a plane crash by switching flights because of a bad feeling her mother had about her original aircraft. It inspired him to write a "spec script", or unsolicited screenplay, for his favourite TV show, The X-Files, in which "Scully's brother had a premonition", Reddick explains. "[I thought:] what if they cheated death, and death came after them?" Working at New Line Cinema at the time, Reddick shared this episode script with colleagues who were so impressed by the originality of the concept that they persuaded him to write it as an entirely separate feature film instead. "[There are] shades of The Omen in Final Destination, where you've got this little devil child Damien causing bad things to happen to people," Muncer says. "But I think it's pretty unique." The script went through a lot of changes before production began in Long Island and Vancouver in 1999. "In the original story, death was a force that took over a police detective who was investigating a case," Reddick explains, "You found out that he had flatlined at the same time as a plane crash, so the essence of death went into him and he was killing off the crash survivors." But for producer Craig Perry, who has worked on every Final Destination film, it was "the intersection of coincidence and what ifs" in the original three-page outline that he wanted the film to focus on. "Everyone at some point in their lives has had a moment of deja vu, or that weird, tingly feeling that something bad is about to happen," he tells the BBC. "Or conversely, when you have a close call, you start to wonder, maybe had I not turned left but right, I would be dead." With such bleak fatalism at its core, some mischievousness was injected for balance once seasoned X-Files scribes James Wong and Glen Morgan entered the frame. They punched up death into a more playful character by way of its elaborate killing schemes, which were inspired by late American cartoonist Rube Goldberg's famous drawings of "chain reaction devices": imaginary inventions "where A had to hit B, which had to hit C, which had to hit D, in perfect sequence for the machine to work", notes Perry. Yet the studio couldn't get their heads around an antagonist they couldn't see. "You've [typically] got a Freddy, a Jason or some visualisation that the [protagonists] can fight, so [the studio] made me put this [actual] angel of death character in the script," recalls Reddick. The idea was that this physical figure would turn up to taunt the protagonist Alex (Devon Sawa), who had the premonition, from the shadows. Luckily for Reddick, Wong and Morgan fought back and got their way with their original vision of death as an abstract force made tangible only via elemental flourishes like gusts of wind and leaking water, which both signalled its presence and its fatal machinations. "We wanted to keep these to the more natural elements, which would be in the arsenal that death could take advantage of," says Perry. "So, water, wind, electricity, the simple erosion of dirt, gravity – all of those things are the things that death has easy access to, to manipulate inanimate objects." For Bloodlines, the personification of death has evolved even further, with the film-makers using the looming framing of IMAX cameras to tell the audience it has arrived. "In the IMAX release of the film, death's perspective expands on screen," says co-director Adam. "Every scene where death arrives, that's where we expand to IMAX so you feel death coming with each close-up shot of everyday objects." Making the mundane malevolent was key to Final Destination's "traumatisation factor", as Perry puts it, with everything from coffee mugs to nose hair trimmers turned into potential threats, but it wasn't always easy to pull off. "Getting the [sequence of accidents] to work is pretty hard," says Perry, "because when you creatively come up with something, you have to imagine how to make sure that the things that need to collide with each other do it plausibly so that the audience isn't taken out of the moment." More like this:• 12 of the best films to watch this May• The 1950s French horror that still shocks• How Clueless revolutionised teen comedy What drives these scenes is the dramatic irony of the audience knowing that, whether at the dentist's or in a tanning booth, the characters are unwittingly at the centre of a death trap. "[The audience] know that there's something in the room manipulating elements, so they're immediately empathetic to the characters, pointing and yelling at the screen," adds Perry. "So you're looking at a can of tuna and after two or three shots, that's no longer a can of tuna, that is an instrument of death." Changing the core characters from adults, as they were in the original scripts, to teens was a key selling point of the first Final Destination, too, since teen horror was all the rage at the time and already recognisable actors like Sawa, Varsity Blues' Ali Larter, Dawson's Creek's Kerr Smith and American Pie's Sean William Scott were a draw for younger audiences. "I watched Devon Sawa in Idle Hands," says Chire, referring to the 1999 horror comedy the actor made just before. "So when I found out he was in Final Destination, I wanted to see it." For die-hard horror fans, the casting of Todd, famous for his turn in 1992's Candyman, as the pivotal character who explains the whole premise was the icing on the cake. "He just gives it some horror clout," says Muncer. "This supernatural evil coming for you, the idea of a curse, links back to Candyman." Upon its release, Final Destination made $112,036,870 (£83,862,398) worldwide against a $23,000,000 ($17,220,000) production budget, and a sequel was greenlit immediately. "Most horror films drop 50% in their first weekend, and we were watching the movie climb the box office," recalls Reddick, who got to work penning the next script with a fresh twist: the new cohort of teen and adult characters had all escaped their original intended death, before the events of Final Destination 2, because the FD1 survivors had got off the notorious Flight 180, "so that you saw a spider web effect tying into the fact that our lives are all connected." The key elements of the franchise Every Final Destination film connects in some way, be it big or small. From one character cheating death because another character, in a separate film, took the last cinema ticket intended for them, to the major twist of Final Destination 5 being a prequel to the original movie – the romantic leads survive to the end of that film, only to perish on Flight 180. "That's part of the fun of the franchise," adds Perry. "Wouldn't it be interesting to see how that connectivity plays out? Death's web is far more intricate and high-level math than we ever imagined. It's the stuff that makes you sit in bed and go, 'I don't want to get up.'" When it comes to specific macabre sequences, Final Destination 2 served up one of the franchise's most enduring images of destruction with its opening highway multi-car pile-up involving a log truck. "I still get log truck memes sent to me every other day," says Reddick. But, more broadly, it also really established a template for the deaths. "There's [always] at least one moment in the chain of events that the character himself or herself actuates, to [convey] the sense that your actions [do determine] whether or not you live or die," says Perry. "And there has to [also] be a moment of just dumb luck, just the fickle Finger of Fate tapping you on the shoulder and saying, 'Pay attention.' Everything else is just the coordination of all those natural elements." And that coordination involves a lot of misdirection. Take the spaghetti-related death of Evan Lewis, a lottery-winning survivor in Final Destination 2 – a favourite franchise moment for Lipovsky. "He slips on the spaghetti, and that's what you think is going to kill him, but then it doesn't. The cadence of that scene was a guiding light for him and co-director Adam Stein. "Final Destination is so predictable: you know that all the characters are going to die in sequence," Stein says. "So we're always trying to think of how to twist it." "It's very common in the previous films to cut to a character by themselves in a dangerous place and the audience immediately knows [they are] dead," adds Lipovsky. "We use that expectation, then subvert, change and flip things around so that you're constantly going, 'Wait, I don't know who's next.'" Yet in each film, the story has to give characters a fighting chance. With Bloodlines, that attempt is played out through a college student trying to save her family from the cycle of death that originated with her estranged grandmother's death-cheating premonition in the 60s. "How do you deliver upon the existential dread of death coming after you while still giving the characters agency to thwart that effort?" Perry asks. In the fifth Final Destination, it's made clear to the characters that they can cheat death by killing other characters: "If you kill somebody, you get whatever life they have left, which makes it a moral question of whether or not you're willing to do it," says Perry. Indeed, such weighty themes are as much a part of the franchise's appeal as its inventive death sequences. It forces the audience to consider their mortality as well as questions that are universal: What would you do to survive? If you knew death was coming, would you hide away, like Ali Larter's Clear in Final Destination 2, or live your life to the fullest? That the franchise doesn't tie itself to any specific belief system makes the existential ideas it grapples with all the more relatable. "I didn't want to tie death into any kind of specific religion or culture," says Reddick. "Our movies never hammer home any message, but hopefully, what [audiences] do take away from it is that life is precious." That ethos is particularly resonant in Bloodlines due to the presence of Todd; he passed away in November 2024, and here gives his final performance on screen, which includes a moving – and as it turns out, improvised – monologue. "We told him to throw away the script and talk to us about what's on his mind, and he said, 'Cherish, accept and love every moment that you have, because you never know when it's going to end,'" recalls Lipovsky. "It works for the character, it works for the franchise, but it's also him as an actor, speaking directly to the audience about his legacy, his work, and his feelings about life and death, all of it wrapped up together." The legacy and cultural impact of Final Destination remain strong, even as it has been echoed by other films such as this year's The Monkey, with its similarly elaborate death sequences. And as a franchise fuelled by the infinite ways we can die, there's an infinite number of sequel possibilities. If Bloodlines does well at the box office, we might just see the universe expand further back in history, with Stein and Perry noting pirate ship and "Game of Thrones meets Final Destination" concepts have been discussed for future instalments. But no matter where each Final Destination story ends up, there is one true constant in the Destination franchise: death is the great equaliser, so remain vigilant and look out for the signs. "If I'm driving and there is a truck with logs in front of me," says Chire. "I'm changing lanes." Final Destination: Bloodlines is out in UK cinemas on May 14 and US cinemas on May 16 -- If you liked this story sign up for The Essential List newsletter, a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week. For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Air India passengers ended up in Denmark and the UAE after Pakistan barred Indian planes from its airspace
Pakistan closed its airspace to all Indian airlines as tensions grow between the two countries. Several Air India flights had to change directions and land elsewhere. Passengers from Toronto took 24 hours to reach New Delhi, some 10 hours later than expected. Hundreds of passengers from across the world faced lengthy delays after Air India flights were forced to divert on Thursday. Flights from San Francisco and Toronto landed in Denmark, while those traveling from Paris and London diverted to the Middle East. All the planes involved were midway through their journeys when Pakistan closed its airspace to all Indian carriers. Tensions have boiled over between the two countries since 26 people were shot dead in the Kashmir region on Tuesday. India has pointed the finger at Pakistan, but the latter has denied involvement in the attack. The closure means many flights to India will now take longer, costing the country's airlines more for fuel and labor. Even before the disruption, passengers on Air India Flight 180 were set for a lengthy redeye trip. It took off from San Francisco around 9 p.m. local time Wednesday, bound for Mumbai. Data from Flightradar24 shows that 11 hours into the journey, the Boeing 777 turned around while over Russia. It then flew four hours west to Copenhagen. Passengers had to wait a couple of hours before continuing to India, landing nine and a half hours later than scheduled. Passengers from Toronto on Flight 190, which was headed to New Delhi, also U-turned over Russia and diverted to Copenhagen. They eventually landed in the Indian capital around 24 hours after leaving Canada, some 10 hours later than expected. Flights 162 and 148, from London and Paris respectively, changed directions to fly over Iran and land in Abu Dhabi. Passengers on both flights ultimately reached New Delhi four hours later than unexpected. "Due to the announced restriction of Pakistan airspace for all Indian airlines, it is expected that some Air India flights to or from North America, UK, Europe, and Middle East will take an alternative extended route," Air India said in a statement on X. It added that it "regrets the inconvenience caused to our passengers due to this unforeseen airspace closure that is outside our control." The flag carrier flies the longest routes of India's airlines, but budget airlines IndiGo and SpiceJet also operate routes that have typically crossed over Pakistan. Read the original article on Business Insider
