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Daily Record
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
MOVIE REVIEW: We see if 'Final Destination: Bloodlines' breathes new life into horror franchise
Sixth instalment honours series' legacy as well as adding to its lore. Other than its awful fourth outing, the Final Destination franchise has been one of horror's most consistently entertaining. But it's been 14 years since the surprisingly good fifth flick, so can Bloodlines resurrect the series in splattery style? Plagued by a recurring violent nightmare, college student Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) returns home to find the one person who can break the cycle and save her family from the horrific fate that awaits them. Co-directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein (2018's Freaks) fully embrace the over-the-top, otherworldly nature of the series, while the trio of writers effectively add to the storyline lore. There's a focus on how the past affects the present and the group of victims in Death's wake is much larger than those found in any previous entry. Final Destination lives or dies by its opening premonition sequence and inventive kills, with the former in Bloodlines sure to torment vertigo sufferers and make you think twice about your next restaurant booking. The latter delivers in spades - and garbage trucks, lawnmowers and MRI machines - to treat gore hounds to a few of the franchise's nastiest, bloodiest farewells. It's touching seeing horror icon Tony Todd, who has been a small-but-crucial part of the Final Destination fabric, given such a cool, poignant send-off in one of his final roles before his passing. Clever story beats also ensure adultery and illness is as threatening as any sharp object or machinery. The cast of characters isn't the strongest we've seen in the series but Juana, Brec Bassinger (young Iris) and Richard Harmon ( Erik) stand out from the crowd, while series fans will appreciate the callbacks and nods to previous outings. I can't think of many franchises with such a strong sixth entry and it's a testament to Bloodlines' successful mix of legacy honouring and lore advancement that it breathes new life into the Final Destination world. ● Do you like the Final Destination flicks? If so, which one is your favourite in the franchise? ● Final Destination: Bloodlines is showing in cinemas now.
Time Magazine
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
The Directors of Final Destination: Bloodlines Want to Ruin More Everyday Experiences for You
W arning: This post contains some spoilers for Final Destination: Bloodlines. A log flying off the back of a truck and exploding through your windshield. Being fried alive in a tanning bed. Getting your hand stuck down the garbage disposal. Anyone who's seen a Final Destination movie tends to be able to name at least one fatal scenario from the franchise that continued to haunt them long after the credits rolled. These unforgettable death traps are a big reason the horror series, which debuted in 2000 with an inaugural installment that quickly earned a cult following, have such staying power. They're also a beloved feature of the first five films that Final Destination: Bloodlines directing duo Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (Freaks) wanted to ensure they kept alive, so to speak. "One of the very first things we talked about when we started working on the movie was, what can we ruin for people?" Stein says with a laugh. "So a big part of the creative process was identifying those common, everyday experiences that will stick with people for the rest of their lives. It can be something as simple as a cup full of ice or something as specific as the song 'Shout,' which is going to make you think about this movie anytime you hear it at a wedding from now on." Although initially critically panned, the Final Destination franchise has brought in north of $666 million worldwide through five movies. Now, Bloodlines, the saga's long-awaited sixth entry, is being praised as "elegantly sadistic entertainment" and is slated to gross at least $35-$40 million in its opening weekend. It arrives in theaters a little less than two months after the 25th anniversary of the first film that turned Death into an unseen, unheard, yet still personified villain fond of diabolically complex Rube Goldberg-style kills. "There's no killer in a mask running around with a knife," Stein says. "But Death does have a personality. Death is very clever and plays a long game. That's why people love these movies. The kills are so much fun to watch that you end up rooting for Death in a way." Having grown up in Vancouver, where most of the previous entries were filmed, Lipovsky says he's long had a soft spot for Final Destination. "A lot of my friends have died in Final Destination movies or worked on Final Destination movies," he says. "A lot of landmarks are set pieces. It's sort of a staple in the city." So when a shot at landing the directing gig for Bloodlines arose, he and Stein decided to go for broke. The pair ultimately convinced the powers that be they were right for the job by faking Stein's death at the end of a Zoom pitch meeting. Thanks to a combination of prerecorded footage and visual effects, New Line execs and producers were given front-row seats to their potential hire suddenly being decapitated by a falling ceiling fan. Thus, the deal was sealed. As with every Final Destination that came before, Bloodlines opens with a character having a vision of a gruesome and terrifying mass casualty event in which they, and any friends and loved ones with them, are killed. This premonition allows them to escape Death, but only until it eventually catches back up to them and begins orchestrating their demises in the same order in which they were originally fated to die. However, this time around, there's a twist. When the person experiencing the vision abruptly comes to, we see that it's not the woman at the center of the carnage, Iris (Brec Bassinger in her younger years and Gabrielle Rose later in life), but rather a college student, Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), who is revealed to be her granddaughter. "The biggest challenge with Bloodlines was that the formula already works really well: a bunch of people escape Death, are marked by Death, and Death comes for them. That's why you're going to the theater. And Final Destination 5 ended in such a great way that it felt like the perfect conclusion," Lipovsky says of reinvigorating the franchise after a 14-year hiatus. "So we wanted to find all sorts of ways be true to the canon, but twist it to play with people's expectations. We wanted to keep it feeling fresh." Turns out, because Iris was able to prevent the opening night collapse of the Skyview Tower restaurant and save everyone inside after she originally had the vision back in 1968, it took Death long enough to make its way through its intended victims that many of them ended up having children. This created bloodlines that, in Death's mind, never should have existed and led to Death going after its victims' descendants as well. Since Iris was the second to last person to die in the premonition, all of this happening gave her time to get wise to Death's tricks and she ultimately hid herself away in a remote, fortified cabin for decades to avoid any fatal surprises. But, once Iris finally gives herself over to Death, the burden of trying to protect the family—and figuring out Death's rules of cosmic justice—falls to Stefani. This unconventional setup also allows Bloodlines to give franchise mainstay and cryptic funeral home owner William Bludworth (late horror legend and Candyman star Tony Todd in his final role) a long-awaited backstory. "He's always been this mysterious character that has a lot of information for sort of no reason and is just this weird, creepy guy," Lipovsky says. "So we wanted to help explain where he came from and why he is the way he is. And then, most importantly, we wanted to not only give the character a goodbye, but also give Tony the opportunity to say goodbye to the audience." While we won't reveal exactly what befalls Stefani and the rest of her family, Death's increasingly inventive, and often darkly comedic, methods of getting its job done pretty much beg to be seen in a theater with a crowd of fellow horror fans—if you're into that sort of thing. "There's a death of a 12-year-old boy early in the film, and the way audiences have been reacting when that happens is cheering with joy that the child has been crushed," Lipovsky says. "That's an experience you will not get at home."
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.
Euronews
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
Euronews Culture's Film of the Week: 'Final Destination: Bloodlines'
The walk home after a Final Destination movie is rife with anxiety. Is that jagged beer can in the street about to be catapulted into my neck by a sudden breeze? And why is that construction worker up ahead… carrying a power tool?! Originally an X-Files spec script by Jeffrey Reddick — inspired by a news story about a woman that got off a plane after her mother had a premonition — each Final Destination film revolves around a bunch of foolish kids trying to outrun death's devious dice rolls. While predictable and gawky in that 2000s teen horror way, the series has always thrived on its paranoia-inducing formula: turning the seemingly mundane into the murderously absurd. If 2011's Final Destination 5 brought us full circle to the first film, directing duo Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (Freaks, 2018) take us back to where it all began, with an ambitious sixth instalment that's dutifully disgusting. We begin in 1968, where a primped and pregnant Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger) and her partner Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) arrive at the newly opened Skyview Restaurant — a space age skyscraper resembling a UFO balanced on a terrifyingly tall Tam Tam stool. We already know this won't end well... Never one to be subtle, death soon sets its plans in motion as windows rattle, glass floors begin to crack, and an insufferable little kid chucks a coin off the roof. The result is all-out fiery carnage in which everyone — including Iris — gruesomely perishes. But unlike the franchise's usual opening premonitions, we next wake up in 2025, as Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), a college student plagued by recurring nightmares about her estranged grandmother (Gabrielle Rose). After tracking Iris down at a remote safe house in the woods, she learns that her visions are not just echoes of Iris's past, but also a symptom of a family curse that won't stop until their entire bloodline is wiped out. At a time when generational trauma has become a hallmark of horror, you might be tempted to question: have the premonitions always been symbolic of our self-fulfilling cycles of fear and destruction? But don't over analyse this — all Final Destination: Bloodlines really asks of us is to cheer at some heads getting splattered and have a good time. Indeed, this might be the most self-aware franchise entry, with Lipovsky and Stein leaning into the previous films' tropes to pay homage, subvert expectations, and ramp up the gore and goofiness. Central to this are the 'new fear unlocked' death traps, and they're played out here in creatively sick fashion — one involving a super-magnetic MRI machine and nipple piercings easily enters the canon of all-time great Final Destination deaths. The best thing about Bloodlines, however, is its period-set premonition that develops into an interconnecting, lore-expanding premise. You see, when Iris saved everyone at the Skyview Restaurant on that fateful day, it created one hell of a list for death. Those traps? They take time. And during that time, the doomed survivors had families, and those families had families — some of whom died from plane crashes and log trucks, wink wink. We also get long-awaited context for mortician William Bludworth, played with delicious drawl by the late Tony Todd in his final role. After explaining to Stefani's family that their only options for survival are to take another's life, or to die and be resuscitated, he snarls: 'If you fuck with death and lose, things can get very messy.' Everyone should see the film for this scene alone. But Bloodlines' bold ideas are also its downfall. The plot moves at such a hurried pace to contain it all, the opening spectacle quickly dwindles into slushy shenanigans and rushed exposition — at one point Stefani devours Iris' big scrapbook filled with potential deaths (only one book — seriously?) to create a Pepe Silvia-style timeline of events. By the third act, it feels like death has lost all inspiration, as janky CGI deaths are crammed in quick succession to no real satisfying conclusion. Then again, the strength of a Final Destination film has always rested on the creativity of its death play, and it mostly excels here. It's also always been a very silly franchise — a quality that Bloodlines fully embraces by intensifying death's slasher persona while acknowledging the ridiculousness of navigating the world as a trap: 'Stay away from that tree trimmer!' It's also bolstered by the characters of cousins Bobby (Owen Joyner) and Erik (Richard Harmon), who have some of the funniest asides in the movie — like sipping from a mug that says 'show me your kitties'. Honourable mention must also go to Paco the micro turtle and his stellar pineapple eating. Much like the victims of the films, horror franchises rarely recognise when their number's up. This year alone we've got revivals of I Know What You Did Last Summer, Saw XI, and Idle Hands. But Bloodlines at least tries to do something new while paying fan service, reminding us there's still plenty of laughs (and groans) to be found in its anxiety-inducing chaos. After all, sometimes you just want to scream with an audience at a man's head being chewed up by a lawnmower — because, as William Bludworth reminds us: 'Life is precious. Enjoy every second. You never know when…' Final Destination: Bloodlines is out in cinemas now.
CBC
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Killer filmmaking: Meet the Vancouver-based duo who made the new Final Destination 'a classier affair'
Final Destination: Bloodlines directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein had to fight for their crème brûlée. We're talking about a single shot during the opening sequence of their new reboot, featuring the delectable French dessert. It's the 60s. A young woman named Iris is enjoying a fancy night out at a space-needle restaurant with a glass-bottom floor. Anyone familiar with the Final Destination franchise knows that things won't end well for the patrons at the restaurant, some of whom will fall through cracks in the surface of that glass-bottom floor. Savvy Final Destination fans also know to spot a bad omen when they see one, like a close-up on the cracks in the sensuous surface of that crème brûlée. But, according to Stein, the shot met with some resistance: "Is it really necessary? Who cares about crème brulee? Does anyone even know what that is?" "There was a feeling sometimes like, 'are you guys caring too much about the details?' Are you spending too much time on this?' In the edit, 'maybe cut this down, it's not necessary.' But when we showed it to an audience, the audience picked up on that kind of thing. They're loving those little omens." Caring too much about the details, and looking for every moment that they could serve their audience a visual treat, is exactly what makes Lipovsky and Stein a cut above most genre filmmakers who might settle for more functional. The Vancouver-based duo who made a name for themselves with indie sci-fi spectacle Freaks, bring an old-school affection for storytelling craft and visual elegance to the Final Destination franchise. They've made the sixth installment in a series where death stalks the people who escape its clutches — saved by a premonition — a classier cinematic affair than you'd expect. "Classy Final Destination is what the world needs," Lipovsky chuckles. The filmmakers are speaking to CBC Arts on a Zoom call from a Vancouver hotel, taking a break from shooting Freaks: Underground, the sequel to their 2018 breakout hit about a young girl kept in a bubble at home with her distraught, potentially unstable father. Lipovsky and Stein turned the first film, made on a tiny budget, into an impressive sci-fi spectacle with sheer storytelling ingenuity, which is not just useful but a key ingredient to the best Final Destination movies. This is the ridiculously fun franchise where the grim reaper sets up elaborate fatal accidents for the people who think they've cheated death. Just when these characters think they're safe, they succumb in gruesome and hilarious ways to things like acupuncture, balance beams and ceiling fans. It's a premise that Stein calls a director's dream because the filmmaking essentially becomes a character in the movie, a petty and mischievous one. "There's no person in a mask with a knife coming after the characters," Stein explains. "The villain that comes for the character, death, is all created by the filmmaking. Each shot is designed to bring death to life through these inanimate objects. It's a real fun challenge to create that as filmmakers." The directors describe that challenge as a years-long process that begins with brainstorming ideas with writers on the ways they will ruin things for people. "What are everyday objects," Lipovsky asks rhetorically, "relatable things that we all experience, [which] once they're in the film and you see them go horribly wrong, you'll never be able to look at that thing again. Logging trucks or laser eye surgery, those are all things that the franchise have ruined for people." In Bloodlines, those things include lawn care and MRI machines. Though the directors point out that not everything goes according to plan over the course of scripting, storyboarding and then stepping into a space and figuring out the actual plausible physics of their grisly setups. Yes, as preposterous as Final Destination can be, plausibility does matter. One of their elaborate plans involved a fire extinguisher that rolls. But on set, the directors were reminded by crew that fire extinguishers come with handles. "They're like, 'they don't roll you idiots,'" Lipovsky recalls. "It's this constant iteration that takes many years to get right," Lipovsky continues. "Even in the editing, you're always changing it a little bit. Misdirect the audience this way. Make them think this is going to happen so that it becomes this really great experience where to some degree they're rooting for death, because of how clever death really is through all these little tricks. Death is working so hard to unravel these incredible Rube Goldbergs that that people kind of respect death for how hard he tries." "There's a part of it that's inherently predictable," Stein adds. "You know all these characters are going to die, probably in this order. How do you as a filmmaker take that knowledge or that expectation, and then twist it in a way that the audience doesn't predict? That was really the fun and the challenge of making this movie." Another unexpected note is the melancholic moment with a Final Destination regular, Tony Todd. The late Candyman actor, who passed away in November, appears in most Final Destination movies as William Bludworth, a mischievously cryptic mortician advising characters on how to keep death at bay. "We approached the movie really around Tony Todd in a lot of ways," says Lipovsky. "We knew while we were making the movie that he was very ill. We knew it was very likely his last role ever, but certainly his last Final Destination movie. With him, we developed this idea of a way not only could his character sort of say goodbye to the franchise but that him as an actor could say goodbye to the audience." "We basically told him to throw away the script for a second and just speak from the heart to the audience about what this has all been about; not only in the franchise, but life in general, as someone who is wrestling with his own mortality. What's the message you want to leave to the audience. He just spoke from the heart and that's what's in the movie." Todd's final message runs counter to the tips his character once gave to avoid death. This time he speaks to the audience and suggests embracing death, along with all the life you have left, which as fitting a final note for a Final Destination as ever.
