After fourteen years, the Final Destination franchise returns to kill even more people in bloody accidents. And this time, we have a whole family as our cast.
I went into this movie with very high hopes, and for the most part, I left feeling very satisfied. It was far funnier than I expected it to be. And while maybe this is just because I actually saw it in theaters with people as opposed to sprawled out on my couch alone, I laughed more and harder than any of the other movies.
Don't worry, though. We're still a horror movie and there's still plenty of gore to go around. A lot of it is CGI, which is admittedly a little disappointing. It occasionally does look distractingly fake. But the kills themselves are very excellent, and are sure to spawn more than a few irrational fears in me moving forward. I'm dancing around spoilers a little, but everything involving the hospital? Beautiful.
I also appreciated how they tweaked the formula a little bit. After five movies, the audience knows how everything works. It let them do some really fun things that made certain kills feel fresh. It's like a magician's trick, pulling your attention over here while something else is happening over there. It was clever, and I wish that there was more of that.
The opening premonition replaced the highway crash for me as the best one. I know. It feels like mild sacrilege to say such a thing. I loved every part of it, but especially the music choices. I'm going to think of this movie now every time I hear (and dance to) "Shout." Brec Bassinger is absolutely excellent as Iris, and I almost wish that we got to spend the full movie with her instead of following Stefani. Kaitlyn Santa Juana is fine as a lead, but she didn't sparkle in nearly the same way.
She was arguably the weakest out of the main cast, but also let down with some of the writing and characterization. Like many modern horror movies, generational trauma is a pretty big theme. Given that the movie is called Bloodlines, I probably should have expected that. I found myself rolling my eyes, though, whenever it got brought up.
It just wasn't fleshed out very well, and I found myself thinking a few times that I would have loved this as a miniseries instead of a movie. Something like the very underrated Harper's Island. It would have given the family relationships more time to breathe and for us to understand why some of them are so fractured to begin with. Why was Stefani (seemingly unknowingly) estranged from her cousins? I don't know. She didn't even know! So I didn't really care.
I was far more invested in the happier, healthier family relationships, specifically the bond between Bobby and Erik. I adored them both. They felt like brothers, and I really wanted them both to survive even if I knew walking in that they were almost certainly both doomed.
Richard Harmon (Murphy on The 100) plays Erik and was by far my favorite part of the movie. Every scene that he was in was just gold, whether it was because I was laughing or because I was cringing away from what was happening to him. Great work by him. He made me want to go watch other things that he's in.
The movie did noticeably drop in quality in the third act. Whether that's because what preceded it was that good, or because it was that bad is a matter of debate. The kills weren't that creative, the CGI was more apparent, and the plot itself started to unravel a bit. It was built on a semi shaky premise to start with, but it definitely crumbled at the end.
It wasn't enough to ruin the movie by any means, but it definitely knocked my overall grade down a point or so.
In every review, I've mentioned Tony Todd. He, more than anything else, has always embodied this franchise to me to the point where I always forget just how little screen time he actually has in them. I've intentionally picked a line of his dialogue for an opening quote whenever I can, even if it is just something silly like a warning about Devil's Flight.
The lines that I chose this time are his last words in the movie. Reportedly, they were unscripted. Just Tony Todd speaking from the heart. And yeah, they made me tear up.
He passed away in November 2024 from stomach cancer, and he's very visibly ill in all of his scenes. I knew that he would be from the trailers, but it was still... sobering. He got a very poignant send off, one that was more than worthy of his character. I really couldn't have asked or hoped for a better one.
Random Thoughts
They cut one particular kill from the trailer that I had been looking forward to. I'm disappointed about that.
We officially got confirmation that killing someone does actually work. I guess Nathan and Sam just picked bad people to kill.
We also got official confirmation that Kimberley beat Death, which was nice. Although if new life works, then why didn't Iris giving birth stop Death's plan?
The doctor at the end was named Dr. Reddick. Jeffrey Reddick is the creator of the franchise.
My Overall Series Rankings
- Final Destination 3
- Final Destination 5
- Final Destination Bloodlines
- Final Destination 2
- Final Destination 1
- The Final Destination
An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.
Fangirl, thank you so much for reviewing the entire franchise of movies. I've enjoyed reading the reviews because I don't watch horror movies. :) But If I did, I bet I'd enjoy these.
ReplyDeleteRIP, Tony Todd. I loved him on Star Trek, and saw him at a Star Trek convention years ago. He was a terrific and memorable guest. I was so sorry that we lost him and I'm pleased that he got to close out one of his major continuing roles.
Oh, and Richard Harmon plays an important continuing character in the time travel series Continuum. That was before he did The 100.
DeleteI always think of Candyman when it comes to Tony Todd. I didn't realize that he was in Star Trek too!
DeleteAlso I forgot to mention it in my review, but Harmon's character at one point held a mug that said "Show me your kitties" and now I want one in the worst way,
Tony Todd was in six episodes of three different Star Trek shows. For four of those, he played Worf's brother Kurn, a major continuing character. He was also the adult Jake, Sisko's son, in one of the best episodes of DS9, and he played an alien in an episode of Voyager.
DeleteI just looked at his page on IMDb, and wow, he did so much. What a career.
"Show me your kitties." LOL.
We saw this on Saturday. I also liked the blond actress and wish the movie had followed her instead. I have nothing against Latina actresses (love them in fact), but there is a point where automatically casting one as the lead in so many movies makes them feel generic in exactly the same way pretty blonds used to be generic. Mixing it up a bit more would be a better choice. Nothing against the specific lead here, who did a good job; she was just less interesting than the actress who played her grandmother in the 1950's.
ReplyDeleteI did notice a couple of interesting things. One was that broken glass and/or fire figured in a lot of the deaths. That seemed to be a deliberate reference to the circumstances of the disaster that Iris prevented, which I don't recall was the case in earlier films. The other is that I believe the film was implying that all of the disasters in earlier films were Death cleaning up the people Iris saved (or their descendants who shouldn't have been alive in the first place). This wasn't stated in so many words, so I may be wrong about that.
The tattoo shop also had a neon sign of a magnet, which was less a reference to the premonition and more a (literal) sign for a future death. A few of the earlier movies have dabbled with having callbacks like that! FD 5 in particular had a few that "rhymed."
DeleteI don't know if it was implying that all of the earlier movies were connected or not. I don't think so. After all, we saw both of Alex's parents in the first movie. One of them would have had to die first in order to follow the pattern, unless he was secretly adopted or there were some kind of cheating shenanigans going on, but that's bending over backwards to make it all fit. Now, you can make the argument that Death was killing someone else who was one of the random casualties and therefore we just never saw them. That's very possible.