Final Destination Bloodlines

It’s been 25 years since Final Destination was released, and with it came the launch of the first major horror franchise of the 21st century. And now the films are back in theaters, ditching the numerals in favor of a fresh start. Final Destination Bloodlines will be hailed as a return to form for the movies, and whether that fills you with delight or disgust likely says a whole bunch about whether you want your protagonists to actually survive in a horror movie.

The year is 1968, and young Iris (Bassinger) is about to spend the night of her dreams with her boyfriend. Somehow, he secured tickets to the grand opening of the Sky View Restaurant Tower, an elevated restaurant in the heart of downtown Everywhere, USA. But as the happy couple make their way to the observatory deck, things go horribly wrong. The glass floor of the restaurant shatters, the gas main explodes, and the tower collapses in on itself, with Iris falling hundreds of feet onto the ragged shards below.

Then, suddenly, we are jolted awake in a classroom alongside Stefani (Santa Juana), Iris’ granddaughter. Stefani is plagued by visions of her grandmother’s death – only it wasn’t her death, because Iris continued to live a full life in the aftermath of the almost-massacre of the Sky View Restaurant. When Stefani goes looking for answers, she finds herself digging into the forbidden corner of her family history, one that includes an absentee mother and a reclusive grandmother who claims that death is coming for her entire extended family.

If you’ve seen a Final Destination movie – and I have seen exactly one, the first one, as recently as a few years ago – you probably already know what to expect. These movies are Rube Goldberg machines of death. Kill sequences are dragged out over tens of minutes, with frequent cut-ins to the mechanics of murder. Coins roll, glasses shatter, liquid leaks, and soon each of these individual pieces form a causal chain of death from which no named characters can hope to escape. And since the cast knows the score – no one more so than Richard Harmon – everything moves along at a brisk and not too self-serious clip.

If that’s your idea of fun, then Bloodlines delivers. From its opening set piece atop the Sky View Restaurant to its climactic last stand between the surviving family members, Bloodlines is a slow-motion disaster movie delivered with stunning confidence. This is no also-ran sequel; the filmmakers know that they’re being given a wide release potboiler at the height of the genre’s popularity, and the film isn’t afraid to take some pretty big production swings. Also working in its favor is the wonderful lighting, which allows the audience to enjoy the full scope of each kill sequence without the muddled darks of much modern horror.

That makes Final Destination Bloodlines a film worth catching in theaters, but only if you know what you’re signing up for. There’s a fatalistic streak to this franchise – or at least the first and last films in the franchise – that makes the involuntary combustion of its main characters a foregone conclusion. Watching Bloodlines is like watching a nature documentary where a woodland creature is ripped to shreds in graphic detail. If you’re someone who roots for the prey over the predators, this might not be the movie for you. Otherwise? Cut loose, friend.