Euronews Culture's Film of the Week: 'Final Destination: Bloodlines' - Death gets very messy

The locomotion location aft a Final Destination movie is rife pinch anxiety. Is that jagged brew tin successful nan thoroughfare astir to beryllium catapulted into my cervix by a abrupt breeze? And why is that building worker up ahead… carrying a powerfulness tool?! 

Originally an X-Files spec book by Jeffrey Reddick — inspired by a news communicative astir a female that sewage disconnected a level aft her mother had a premonition — each Final Destination movie revolves astir a bunch of foolish kids trying to outrun death’s devious dice rolls. While predictable and gawky successful that 2000s teen scary way, nan bid has ever thrived connected its paranoia-inducing formula: turning nan seemingly mundane into nan murderously absurd. 

If 2011’s Final Destination 5 brought america afloat circle to nan first film, directing duo Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (Freaks, 2018) return america backmost to wherever it each began, pinch an eager sixth instalment that's dutifully disgusting.

We statesman successful 1968, wherever a primped and pregnant Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger) and her partner Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) get astatine nan recently opened Skyview Restaurant — a abstraction property skyscraper resembling a UFO balanced connected a terrifyingly gangly Tam Tam stool. We already cognize this won't extremity well...

Never 1 to beryllium subtle, decease soon sets its plans successful mobility arsenic windows rattle, solid floors statesman to crack, and an insufferable small kid chucks a coin disconnected nan roof. The consequence is all-out fiery carnage successful which everyone — including Iris — gruesomely perishes. 

But dissimilar nan franchise’s accustomed opening premonitions, we adjacent aftermath up successful 2025, arsenic Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), a assemblage student plagued by recurring nightmares astir her estranged grandma (Gabrielle Rose). After search Iris down astatine a distant safe location successful nan woods, she learns that her visions are not conscionable echoes of Iris’s past, but besides a denotation of a family curse that won’t extremity until their full bloodline is wiped out. 

At a clip erstwhile generational trauma has go a hallmark of horror, you mightiness beryllium tempted to question: person nan premonitions ever been symbolic of our self-fulfilling cycles of fearfulness and destruction? But don’t complete analyse this — each Final Destination: Bloodlines really asks of america is to cheer astatine immoderate heads getting splattered and person a bully time. 

Indeed, this mightiness beryllium nan astir self-aware franchise entry, pinch Lipovsky and Stein leaning into nan erstwhile films’ tropes to salary homage, subvert expectations, and ramp up nan gore and goofiness. Central to this are nan “new fearfulness unlocked” decease traps, and they’re played retired present successful creatively sick manner — 1 involving a super-magnetic MRI instrumentality and nipple piercings easy enters nan canon of all-time great Final Destination deaths. 

The champion point astir Bloodlines, however, is its period-set premonition that develops into an interconnecting, lore-expanding premise. You see, erstwhile Iris saved everyone astatine nan Skyview Restaurant connected that fateful day, it created 1 hellhole of a database for death. Those traps? They return time. And during that time, nan doomed survivors had families, and those families had families — immoderate of whom died from level crashes and log trucks, wink wink. 

We besides get long-awaited discourse for mortician William Bludworth, played pinch delicious drawl by nan precocious Tony Todd successful his last role. After explaining to Stefani’s family that their only options for endurance are to return another’s life, aliases to dice and beryllium resuscitated, he snarls: “If you fuck pinch decease and lose, things tin get very messy.” Everyone should spot nan movie for this segment alone. 

But Bloodlines’ bold ideas are besides its downfall. The crippled moves astatine specified a hurried gait to incorporate it all, nan opening spectacle quickly dwindles into slushy shenanigans and rushed exposition — astatine 1 constituent Stefani devours Iris’ large scrapbook filled pinch imaginable deaths (only 1 book — seriously?) to create a Pepe Silvia-style timeline of events.

By nan 3rd act, it feels for illustration decease has mislaid each inspiration, arsenic janky CGI deaths are crammed successful speedy succession to nary existent satisfying conclusion. 

Then again, nan spot of a Final Destination movie has ever rested connected nan productivity of its decease play, and it mostly excels here. It's besides ever been a very silly franchise — a value that Bloodlines afloat embraces by intensifying death’s slasher persona while acknowledging nan ridiculousness of navigating nan world arsenic a trap: “Stay distant from that character trimmer!” 

It’s besides bolstered by nan characters of cousins Bobby (Owen Joyner) and Erik (Richard Harmon), who person immoderate of nan funniest asides successful nan movie — for illustration sipping from a mug that says “show maine your kitties”. Honourable mention must besides spell to Paco nan micro turtle and his stellar pineapple eating. 

Much for illustration nan victims of nan films, scary franchises seldom recognise erstwhile their number’s up. This twelvemonth unsocial we’ve sewage revivals of I Know What You Did Last Summer, Saw XI, and Idle Hands. But Bloodlines astatine slightest tries to do thing caller while paying instrumentality service, reminding america there’s still plentifulness of laughs (and groans) to beryllium recovered successful its anxiety-inducing chaos. 

After all, sometimes you conscionable want to shriek pinch an assemblage astatine a man’s caput being chewed up by a lawnmower — because, arsenic William Bludworth reminds us: “Life is precious. Enjoy each second. You ne'er cognize when…”

Final Destination: Bloodlines is retired successful cinemas now.