Confession: I have never seen a Final Destination film before, at least not in entirely. When the first one, Final Destination, came out in 2000, I was ten years old and, of course, too young to watch a R-rated and bloody horror film. That and I haven’t had a clue as to what they are about. Even when I got older and was at the proper age to watch those types of films, I had very little interest in the franchise. The latest of them to be released was Final Destination 5 in 2011, and since then, the series has been pretty much dormant. Fourteen years later, we finally get a new film though unlike the previous entries, this one has a secondary title, which is Final Destination: Bloodlines.

For those unaware of the premise of the Final Destination films, it’s a set of horror films in a franchise focused on a group of characters where at least one gets a premonition on how they will die. What follows is their best efforts to cheat death. These deaths, to my knowledge, aren’t spontaneous like a lightning strike or a heart attack, but rather a chain reaction after someone does something like drop something on the ground or a bolt gets loose from a machine, and these small actions lead to someone dying. In other words, it’s basically a horror franchise that makes use of the Rube Goldberg machine concept with bloody results. As mentioned earlier, I’ve never seen a Final Destination film from beginning to end, though I’ve looked at various clips over the years via YouTube and recognize some of the references as to why you shouldn’t drive behind a log truck. Despite Final Destination: Bloodlines being my first entry in the franchise, I was curious if a newcomer like me can enjoy it. Most importantly, though, was it a good film in general? As usual, let’s find out.   

In Final Destination: Bloodlines, we first follow the young couple Iris (Brec Bassinger) and Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) as they attend a grand opening ceremony of the Skyview Restaurant Tower, which to give you a visual reference, looks like the Seattle Space Needle. From going up the elevator to walking on the glass floor of the restaurant and learning the tower finished months ahead of schedule, Iris begins to feel uneasy about her and her boyfriend’s current situation. She eases a bit once she reveals that she’s pregnant seconds after Paul starts to propose and the newly engaged celebrate by taking a turn on the restaurant’s dance floor. Their celebration is short lived when a penny causes a chain reaction, igniting a gas fire and breaking the glass floor. These actions kill the restaurant patrons including Paul though Iris and a little boy (Jayden Oniah) are the last two survivors. Unfortunately, they eventually fall to their deaths, which then transitions to a young college student named Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), who has awakened every night for the past two months with this recurring nightmare. She’s at the point where she is desperate to find answers for this particular problem because she’s now on academic probation, which could mean the removal of her scholarship. She then goes home to find answers because the only clue is Iris, who also happens to have the same name of her estranged grandmother. She reunites with her dad Marty (Tinpo Lee) and her younger brother Charlie (Teo Briones), and when Stefani tries to bring her grandmother, her dad tells her to not look into it. Stefani and Charlie then visit their cousins Erik (Richard Harmon), Bobby (Owen Joyner), and Julia (Anna Lore) along with their aunt Brenda (April Telek) and uncle Howard (Alex Zahara). While the two are with their extended family members, Stefani gets a lead on the whereabouts of her grandmother. Going alone, she finds her in the woods in a fortified fortress living in isolation. Hesitant at first, Iris (Gabrielle Rose) allows Stefani to come into her home and explains everything. She informs her granddaughter that the nightmares that Stefani has been getting are premonitions and that she saved everyone in the restaurant. This, however, resulted in everyone also cheating death, but death started to kill the survivors one at a time for several decades, as well as their descendants, since they weren’t supposed to be born. Iris even prepared a guide full of the information of every who has died and the different scenarios that could lead to more death. Feeling skeptical, Stefani starts to flee the house, but then Iris proves to her that everything she said was real as she steps into the front yard and gets impaled by a weather vane. The family holds a funeral for the deceased grandmother/mother and during the service, Stefani and Charlie’s estranged mother, Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt), who left her family years ago, shows up, causing Stefani to go back to house. Both her dad, Charlie, and the extended family then have a BBQ in the backyard while Stefani reads the book from her late grandmother. She then has a feeling something bad will happen at the gathering, which she is unfortunately right about, with a deadly series of events involving broken glass and a lawn mower killing Howard. Later, Stefani explains to the family that because they are descendants of the ones who escaped death, they will soon perish if they don’t figure out a solution, which is unfortunately too late for Julia as she gets crushed by a garbage truck while jogging. Looking for clues in the book, Darlene discovers where to go next for answers based on someone by the name of JB, and all the survivors of the family (minus Marty and Brenda) look for answers before anyone else dies.

So, after watching Final Destination: Bloodlines, I got some unexpected positive takeaways that I wasn’t expecting, to be frank. For a nice change of pace, I’m glad that I was able to watch a horror movie that wasn’t a cautionary tale, but rather something horrifically creative with a nice message . . . sort of. 

I think one of the reason why I never got into the Final Destination franchise, even after reaching the appropriate age, is that this is a horror series that’s basically torture porn. For those unfamiliar with the phrase, don’t worry, it has nothing to do with pornographic material. Instead, it is gratuitous violent content for the sake of violence. One example that you might be familiar with is the Saw franchise. While there are violent scenes featuring people getting killed through chain reactions and gory situations, the biggest theme in Final Destination: Bloodlines is family. Aside from the mother and grandmother, the family featured in the film did have nice chemistry between them and I’m not going to lie, it drove up the anxiety for me whenever there was a scene when I knew someone was going to kick the bucket. The film even tricked me a bit as there were plenty of red herrings throughout, which made for pretty clever plot twists. I am not sure if they did it in the other films, but I appreciated it here.

I did mention earlier that Final Destination: Bloodlines had some sort of message and honestly, I like it because it’s pretty straightforward: the importance of life itself. There’s one character in the film that makes a cameo, and this particular person has appeared in almost every Final Destination movie. Unfortunately, Final Destination: Bloodlines marks his final appearance as the actor Tony Todd portraying him passed away last year. The silver lining, however, is that he delivers a great message on embracing life and celebrating it whenever we get the chance. This pro-life stance is something myself and other Catholics should always ponder as we don’t know how long we have left on God’s green Earth. From cradle to grave, we should always treat our lives and others with respect and live them as tomorrow is never promised.

Despite getting some enjoyment from Final Destination: Bloodlines, an installment in a franchise I had little interest in, it’s not entirely flawless, let alone a great horror film. Honestly, it took me a while to figure out why it wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not something that I was going to love if it had a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and/or Metacritic. It wasn’t until I was writing the synopsis part of this review and revisiting the plot that I figured out what was bugging me about it. So, the first major character to die is the grandmother, followed by the uncle and the oldest cousin. One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that the deaths in the film are set in order of age in the family going from the oldest member (the grandmother) to eventually going down to the youngest, which would be Charlie. My issue with all these deaths, is how rushed they feel. For example, the uncle dies moments after the funeral service of the grandmother, and the oldest cousin dies not too long after the uncle. Now, one could say that all these deaths are happening too quickly because the grandmother kept herself alive through many decades, and after she perished, death was playing catch-up with the other family members. However, it just seems to implausible based on real world factors. There’s no police investigation into this family, or time for the family to mourn once the plot starts going. At one point in the film, two characters die, and the rest of the cast just keeps moving to try to solve the conflict. If the overall plot in the film took place within a five-year span and there were some police involvement, it would’ve felt more plausible. It feels like a rushed plot instead of a well-paced film.

Though flawed, and likely not the greatest movie I will see in 2025, Final Destination: Bloodlines was an interesting treat that older fans and newcomers. If seeing people getting killed in a bloody gruesome fashion isn’t up your alley, by all means avoid. I, for one, did find this interesting and it was nice seeing an antagonist that’s something you can’t see but is everywhere, which is death itself. After watching this film, I might check out the other movies to see what I have been missing. The only red flag is that people have been saying that Final Destination: Bloodlines is the best entry in the series. Hence, I might not be in for a treat compared to what I saw. I guess I could proceed with caution if I do get the chance to see them, keyword being “if.”