Final Destination: Bloodlines Review

Final Destination: Bloodlines opens in theaters Friday, May 16.

Final Destination: Bloodlines is late to the party. Its predecessor, Final Destination 5, was released 14 years ago – a veritable eon in filmgoing terms, especially when you consider it was shot and released in 3D. Body-count horror still has its audience, but it hasn’t been the genre’s bread and butter in a very long time. It must also be said that Bloodlines isn’t even 2025’s first horror movie about the disembodied specter of death creating cartoonishly brutal tableaux of murder: Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey both excelled in and elevated that space. But as it turns out, Bloodlines is only late because it was stopping at the store to pick up beer and fireworks, and boy, did it come ready to irresponsibly mix those two things. From the moment it kicks the door down with its stellar opening sequence, the newest addition to the Final Destination family maintains a laser focus on making sure everyone goes home with good stories to tell.

There’s a real sense of homecoming in Bloodlines’ extended 1960s-set intro, which follows lovebirds Iris and Paul on the way to the top of the Skyview (basically the Space Needle) for a night out. Fate pulls Iris’ attention to seemingly disconnected images throughout the evening: an over-crowded elevator, a creepy problem child in a bowtie, a cook working with an open flame, a glass dance floor suspended hundreds of feet in the air. Co-directors Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky use Iris’ growing paranoia to set the stage for disaster right out in the open: Each domino they line up is highlighted with such tongue-in-cheek attention that by the time the band’s playing the Isley Brothers’ “Shout” and all those dominos start to fall, it’s clear that Bloodlines is going to be leaning into comedy harder than any Final Destination before it. It’s a tonal shift that pays off spectacularly with clear reverence not just for the deathtraps at the franchise’s heart, but for the way the component parts of those traps fit together and build off each other in increasingly ridiculous ways.

Death’s scythe never falls quite the way you expect it to in Bloodlines, with pieces of the killer puzzles coming into play in consistently surprising ways. It’s a shell game that Bloodlines plays not just with its causes of death, but with who’s actually the target of any given trap – and these carefully constructed moments rarely miss. By the end of the prologue, Stein and Lipovsky have treated us to an entire movie’s worth of over-the-top kills, and we haven’t even met our lead character yet. The directors are singing from the Sam Raimi hymnbook, with a kinetic style that succeeds on both the horror and comedy fronts and comes across clearly in the cinematography and editing. Special mention has to go to the effects here, which blend practical and VFX elements extremely well as bodies are slashed, smashed, smushed, and stuffed. Some of these sequences feel a little less effective than the others – one at a tattoo parlor comes to mind, but even that one sets up a pretty hilarious joke for the next scene. As if acknowledging that we’re all running on borrowed time (horrifying accidental deaths or no), Bloodlines wastes only a few of the precious 110 minutes we spend with it.

The tragedy at the Skyview spins out into the present day, as college student Stef Lewis (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is plagued with visions of the event so disruptive, she’s been placed on academic probation. Final Destination movies have always been built around premonitions of tragedies which have yet to occur. By shaking up the formula with Stef investigating her relationship to a tragedy that happened before she was born, Bloodlines gets off to a pretty intriguing start. That intrigue doesn’t last long, though: The movie rushes to reveal why Stef is having these visions and how the Skyview tragedy connects to deaths happening in the present day.

Stef’s friends and family, who make up the majority of the supporting cast, aren’t the types to slow down for serious and broody monologues about mortality. They’re a little less complicated than that. A little… stupid. Lots of these characters are dumber than a box of rocks, but here, that feels appropriate given that they need to be just oblivious enough to not see the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Stef’s extended family are like the Avengers of teen horror movie archetypes, and they know it: They’re in close conversation with the audience’s knowledge of not just the horror genre, but of the established rules of Final Destination. By comparison, Stef’s growing ability to see the code of this murder Matrix sets up some great moments – but outside of that, her characterization is rather thin. Kaitlyn Santa Juana deserves credit for keeping Bloodlines emotionally grounded, even in the face of a superfluous subplot about Stef’s estranged mom that kicks off a little too late to have any real impact.

Bloodlines very wisely positions itself as an entry point for newcomers, which makes sense given how sparsely connected the first five Final Destination films are, but the movie does take care to give love to some of the franchise’s most memorable imagery – references that are obvious, but unobtrusive to enjoying Bloodlines on its own terms. A little more effort is exerted to make space for the late Tony Todd’s swan song as the ominous Bludworth. The horror icon usually stops by Final Destination movies to muse on the nature of death, but here in Bloodlines, that moment takes on powerful symbolism: Todd’s scene was clearly devised with the intention of giving him a chance to bid farewell to his most ardent fans. The gravity that he is famous for hits like a freight train here, helped enormously by some wonderful camerawork that often frames Todd as if he’s talking directly to the audience. It’s a powerful final bow which few in this space are afforded, and that fewer still deserve more.