An old horror franchise is back from the dead via Final Destination (No Colon or Dash) Bloodlines (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video), which arrives 14 years after the previous film, in a much different world. Am I trying to say that death is much closer to us all than it was in 2011? Uh. Maybe? But more tangibly, the zeitgeist is more welcoming of another Final Destination, with this film, the sixth in the series, grossing a franchise-best $272 million worldwide (even adjusting for inflation). It also enjoyed far greater critical acclaim than its predecessors, earning a 92 percent critical tally on Rotten Tomatoes, a marked improvement over Final Destination 5’s 63 percent. So this series has undergone a reevaluation, with a couple of these films – all of them about DEATH ITS DAMN SELF concocting bizarre Rube Goldbergian methods of killing folks – being considered minor genre classics. And now we have a sort of reboot or reimagining or re-something-or-other that takes the original premise and expands on it, making it even more needlessly convoluted than before – because needless convolution is precisely the point of these movies.
The Gist: First things f—in’ last: Let’s quickly discuss how the premise is tweaked in Bloodlines. You surely remember that one key Final Destination character has a premonition in which numerous people die, then, after taking action to prevent those deaths, watches in horror as Death Its Damn Self makes up for it by finding diabolically ridiculous ways to kill those numerous people. As the title implies, this time, it’s PERSONAL, because Death Its Damn Self seeks to punish the family members of the Death Cheaters, in descendent order. It sort of makes sense that Death Its Damn Self – or DIDS if you so desire – would be way into studying genealogies, doesn’t it?
So we open at the site of a towering Space Needle-type structure called The Skyview, which has a rickety elevator leading to a fancy restaurant and club up top, with glass floors, and people stomping and dancing, and a chandelier with loose dangly pointy bits that are about to fall, and a bratty little kid tossing pennies off the observation deck. Nothing to worry about here! Per the date on the penny, it’s 1968 or sometime shortly thereafter. Young Iris (Brec Bassinger) envisions all the horrible stuff I won’t spoil because it’s gruesomely hilarious, and stops it all from happening before Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) wakes up with a shriek and a gasp. She’s been having awful, gory dreams about the Skyview disaster that never happened. Curious. She’s so disturbed by them and two months’ worth of sleepless nights, her grades are slipping. Something has to give.
Stefani returns home to her brother Teo (Charlie Reyes) and father Marty (Tinpo Lee), and they’re all close with Uncle Howard (Alex Zahara) and Aunt Brenda (April Telek) and cousins Erik (Richard Harmon), Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) and Julia (Anna Lore) – which gives DIDS a bountiful buffet of people on which to assert the fresh tweak on the Final Destination formula. Notably, Stefani was 10 when her mother bolted, and her maternal grandmother, Iris (Gabrielle Rose) – this is where you go aha! – is long estranged from the family. Stefani comes to the conclusion that she’ll have to track down Granny Iris in order to address the nightmare problem, which totally makes sense, especially if you exist in a Final Destination movie.
Turns out that Iris has managed to avoid being killed long enough to figure out that everyone who survived the Skyview thing has been biting it – does she have a Crazy Person Wall full of photos and news clippings and tape and string? Boy does she! – as DIDS slowly works his way through them, even though you’d think DIDS would be powerful enough to transcend space-time and therefore not adhere to any such earthly limitations of physics, but never mind. One at a time it is, then, because it’s more suspenseful that way, as Stefani grows more and more paranoid and all too aware of the many power tools and wonky hinges and fraying trampolines and MRI machines that are far too easy to overload and very pointy rakes that are within her peripheral vision. Will she figure out how to be a Death Cheater? NO COLON NO DASH NO SPOILERS!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This is as good a place as any to mention that Final Destination diehards will notch all manner of franchise Easter eggs in Bloodlines. There’s also a chunk of the plot that recalls Flatliners.
Performance Worth Watching: As wacky ol’ Iris, Rose masterfully gives us Crazy Eyes that are also at the same time Sympathetic Eyes. And Harmon is a key comic relief figure, frequently lightening the tone and reminding us that hideously disgusting incidences of death are actually quite funny.
Memorable Dialogue: Iris’ most dire warning: “Death doesn’t like it when you f— with his plans… he’s a relentless son of a bitch who won’t stop ’til he finishes the job.”
Sex and Skin: Nah.
Our Take: Like I said, convolution is ample grist for the Final Destination mill. We aren’t here to get emotionally invested in the lives of the characters, we’re here to watch with perverse glee as they try really really hard not to die even though they’re doomed to Get It in spectacularly stoopid fashion. Rooting for them is as pointless as voting third-party for President rimshot! And Bloodlines knows where its bread is buttered, taunting us with dozens of fakeouts as new-to-the-franchise directors Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky put a very sharp ice cube in the foreground, or dangle a chain near a ceiling fan, or make us reconsider getting that septum ring. Characters in these movies don’t have nut allergies, or get angry at vending machines when the candy gets stuck, just to reflect the hardships of reality, you know. Everything is a tool for DIDS if you’re creative enough!
And Stein and Lipovsky are indeed creative enough in crafting kills, as characters meet their ends in such amusingly vile manner, it’s easy to overlook some of the cheaper CGI. Regardless, franchise fans will almost certainly be satisfied with the filmmakers’ effort expended to maintain suspense and deliver the nasty goods. I could reveal that everyone in the movie dies, or doesn’t die, and no one would care; the true crime would be to spoil how the doomed die, because the plot exists to give us some semblance of cohesive story to follow so we can feel a little edgy tension before the brains and guts go splat splat splotch. Will you rummage around in some subtext about predestination, fate, free will and other existential fodder? If you’re up for it, sure. You might even wonder if a life of extreme looking-over-your-shoulder paranoia is truly living at all, and ponder quality vs. quantity of your years on this planet. It seems silly to assert that a Final Destination movie has anything substantial to say beyond its basic philosophical tenet, though: Obsessing over survival is futile. We’re all going to die sooner or later. Have a nice day!
Our Call: Bloodlines is a worthy franchise entry, continuing to hone its dark humor to a fine point, like a very sharp thing that’ll pierce a very soft part of the human body, killing it instantly, if the conditions are just right. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.