Watching a Final Destination movie is a lot like being a parent of a toddler for 90 minutes (or 110 minutes, as is the case with this latest instalment). "Don't put that in your mouth." "You'll put your eye out!" "Mind you don't step on that..." The genius of the franchise is that it doesn't have a physical villain. Death itself is the antagonist. Many characters die in the sort of manner that would see them nominated for a Darwin Award but others succumb despite doing their best to avoid trouble. The message is clear: you can't cheat death.
Except, of course, you can. Because if you couldn't the movies wouldn't have any plots. We need to believe that at least one of the protagonists is going to find a way to escape their fate, otherwise we'd just be left to watch a bunch of people die in grisly, over-the-top fashion; which admittedly, is bags of fun.
Final Destination Bloodlines deviates from the series' template in one significant way. This time the central character, college student Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), doesn't have a premonition of impending disaster, but rather is plagued by a recurring dream of a tragedy that seems to have already occurred. This leads Stefani to discover that she, along with her extended family, is marked for death.
Cue the classic formula of characters snuffing it in outrageously staged sequences. The opening set-piece is probably the best since the second movie, though some fans might view its deviation from the series' convention as a bit of a copout. Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein prove a natural fit for this series from their opening scene, carefully building their Jenga tower before gleefully knocking it down like a bratty child. The sequence plays like a 1970s disaster movie on speed, and in just a few minutes the movie manages to establish just whom we want to survive and whom we want to see torn apart or set alight. The subsequent deaths are a mix of shocks that come out of nowhere thanks to clever misdirection, or the slow Rube Goldberg escalation that is the series' stock-in-trade. A set-piece at a family garden party seems to take its influence from those old public safety films, making a variety of everyday implements and accoutrements possible vessels for death.
The series has gotten more comic in tone with each new instalment. This didn't quite work for the third and fourth movies, but the fifth was a return to form, balancing its jokey self-awareness with its suspense and scares. Bloodlines does likewise. It's by far the most knowing entry in the series, but it's never smug. Like its predecessor, it plays the scenario for laughs but the set-pieces don't lose any of their impact in spite of this. It might be the instalment most influenced by classic cartoons, with bodies bent and rent like those of Wile E. Coyote or Tom. This entry introduces a new way to cheat death but it wisely never follows through, as doing so would have made it a very different movie, something closer to It Follows than Final Destination. The notion is brought up seemingly just to remind us that not every horror movie has to be taken seriously. This is the antithesis/antidote to elevated horror.
In a refreshing change for a revived horror franchise, Bloodlines isn't concerned with tying itself in knots to fit into previous entries, and the fan service is so subtle that much of it will go over the heads of all but the most hardcore devotees of death. As such, you don't need to have seen the previous films to enjoy this one. The only returning character is Tony Todd's creepy mortician William Bludworth. Todd was clearly unwell when his scene was shot, and the theme of his cameo is loaded with poignancy as a result, the actor defiantly going out with that famously wicked grin on his face. In an era when so many horror movies are obsessed with grief and trauma, the Final Destination series continues to make us laugh in the face of death.
Directed by: Zach Lipovsky, Adam Stein
Starring: Brec Bassinger, Tony Todd, Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Anna Lore, Rya Kihlstedt
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