Don’t tell Death, but true horror franchises never truly die. Case in point, during this time of belated legacy sequels that’s seeing seemingly every franchise and it’s dog rising from the grave to take another shot at fan adulation and box office glory, the Final Destination series has jumpstarted its pulse and barrelled back into cinemas with the force of a runaway log truck.
Back in 2000, the first movie took a bunch of teen mortality angst and whipped up one of the most fascinating premises populist horror has ever seen that merged the creative, out of nowhere killing of The Omen with a complex, Rube Goldberg string of occurrences that lead to a truly nailbiting experience fully took advantage of the clawing fear of the unlikely. Soon sequels started flowing that ramped up the kills to such a showstopping degree, you could help but cheer as death reduced it’s preordained victims to so much mulch; but after the fifth film was release back in 2011, the franchise inexplicably went into hibernation despite still being profitable and extraordinarily fun.
Well, now it’s back – and I for one and stoked to death.
College student Stefani Lewis is clunking her classes thanks to an overwhelmingly violent, reoccurring nightmare she’s been having for the past couple of months. It involves her grandmother, Iris, attending the opening of a swanky new high-rise restaurant named the Skyview with her sweetheart in 1969, but despite an idyllic evening that sees them get engaged and more, their date plummets in quality when the restaurant suddenly collapses killing hundreds of people. As weird as this is, what’s even weirder is that Stefani’s never even met her grandmother (who is still very much alive) since that side of the family is estranged to the apparent mental breakdown the woman had after her husband died.
Even though Iris is a massively sore subject to Stefani’s Uncle Howard, in an effort to try and make sense of her nightmares, the young girl still goes to see the reclusive old lady in what seems to be a fortified compound that would make Halloween’s Laurie Strode possibly salivate and it’s here that she finally gets some answers.
Of course, the answers end up being worse as the problem as the obsessed Iris spins her a tale about her having a premonition of death all those years ago that saved everyone in the Skyview before disaster struck, but the true bad news is that in doing so, she royally fucked up Death’s design, sparing hundreds of people who went on to have lives and families that never should have existed.
In an effort to slow Death’s roll, Iris has been living for decades in a “death proof” existence as every person and relative connected by blood to the Skyview incident is scratched violently off the list by various, gruesome accidents. However, Death only has one bloodline left to take out and if Iris buys the farm, Death will come hard for the rest of Stefani’s family.
I have to say, I was confused as anybody when the Final Destination franchise had apparently reached its own final destination with the highly enjoyable fifth entry; particularly because the series had always been a personal favorite of mine. From the pseudo-serious mortality musings of the first, to the rock and roll excesses of the sequels, they may not have always been the most refined of movies, but if you’re judging them purely on a rollercoaster-type thrill ride, the more inadvertent, guttural sounds of amused shock that came from an audience usually meant you were watching one of the better ones. However, if this is truly the correct yardstick to accurately rate a Final Destination movie, then there’s a damn good chance that Bloodlines might actually be the best of the bunch.
Overseen by the MCU’s Spider-Man guy, John Watts and directed by the team of Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky, the sixth entry into the mega-death series sees it in invigorated form as it takes the basic rules of the franchise and then proceeds to twist it into knots to use our knowledge of the franchise against us. With our familiarity of the series now weaponized, the movie takes every aspect of itself (even it’s trailers) and has us second guessing ourselves all the way through. Characters we’re convinced are gonners somehow break the rules, others who are supposedly safe are placed in the firing line and for a franchise on its sixth installment, it manages the enviable trick of being both endearingly familiar and overwhelmingly fresh. Plonking the opening premonition in the late sixties as part of our lead character’s dream not only muddies the waters, but it also niftily manages to connect itself to the entirety of the rest of the franchise with some deft retconning. It seems that Death is such a vindictive prick because it’s still been trying to tie up all the loose ends from the Skyview, but the fact that the survivors have all gone on to have families could very well caused all the expansive disasters from all the previous five films.
It’s a cracking concept and it plays right into the whole supernatural conspiracy aspect that’s fueled these flicks from the start, but the fact that this is now a family that’s fighting for their lives successfully adds another wrinkle into an already established template. It also helps that we have some stronger actors this time round – something of an achilies heels for some of the past sequels that often traded on unlikable victims and bland heroes – with solid chemistry coming from the cast and a farewell performance by series regular, the late, great Tony Todd. However, the real hook here are those all important deaths and by God, do the filmmakers have you covered.
Like I mentioned earlier, the louder you are when death violently snuffs out a life in one of these movies, the more fun you are generally having and while I was watching Final Destination: Bloodlines, on average I was recoiling, cheering and laughing like I was at a football game. The deaths are super complex, exquisitely timed and gorgeously gruesome and even the expectation of them as the ball starts rolling is enough to have you giggling like a loon with anticipation. Even better, the opening disaster easily equals that of numer 2s multi car pile up or 5s collapsing bridge as the most frenetic and brutak opening the series has obtained so far. Bodies crunch and clang off metal girders as happy revelers suddenly plummet through the glass dance floor, old ladies go up in flames and one poor unfortunate is scrunched into a squishy ball thanks to a malfunctioning elevator and through it all you’ll either be screaming in shock or cacking like a loon. Thankfully the subsequent deaths more than live up to that boffo opening with garbage trucks, body piercings and even an MRI scanner are employed to well and truly fuck up somebody’s day and almost every single one of them manages to bring the house down.
Whether Final Destination: Bloodlines is the best of the series is a question that time will ultimately decide, but for my buck, it’s pretty damn close. In fact, I can’t remember the last time such wanton disregard for human life has made me laugh so goddamn hard as a bunch of mischievous filmmakers had me completely eating out of the palm of their hand. Indie horror is important and elevated horror is necessary; but sometimes, all you want is a populist horror flick to rock up and shake your world like a fairground ride just like this.
Death lives!
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