You don’t need ESP to know that Final Destination Bloodlines will start with a premonition. And this one’s a belter, eclipsing the plane crash (1), rollercoaster derailment (3), speedway crash (4) and suspension bridge collapse (5) that have previously acted as the franchise’s gory-glory curtain-raisers. Heck, it perhaps even rivals the second instalment’s Route 2 pile-up that made driving behind a logging truck such a no-no for all right-minded motorists.
The precog carnage this time takes place atop a soaring, needle-thin tower not unlike the Stratosphere in Las Vegas, as revellers in the sky-view restaurant stomp their stuff to a band playing ‘Shout’. Iris (Brec Bassinger) is the one being ‘treated’ to a preview, as a rogue coin flung by a bratty kid kickstarts Death’s signature Rube Goldberg routine: champagne corks pop, drums thud, chandeliers tremor, rivets spring, heels scrape, the glass floor cracks, and… well, by the time this extended set-piece finally comes to rest in pieces, chances are the cinema you’re watching it in will be rocking with applause.
But while this thrilling opener is everything you’d expect from a Final Destination movie, it’s also something different — set in the 1960s. We then crash-cut to the present as Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) awakens screaming. Plagued by night terrors for two months now, she’s flunking college, her scholarship in doubt. And so she decides to investigate the recurring nightmare. Might the Iris in the dream be her long-lost grandmother?
So comes the usual Mouse Trap mayhem, all of it splattery fun.
Entertaining as it is, the Final Destination franchise was getting tired when it was laid to rest in 2011 — there are only so many times you can rinse and repeat before the Grim Reaper’s scythe gets rusted. This reboot, then, offers a tweak to the format, with the group in peril being not pals and a rando or two, but a family. Searching for answers, Stefani teams up with her younger brother Charlie (Teo Briones), cousins Erik, Bobby and Julia (Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Anna Lore), and estranged mum Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt), only to quickly learn that the family tree is about to be felled.
And so comes the usual Mouse Trap mayhem, all of it splattery fun even if none of it quite reaches the giddy heights of that sustained opener. The gaps between the elaborate death scenes, meanwhile, are dedicated as much to the fractured family resolving differences as to exploring how they might get Death to chill out. It’s hardly Secrets & Lies, but the no-name young cast prove likeable enough, and all efforts towards characterisation are appreciated — this is, after all, a franchise built on wafer-thin characters, where what’s inside is only of interest when it’s on the outside, in the gooiest form possible. The best bit of family drama has a major skeleton clatter out of the closet in a manner that’s both funny and clever, sure to wrong-foot fans who have become expert in sifting through the red herrings that make each death in the franchise a guessing game.
In fact, the screenplay, by Guy Busick (Scream) and Lori Evans Taylor (Cellar Door) from a story by Jon Watts (the Tom Holland Spider-Man trilogy), is smart throughout, and is matched by the peppy direction of Zach Lipovsky and Adam. B. Stein. Their 2018 movie, Freaks, one-upped both screen versions of Stephen King’s Firestarter in just how to do a sci-fi horror about a young girl with escalating psychic powers, and the directors here demonstrate a similarly crisp understanding of dog-eared material.
Clearly desiring to hit every base, Final Destination Bloodlines runs through all of the how-to-cheat-death rules that were fitfully established over the first five movies, tosses out Easter eggs with the forceful abandon of giant logs bouncing down a highway, and at last offers an explanation — and a satisfying one, at that — as to why mortician William Bludworth (Tony Todd) is such an expert on Death. Reprising his fan-favourite role from the first, second and fifth instalments, genre icon Todd, who passed away last November, is here visibly ill as he courageously delivers his final performance. He brings pathos to the line, “Life is precious… enjoy every single second,” and the film is dedicated to his memory — still, reflective moments amid the rush of squishing heads, bursting eyeballs and tearing genital piercings.
