4 out of 5

Directed by: Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein

After the first film establishing a great idea and the sequel that juggled the concept’s inherent tensions with creativity and humor, the Final Destination franchise has struggled to find a balance in tone. It easily steered towards focusing just on its death sequences – and it turns out we need some story and characters to hang on to – and even when correcting for that, it was hard to do something really engaging beyond repeat what had worked.

We let some time pass, we had a respectable period of “elevated” horror, and then we got into another cycle of horror franchise reboots / reimaginings, and along comes Final Destination: Bloodlines – the sixth entry in the series.

Acknowledging that this film does not work without the preceding movies having established a pattern and series tropes, FD: Bloodlines is surely the best entry, all around: the deaths are complex, laugh-out-loud great (which is some kind of combination of flashy gore and oooh-look-away gore); the characters are fun to be around, and directed / acted by people who get the need to balance some winking with actual characterization; and the story successfully walks a tightrope between tribute, fanservice, and trying out some new wrinkles to the concept, giving things a nice sense of history, but also glimmers of hope as to how our new gaggle of prey can beat death.

For the uninitiated, the first Final Destination set the template, and they’ve all followed suit: our lead character has a premonition of some mass casualty accident, which is played out in all its bloody gory as the opening sequence, only for said lead to wake up minutes before some triggering incidences. They freak out, alerting a few others regarding what’s to come, and the accident occurs exactly as they saw it – except the few that paid attention to their alarm end up making it through. Unfortunately, this was not death’s design; and now death has to do cleanup, which often involves Rube Goldberg death sequences of happenstances.

…Except often not. One of the main problems the series has run in to is how much to show death’s “hand.” Some movies played with supernatural elements a bit too much – things turning on by themselves; water moving in alien ways to cause someone to slip, etc. – and the more indulgent films removed any kind of “accident” vibe by setting stuff up a little too clearly to achieve the end goal. Bloodlines really nails the same vibe as the great second film of making everything feel “plausible,” but the history of the series allows this entry to go one step further by continually dodging our expectations, while also knowing the limits of that in order to let inevitable deaths either linger on or happen right away, whichever will be the most impactful. I laughed (out of entertainment) at almost all the deaths.

The second main problem has been the characters: getting them all into position; keeping them likeable enough to care about their fates; expositing the story. Bloodlines creators (screenplay from Guy Busick
and Lori Evans Taylor; direction from Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein) knew enough to not dawdle too long on trying to explain things, but there is a rush to get our lead – played by Kaitlyn Santa Juana – on board, and that rush makes the first portion of the film the most clunky, and frustrating. It’s a bit of an uphill battle to get us on the characters’ sides, but that rush almost means it’s a short battle, and once we’re in, the remainder of the movie is incredibly solid.

I also appreciated the expansion of the shtick, as Juana’s character’s opening gambit is a dream of the past, and features an architectural accident on the scale of something we haven’t yet seen in these films. It hits hard, and the way it reverberates outward to the present day is a great hook.

The caution there is that this film’s quality (and its box office success) means we’ll likely get another followup soon, and it’s so hard to add “lore” to these movies that I’m not sure if a straight repeat of this flick (or something on the same level) would be as much fun; there really is some originality here that adds to things – it’s not just that we haven’t seen an FD movie in a while. But flipping back to the praise, Final Destination: Bloodlines shows you don’t have to do a reboot, or a reimagining, or even a direct sequel. You can just… make another movie in the series. As long as you make it well, and sincerely – certainly the case here – horror fans will give you the nod.