Final Destination Bloodlines (2025) review

Dir. Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

 Remembering Tony Todd

1954 – 2024

A double-salute to the patient folks such as myself, who spent the last 14 years reading up on reports and rumors regarding a sixth Final Destination film and holding out hope it would materialize one of these days. With that, a moment of silence for the brothers and sisters who didn’t live to see it a come to fruition. I was starting to believe we’d see the release of the long-in-development Grand Theft Auto VI before we’d get another sequel to one of the best contemporary horror franchises.

Die-hard fans of the franchise might recall various reports that the long-awaited sixth installment would revolve around first responders, and at one point, perhaps even take place in the Middle Ages. Final Destination Bloodlines (no colon, strangely) arrives into theaters intending to make up for lost time. Blessed so, the film isn’t a misbegotten reboot of the series, but instead employs a new central idea. The concept is, when cheated, the ever-present, though unseen forces of Death will go after the consanguineous relatives, who never should’ve existed, seeing as their ancestors should’ve perished many decades ago.

The opening catastrophe takes place in 1968 at a towering restaurant known as Skyview (which resembles the Seattle Needle), where a young Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) intends to propose to his girlfriend, Iris (Brec Bassinger). Once on the top-floor of the restaurant, Iris becomes increasingly unnerved by the heights and eventually has a vivid premonition of the glass floor beneath them shattering and the entire structure turning into a fiery inferno.

This scene turns out to be a recurring nightmare had by Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), a young college student. Stefani returns home to confront her family about the incident. Iris is in fact Stefani’s grandmother, who has been estranged from the family. She successfully saved the lives of hundreds of people at the Skyview on that fateful evening, but every one of them, and the subsequent family members they never should’ve had, went on to die in bizarre ways. Death doesn’t just work in mysterious ways, but it knows how to manipulate general happenstance, be it a shard of glass falling into an ice bin, or a penny that wedges itself in a crevasse that renders a gas heater ready to rupture. For others such as myself who have a nut allergy, there’s one scene where you might have to convince yourself you’re not the one going through anaphylactic shock.

After visiting her hermetic grandmother (Gabrielle Rose) — who, for some odd reason, has her estate rigged with sharp poles and objects ripe for impaling despite her deeply ingrained paranoia — Stefani comes to the realization that her family is the last group on Death’s list, following many decades of do-diligence on part of the unseen force. This grim reality, where individuals who shouldn’t even exist are now doomed to die for that very reason, is tragic and unfortunate, and makes the subsequent deaths of Stefani’s family members that much sadder.

For one, this is one of the first Final Destination films where characters actively grieve after witnessing their loved ones perish in uniquely brutal ways. In past films, most of the impacted were complete strangers who just happened to be on a highway or a rollercoaster together. The way in which Bloodlines is about family would make Vin Diesel smile.

Either way, like the umpteenth Saw sequel, you come to a Final Destination movie to see the inventive, Rube Goldbergian ways in which these characters bite the dust. Many of the deaths are exhilarating, and despite all this lost time, the build-up remains a master-class in suspense. I forgot how anxious and unsettled I get when watching these sequels. Directors Zach Lipovsky (Leprechaun: Origins) and Adam Stein adhere to the strengths of the series by way of careful scene-setting and plotting. The environments in which these characters exist (in tattoo parlors, hospitals, backyard barbecues) become rife with clues, callbacks, and subtleties that make for an active, albeit unnerving movie experience.

We all saw what a rat bastard Death can be when it took the life of horror icon and Final Destination mainstay Tony Todd at the age of 69 this past November. Seeing him return as coroner/mortician William Bludworth in Bloodlines, as a gaunt, nearly unrecognizable version of himself, gives insight into how sick Todd was at the end of his life; eaten away by cancer similar to the late Toby Keith. Knowing he wasn’t much longer for this world, Lipovsky and Stein let Todd write Bludworth’s dialog for this installment, which includes a monologue that made my eyes well with tears. Losing a legend is terrible, but not many go out on their own terms, their final film role rife with wisdom and life lessons we all should hold dear in our hearts.

Final Destination Bloodlines is clever and unpredictable enough to sit alongside most of its predecessors as a fine work of dastardly horror with an obscenely high body count. The familial connection of the characters coupled with the real-life connection to the loss of Tony Todd provides shocking emotional heft for a series that I believe many people are reluctant to admit they love as much as they do. It’s truly a marvel. Horror films shouldn’t be this good when they’re up to number six.

Starring: Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Rya Kihlstedt, Anna Lore, Gabrielle Rose, Brec Bassinger, Max Lloyd-Jones, and Tony Todd. Directed by: Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein.