It’s been 25 years since Final Destination first arrived on screens, its crafty (and best) 2000 original ushering in a popular franchise predicated on elaborately contrived mayhem and driven by grim musings on mortality and fate. Fourteen years have passed since the last installment, which makes the new Final Destination: Bloodlines a reboot of sorts, but no primer required as the basic premise—a group of young people are stalked by “Death” via macabre, cause-and-effect mousetraps—is, again, the whole show.
That familiar set-up drives the latest picture, co-directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein (Freaks) with occasional style elevating the usual gory bedlam. But is it still fun? Fresh? Well, a little. Despite a few clever bloodbaths that fit the fan service bill, this competently crafted and decently acted movie is almost instantly forgettable.
Lipvosky and Stein open very promisingly with a series best sequence of lavishly mounted, old school Hollywood disaster filmmaking. With glossy panache steeped in impeccable late 60s period detail, a blissfully happy young couple heads toward disaster atop a fancy, sky-high dining lounge, using Seattle’s iconic Space Needle as fabulous inspiration for what becomes an impressive, fear ratcheting 17-minute set piece.
This adroit, nail-biting opener introduces vertigo-plagued young Iris (Brec Bassinger), whose boyfriend (Max Lloyd-Jones) is on the verge of proposal high above (presumably) Seattle. Right away the filmmakers’ craft a tense trojan horse of gleaming beauty, expertly shot and methodically uncoiled to calibrate maximum fright as the aerial lounge’s glass floor—put upon by celebratory dancing—is destined to shatter. There is great fun is in watching how Lipovsky and Stein lovingly toy between a minuscule fissure and impending catastrophe while holding us, our breath and their richly realized set, in anxious suspension.
While this sequence raises hopes that the movie is genuinely onto something, it soon heads toward the middle and for 109 minutes never excites on the same level. Flash forward to collegiate Stefani Lewis (a very good Kaitlin Santa Juana), haunted by nightmare visions of the now historic disaster. But what is her connection? Turns out survivor Iris (Gabrielle Rose) is Stefani’s aged grandmother, now a rural recluse senior living in extreme lockdown. While Death lurks to claim her—and have its ghoulish way with her family tree—she’s not about to take any chances.
The genealogical map of potential victims includes Stefani’s wayward mother (Rya Kihlstedt), sensitive single dad (Andrew Tinpo) and sidekick teen brother (Ted Briones) Of course, no one believes her warnings. Who would? Stefani also sounds the alarm to their extended bloodline, which includes three predictable-type cousins, the Buff Athlete (Owen Joyner), Alternative Tattooist (Richard Harmon) and Hot Blonde (Anna Lore). Turns out her aunt (April Telek) and uncle (Alex Zahara) hold a few key puzzle pieces.
Despite the likable Santa Juana, the movie around her is fairly schematic, though one late exception involving a spectacularly rogue hospital MRI turned super magnet is undeniably fun. But most of Final Destination: Bloodlines, authored by Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor, is merely serviceable rather than sinister. And after a while, its lawnmower blades mutilations, bodies pulverized by garbage compactors and ceiling fans affixed to nose rings register as little more than shock-laughs. It doesn’t help that key moments during this gruesome parade are often rendered with merely so-so CGI.
I know, I know. Such gross-out, domino-effect carnage sequences are why moviegoers line up to buy tickets. But the once-novel series, always conceptual to a fault at the expense of characters (almost always on screen just to be dispatched), no longer quite thrills. If no character is safe and can be gleefully ground to gristle, why care? The film does manage a welcome, climactic cameo by late horror icon Tony Todd as a mysterious mortician imparting semi-improvisational) advice to outwit Death’s design.
Final Destination: Bloodlines has its share of polish and spirit, but aside from its brilliant opening adds little new to the franchise. Across seven movies the plots are basically the same, as a young protagonist typically has a premonition of a violent accident before it happens. Eventually everyone figures out that there’s a pattern to Death’s design, teaming up to cheat fate. Death, the series says, is relentlessly breathing down each of our necks, and we must do our damndest to stave it off. Forget living our inevitable last days to the fullest and instead outwit the reaper at his own game.
If only the movie had outwitted its formula.
2 1/2 stars
