Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025) Review

“Good luck”

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

Sometimes, death can bring families together. Oddly enough, Final Destination: Bloodlines is an example of the claim.


PLOT


The 2025 film follows college student Stefani Reyes who is failing her classes due to having constant nightmares of a high rise tower, Sky View, collapsing in 1969. Wanting to seek answers, she returns home to see her dad Marty and young brother Charlie. With Charlie, she goes to their uncle Howard if he remembers anything about his mom Iris. He shares that he was so overprotective towards him and his sister Darlene, Stef’s mom, to the point where it led to their dad Paul divorcing her. She tracks her down to a fortified cabin and her grandma explains her behavior comes from having a vision that prevented everyone from dying at Sky View and ever since, Death has been taking the lives of each survivor in the order that they died, including their descendants. After her husband passed, she made a notebook of Death’s actions to protect her family. When Stef doesn’t believe her, Iris proves the design is real by stepping out of her cabin for the first time that causes her to be impaled by a weather vane. On the day of her funeral, Darlene returns but her daughter resents her since she left her and Charlie when they were kids. Later, Stef reads the notebook and finds out someone named JB defeated Death. The design would continue for the Campbell-Reyes family when Howard gets killed by a lawnmower. And after his funeral, Stef explains to everyone else of Death’s plan that includes her uncle’s wife Brenda and their three adult children: Erik, Julia & Bobby. Erik openly doesn’t believe the claim that Death is after them, especially after surviving a fire that broke out at the tattoo shop he works at, due to being protected by leather clothing. The day after though, Stef is proven right when Julia is crushed by a garbage truck compactor, as a result of being knocked into a trash can by a soccer ball, as a result of nearby children that got distracted by a leaf blower operator that accidentally blasted onto their eyes; The operator went off due to it being activated by a tree trimmer that fell of a tree. Out of shame, Brenda admits Erik is not Howard’s son because she cheated on him with another man named Jerry Fenbury. Stef and the remaining family go to the nearest hospital to find JB. It turns out JB was coroner William John Bludworth. He explains he was a child when Iris saved her at Sky View and when she later tracked him down as an adult, he helped her set up the cabin she was hiding in and diagnosed her cancer she was struggling with in the final years of her life. He then explains there are only two ways to escape Death’s design for good, either killing someone else and taking the time they have or go through flatlining and later be revived. He knows for sure the latter works because Kimberly Corman from the second film is the only one to have succeeded. With him having cancer as well, JB departs after wishing the family good luck to survive however they can. This leads to Erik deciding to go through with the flatlining option with Bobby triggering his fatal nut allergy. That doesn’t go according to plan when an activated MRI malfunctions pulls Erik in with his metal piercings and he gets crushed by a nearby wheelchair, whereas the coil of a vending machine launches into Bobby’s head. When that happens, Darlene heads to Iris’ cabin hoping to protect themselves the way her mom did for so long. When crashing through the front gate, Stef’s seat belt jams and the cabin explodes due to a burning leaf being blown inside, landing near a broken gas pipe. Darlene barely saves Charlie from drowning before being crushed by a lamp post. This leads to him saving his sister via resuscitation. A week after this, Charlie would go on a prom date with his crush Jenny and when meeting her father, Doctor Reddick, he and Stef share their recent experience of how she was briefly dead. However, he corrects her by sharing no one is clinically dead if resuscitated before cardiac arrest. The film ends with both siblings being crushed by a derailing freight train carrying timber.


THOUGHTS


It’s kinda crazy that I’ve come to grow in an era where we felt nostalgic for another Final Destination movie, as we all know there are an infinite amount of ideas involving freak accidents. But when 14 years go by without another entry, it makes sense for the feeling to come across. With so many ideas on how dangerous it is to just walk the face of the Earth, it’s very impressive that the directing duo of Adam Stein & Zach Lipovsky are able to let it all unfold in the graphic Rude Goldberg style we’re expecting. I was already disinterested with high rise towers, but that opening vision made me want to avoid them forever and it was creative to see how much history of action can be told of a penny from start to finish. You can say boundaries are sure pushed in the combined practical visual effects done for moments like that and the MRI or the compactor, but it really kicked in during the opening still because we actually got excited that a brat of a child had a comeuppance being crushed by a piano since it was his penny that causes the high rise tower’s malfunction. My favorite Easter egg would be how he’d still die of the same manner as an adult. I don’t like saying he deserved it since he didn’t know better, but since he chose to not respect any adults around him, lord knows where or who were his parents, you can’t help be relieved to know his actions had consequences one way or another. Another aspect in what made this entry so special is the final appearance of Tony Todd revealing Bludworth was never the mediator of this franchise, but a survivor being a savior in the similar vein of who saved him. Due to this connection, it actually explains his profession as well. Since his age was getting to him soon, it was so fitting for him to give advice to the new cast on appreciating life before time would be up for them the way it was for him. Living around people who’ve lived eventful lives like him sure do make the message more clear. With this aspect of the franchise finally making more sense, it makes this entry’s lesson moving by expanding the thought on how special life is when you have family to be with in the end. Even though this movie’s family had a terrible conclusion, there was no doubt they loved each other until the end. Chronologically, Iris was the first to have a vision of Death’s plan and we see exactly how bad paranoia struck the rightful worried as time went on. Brec Bassinger pulls us in that she was so free spirited about the next chapter, only for Gabrielle Rose to show how over consumed in fear she became that it affected two generations of her bloodline. Even though not enough people understood her intentions, she sure proved selflessness when it mattered most. The one thing people don’t understand when it comes to family expanding is that you can’t guarantee you’ll turn out like your ancestors, which is why it was interesting to see how different Darlene & Howard coped with putting Iris behind them. Rya Kihlstedt expressed the former repeat the motive of reclusiveness, constantly afraid of messing up rather than let things happen as is to figure out what to do after and Alex Zahara showed the latter to be so eager when it came to living to the fullest, not even thinking about his mom unless someone brings her up. It was obvious they found good matches with Marty & Brenda because both Tinpo Lee & April Telek respectively portrayed them as most level headed. Sadly, they weren’t enough to be safe from Death’s new blueprints, no matter how different they approached it. While their kids didn’t have the best luck either in avoiding it, you can’t say their efforts weren’t worthwhile. Kaitlyn Santa Juana was a strong lead as Stef because she too wants the fear to go away and chooses to make time in solving it rather than avoiding it. With the knowledge she gains, she does her best in analytical to the point where she starts sounding paranoid like her grandma, but ironically also sounds less crazy about it since everyone else made the time to listen. It was easy to enjoy Teo Briones as Charlie because he chooses to be loyal to his sister, wanting to connect with her as much as he could rather than disconnect like what happened with their mom before the truth was out. And while you respect him saving her when he did, it sucks it didn’t get them out of the plan as they were trying so hard to do. If you ask me, my favorite character here is Erik because Richard Harmon made him most cynical due to not even part of the plan to begin with. Even if this was off of the revelation he wasn’t part of the bloodline, whether or not Howard knew, he remained loyal to his siblings because his love for them was what was most true to him at that point. Sadly, his luck in cheating death still cursed him to be added on, arguably having the worst death of the whole family. Owen Patrick Joyner made Bobby likable for being most soft spoken while Anna Lore brought a fair amount of skepticism as Julia since it is a lot to take knowing her family wasn’t supposed to exist. Maybe if they were ever more curious compared to their cousin, Stef, they likely would’ve bettered their chances sooner in getting the answers of outliving Death’s plan. Having said all of this, making another entry for this franchise is fitting if they make the same amount of the Halloween franchise or more because Death doesn’t stop when one plan is over. So whoever is next, I wish good luck like Bludworth did. This movie rocks in so many ways, but there were still some confusing things to look back on. Like from the beginning, it doesn't make sense for reservations to be check at the top of the SkyView building rather than first floor, to avoid over-capacity. It then gets too fucked up that Stef's classmate laugh at the meltdown she has in class. Hell if her nightmares bothered her roommate so much, they should've made better sleeping arrangements or at the very least consider therapy before pursuing Iris. And if Howard was so troubled of the letters she wrote, he should've not kept them rather than make the opportunity for Stef to find her. Also, Iris should've been picky with Stef's necklace upon entering if she's been this careful. Moving on, it is is ridiculous that Bobby didn't check that glass went into the ice, which it does and it gets his dad killed. If he was a bartender, he would've been fired for that shit. While I respect Stef taping down the many family trees that have been wiped out, red tape was a bad call because it crops pout the stories of the people that died. I'm even surprised Stef was able to get them all together for that presentation. Next, it's still bullshit that the car that passes Erik is quiet until entering the scene, much like the first movie which becomes my least favorite callback. And if Erik wanted to get rid of the peanuts that were in Darlene’s RV, he could've taken it to the trashcan instead of leaving it in the front yard. I’m sorry, I just hate loitering that can be avoided too. My only takeaway of Bludworth's scene is him saying he's tired of helping people when he was metaphorical the whole time and wasn't straightforward until now. I know he's old, but he definitely wasn't honest in how he chose to be helpful. While I can go on there should be better security hallmarks for the MRI machine, Stef is way too sure of claiming Iris' cabin is 100% safe when a burning rope almost happened until her grandma prevented it. If you can still ignore this, then you’re still set for a bloody good time. In conclusion, Final Destination: Bloodlines is an impressive entry that knew how to find new surprises in how creatively vile Death is. If you’re still a fan of this franchise after the years of waiting for more, I promise this won’t disappoint you.