‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ Starts Out Stable Then Goes Code Red

The Final Destination franchise was almost an over and done deal by Final Destination 5 released in 2011 which was actually a prequel. Some people have noted that the fourth entry is titled The Final Destination, being the last in the chronological order.

However, there was a plot hole in the fifth movie where William Bludworth (Tony Todd) makes a comment that he’s seen this all before. But how could he have seen it if it’s a prequel? Well, the greatest thing about making movies is you can write whatever rules you want. To anyone with half a brain, you can deduce the young boy that is seen in the extended prologue is Bludworth as a child.

The first half of this movie is quite impressive in how it follows what Hitchcock said about suspense being a bomb under the table that the audience knows about but it doesn’t go off. The movie starts off in 1969 where a young couple Paul and Iris Campbell (Max Lloyd-Jones and Brec Basinger) attend the grand opening of the Skyview, a high-rise tower that includes a restaurant and bar lounge.

Through many intersecting minor and major events including another young boy who is a brat and everyone dancing to the band playing “Shout,” the tower collapses in a bloody and fiery bloodbath, similar to the log truck traffic accident in the second one and the suspended bridge incident in the fifth one. What makes these scenes so intense is they draw on our fears. The first movie had a plane explosion being foreshadowed. People are scared of flying, driving on highways with a lot of traffic and even crossing huge suspended bridges.

And now, we have huge high rises that terrify people. When my dad and I went to the Westin Parkway Hotel in Atlanta that had an observational restaurant and lounge, we got on the elevator with a family from the United Kingdom. The father was backed up so far against the elevator door as his family looked all happy at the Atlanta skyline he could’ve fused himself with the metal. Another time when I was down the road at the Hilton Hotel that has an express elevator to a restaurant on the top, two young couples were also with me and one woman commented if it is going down. Her partner responded, “Yes, I’m sure it would go down.”

Are people afraid of heights or are they afraid of falling from heights? It turns out this whole horrific incident is a nightmare Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Junta), a college student, keeps happening. But it’s irrelevant that she’s a college student. This is another movie that sets a character up in one setting introducing characters we never see again as she goes into a different setting after 10 minutes. This is one of my main complaints of these movies.

So, she goes back to spend time with her family in a location that looks a lot like Vancouver. She reconnects with Iris (Gabrielle Rose) now, an elderly hermit recluse who has remained in a desolate house where she is constantly on edge. Iris explains to Stefani that she alerted everyone of the visions she saw of the tower collapse and they all escaped unscathed. It was later revealed some corners were cut and the structure was unsafe.

However, since Iris prevented the deaths of dozens of people, she interfered. And in the last 55 years or so, everyone who survived has met an unfortunate early death. Even Paul died of cancer. Her fear of death led to her own children being taken away from her. Stefani, herself, is estranged from her own mother, Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt).

But Iris herself is killed by a weather vane which leads Stefani to determine that there was a blood line in which all the descendants of Paul and Iris will follow as they are killed. It’s a great premise and filmmakers Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein do a great job of creating suspense. We’re even given a nice farewell scene of Bludworth as he finally can leave his job as a mortician. Todd, who stood 6-foot-5, obviously shows signs of the stomach cancer that would led to his death in November. But it’s a nice farewell as he tells Stefani and her family “Life is precious, enjoy every single second. You never know when … Good luck.”

But after you know who is next to die, it suddenly becomes another silly Rube Goldberg bloody contraption that resorts to stilly horror cliches, i.e. people who are too stupid or ignorant to fully understand things. Part of the reason a lot of the bodies are killed is because someone does something very stupid. A garbage truck driver is too busy looking at a dating app and listening to loud music to notice people running after him and banging on the truck because someone is back in the compactor. Maybe the problem isn’t death in this unidentified community but an abundance of the most inept people on the planet.

I’ve always wondered if some of these deaths would’ve resulted in any legal action. I’d kinda like to see a movie like that. Final Destination: Punitive Damages is what they could call it. The plot would be family members of victims sue the people whose carelessness caused some of the deaths and there’s a twist that death is coming after those who file the claims.

What makes these movies so repetitive and boring is that the characters keep acting like nothing is wrong even as people keep getting dying and get killed in outrageous ways. Also, you’d think after 25 years, they would’ve known about all the previous incidents, especially with the Internet and social media. I mean a suspended bridge collapse, plane explosion and log truck incident would’ve made the rounds online.

Anyway, you spend most of the second half waiting for a character to die an extremely outrageous death. A good twist would be if someone died of something so easy and simple. Someone who works as a lumberjack or tree removal dies of a heart attack or a stroke after they spend five minutes trying to avoid getting squashed by lumber or going head first into the wood chipper.

Still, regardless of the sloppy second half, it’s still better than the overrated The Monkey which got way too repetitive fast and was silly. At least the pet turtle didn’t die and that little brat got what was coming to him.

What do you think? Please comment.