Final Destination: Bloodlines review: Was it really the best movie in the franchise?

Dubai: After more than a decade, the newest Final Destination movie hit the screens and I had to go watch it. Was it worth it? Read on to find out.

As someone who has watched all Final Destination movies over the years, Bloodlines stood out for a few reasons. But let me give you a small spoiler-free summary of the movie first.

The movie revolves around Stefani played by Kaitlyn Santa Juana and her family. Stefani has recurring nightmares for over two months of a tragic collapse of a restaurant in the 1960s that kills hundreds of people including her maternal grandmother Iris, played by Brec Bassinger. This leads to Stefani on the search to find her grandmother who the family has disowned.

When Stefani does find her grandmother, played by Gabrielle Rose, she learns that it wasn’t just a nightmare but a vision her grandmother saw which helped her save several lives. But one thing we’ve learned from watching the Final Destination series is, trying to cheat death comes at a cost. And in Bloodlines, it’s a pretty devastating cost.

Death circles back and targets all the descendants of the survivors in this movie, and it finally catches up to Iris and her family – children and grandchildren, decades after Iris’s vision. One difference when compared to the previous movies is how Stefani doesn’t have visions like the protagonist in all the Final Destination films do, instead she has this strong gut feeling, which is never wrong.

For instance, when she sees hazardous things around one of the family members and predicts how they’re going to die. Which then leads to others believing that death is actually after them.

But there were different aspects of the movie that stood out for me, personally. One being the comedy or dark humour that creeped in certain scenes throughout the movie, thanks to the character Erik played by Richard Harmon.

The one main aspect, however, which is probably the reason for this movie to get the highest ratings in the franchise, the elaborate death sequences. These scenes in Bloodlines stood out right from the beginning when the restaurant collapses, to the last gruesome scene of the movie, which did remind me of one particular death scene from Final Destination 2.

Every kill in the movie directed by Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky, was made creative using mundane objects. Like how the previous movies in the franchise gave us a fear of rollercoasters, escalators, dentists and more, Bloodlines is sure to give you a fear of ceiling fans, kitchen accidents, and piercings.

One of the main reasons why I did go to watch this movie, however, was to bid farewell to Tony Todd. The actor who played William Bludworth, made his cameo in the movie just like he did in the other movies, at a crucial point. And in this movie it is finally revealed how he is connected to the entire story.

And no, he is not death himself, like most of us assumed over the years.

Overall, the movie was just what I had expected. Intense suspense and extremely gruesome deaths, and was definitely worth the wait.

Will there be another movie added to the series? Not with the finale-like-ending we got with Bloodlines. But based on the ratings, there are rumours that another movie might be added to the franchise.