Major spoilers ahead for Final Destination: Bloodlines. You’ve been warned.
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If you’re looking for horror flicks that encapsulate the early 2000s look and vibe, you need look no further than the Final Destination franchise. The five flicks (2000-2011) managed to combine horror and comedy into its own little subgenre. And even though they all share the same story structure, each flick kept us on edge to find out how Death would get its revenge on survivors of tragedy. But does Final Destination: Bloodlines have what it takes to draw an audience in 2025? Read on to find out.
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Final Destination: Bloodlines begins in 1969, where a cute young couple named Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) and Iris (Brec Bassinger) drive to their date destination, a brand-new restaurant called The Skyview. Paul blindfolds Iris so she’s surprised by the reveal – but as she looks up at the huge, Space Needle-looking tower, she gets anxious.
They see a bratty kid (Noah Bromley) trying to steal coins out of the fountain. And in the elevator ride to the top, the same kid jumps up and down on the floor, making Iris even more nervous. When they get to the top, Paul and Iris marvel at the swanky restaurant, but Paul’s reservation gets bumped. They decide to stay and have a drink.
Now here we go with the Rube Goldberg mechanics: one of the waiters opens a wine bottle, sending the cork flying up into the chandelier, loosening one of the crystals. The crystal falls and hits the glass floor, creating a crack.
Meanwhile, Iris feels nauseous and heads for the bathroom. One of the singers (Natasha Burnett), who’s looking after her kid (Jayden Oniah), sees her and asks how far along she is. Iris is surprised that she was able to tell and confides that she hasn’t yet told Paul. The singer reassures Iris that she’ll be alright, and she shouldn’t be afraid to tell Paul the good news.
Paul finds Iris and takes her outside to the observation deck, where he proposes. Iris butts in and blurts out that she’s pregnant, and Paul couldn’t be happier. Everyone out there with them applauds as he gives her the engagement ring. Then Iris sees that same bratty, coin-stealing kid throwing pennies off the tower. A security guard yells at him, but as soon as he walks away, the kid tosses the penny anyway. The penny gets sucked into the ventilation system, causing it to clog a fan and start releasing gas into the restaurant.
Paul and Iris hit the crowded dance floor, where the band starts a rousing version of “Shout.” Everyone stomps on the cracking floor, which then shatters, sending people falling to their deaths – including poor Paul. Then a flambé flame ignites the gas in the air, setting several guests on fire. Everyone rushes for the stairs, but they collapse before Iris can get there. Then, everyone dashes for the elevator, and it plummets.
The outside supports break, the whole restaurant tilting, sending people slamming into the windows. Then the infamous penny reappears and lands on the precariously hanging piano. The infinitesimal weight of the penny causes the anchor on the piano to snap, sending it flying into more people – happily, including the bratty, coin-stealing kid.
Iris sees the singer’s kid and tries to rescue him. The rest of the restaurant gives way, sending Iris and the kid out the window. She gets caught on some rebar – more specifically, she gets caught by her engagement ring, which was tight on her finger. But their combined weight pulls the skin off her finger (eww), and she and the kid both fall to their heinous deaths.
Cut to present day, where a college kid named Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) wakes up screaming, having dreamed the whole thing. She’s in the middle of class and is mortified by the teacher and everyone else laughing at her. Then after class, her teacher delivers bad news: her grades are in the toilet, so they’re putting her on academic probation.
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Later, in her dorm room, Stef wakes up screaming again, which also wakes up her roommate. Stef confides that the recurring dream/vision is keeping her from sleeping, hence the bad grades. Her polite but annoyed roommate says she needs to take some time off to resolve whatever issue she’s having.
So we cut to Stef driving to her Dad, Marty’s (Tinpo Lee) house, who’s surprised to see her. So is her younger brother Charlie (Teo Briones). Stef asks Marty about Iris, who, as it turns out, is her and Charlie’s grandmother. But Marty doesn’t want to talk about it, seeing as Iris’ insanity is the reason he and Stef’s mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt) divorced.
Charlie wants to go to their cousins’ place to hang out, so Stef drives him. All the cousins, Erik (Richard Harmon), Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) and Julia (Anna Lore), are also surprised to see her, as are her uncle Howard (Alex Zahara) and Aunt Brenda (April Telek). Stef has a reputation for distancing herself from the family, so she has to deal with their obvious resentment.
Stef tries to get information from Howard, but he, too, doesn’t want to talk about Iris. All he’ll say is that surviving the Skyview accident made Iris severely paranoid and pretty much insane, which made growing up hell for him and Darlene. After he walks out, Stef begs Brenda for help, and she clues Stef into a box of old letters in a cabinet. She gets an address off one of the letters and drives out to Iris’ house, which to her shock, is a scary-looking, DIY fortress.
Stef announces herself over the speaker on the gate and granddaughter finally meets Grandma (Gabrielle Rose), but she’s not at all like a typical grandmother. She explains to Stef that at the time, she trusted her instincts and managed to evacuate the restaurant before the collapse. But after that, she found that people who had been at the Skyview and survived started dying.
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Iris says she became consumed with preventing Death from claiming her and her kids. The fortress has kept her safe for 20 years – but now she’s got terminal cancer. She shows Stef a notebook filled with writings, news articles and a flow chart about other similar situations (e.g., Flight 180), and info on all the survivors who became eventual victims.
Weirded out, Stef tries to leave. Iris begs her to stay, afraid to step outside the house. But knowing that Stef’s in danger, Iris bravely walks outside to give Stef the notebook. And as soon as she does, Death sends a fire extinguisher flying into a broken weathervane, which launches right through Iris’ head, and does the signature Final Destination blood splatter all over Stef’s face. Ick.
At Iris’s funeral, everyone’s surprised when Darlene shows up. Stef and Charlie aren’t happy to see her, as they believe she abandoned them. Uncle Howard and Aunt Brenda invite her to a memorial barbecue at their house.
Howard raises a toast to Iris at the barbecue, telling everyone how they need to enjoy the time they have with family. But of course, Death has other ideas, laying several traps to the tune of “The Piña Colada Song” – a faulty grill venting gas, a rake underneath the trampoline, a shard of glass hidden inside a glass of ice.
Meanwhile, back at her Dad’s, Stef goes through Iris’s notes. Then she gets the feeling something’s wrong and rushes over to Howard and Brenda’s. Even though Darlene spotted the rake under the trampoline, it rips, sending Bobby falling through it. Then when Erik lights the grill, it nearly explodes in his face. The shard of glass ends up stuck in the grass, where Howard steps on it. He falls, and the rake then falls into the lawnmower – and poor Howard gets mowed.
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After his funeral, Stef gathers the family to discuss Iris’ theories. Stef realizes that because Iris survived – and wasn’t meant to – that her children and grandchildren weren’t meant to be born. So Death’s coming for all of them (except Brenda and Henry, who aren’t blood relations). But of course, nobody wants to believe such a whacked-out idea, and they all dismiss Stef.
That night, as Erik closes up at the tattoo/piercing shop he works at – and while mourning by giving himself a “Dad” tattoo (and listening to “All by Myself”), he falls victim to a heinous series of events. He almost gets pulled into the ceiling fan by his nose piercing (yikes), and then a fire started by spilled alcohol rages through the shop. But miraculously, he survives.
The next day, Stef tries to convince Erik that he’s still in danger, as evidenced by the truck that rushes by and nearly hits him. But he’s still not buying it, and neither is Julia, who angrily dismisses Stef again before heading out on a jog. But then, through another series of events, Julia falls into a garbage can that gets picked up by the passing dump truck.
While Erik and Charlie try to alert the driver, Stef climbs up onto the truck and tries to grab Julia. But Death has its way and crushes her with the compactor (really gross). What’s left of the family finally believes Stef and they try to figure out who’s next on Death’s list. Stef finds someone named “JB” in Iris’ notes, and Darlene remembers that he works at a local morgue.
Everyone piles into Darlene’s RV (which she’s been living out of for years), including Erik and Bobby. As they drive, Stef notices that Darlene has photos of her and Charlie, and Darlene says she keeps them close. When they get to the morgue, they meet William John Bludworth (the late, legendary Tony Todd), aka “JB.” Turns out, he’s the son of the singer at the Skyview, and remained friends with Iris. JB knows about Iris’ death and isn’t surprised to see Stef.
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About to retire, JB clues them in on how to beat Death. You can either kill someone to get the years that person has left, or you can technically “die” and then be revived. Like Iris, he’s survived this long, but now cancer has the final word. He tells them to enjoy life while they have it and wishes them good luck. Then he takes his box of belongings and exits. Aww. We love you, Tony.
Erik and Bobby split off from the group to take matters into their own hands. Bobby’s next on the list since Death missed Erik. They ever-so-briefly consider killing a baby. But then Erik comes up with the idea that they can cheat Death by having Bobby “die” from anaphylaxis from his peanut allergy. Then, Erik says he’ll resuscitate him, and he’ll be okay. Bobby reluctantly agrees, deciding that if he’s gonna go, he’s gonna die by peanut butter cups.
They duck into an MRI room and unknowingly start it up. It slowly ratchets up to its most powerful setting as Bobby eats the peanut butter cup. By the time anaphylaxis sets in, the MRI’s pulling in every metal thing on the entire floor. Erik gets sucked in by all of his piercings (eww) and then gets crushed. Bobby manages to get his EpiPen and stab himself, but then a nurse walks in the door, and a metal coil from a vending machine (where they got the peanut butter cups from) flies right into Bobby’s head and kills him. Yow.
After that horrifying disaster, Darlene decides she’ll go to Iris’s fortress and stay there. As long as she survives, Stef and Charlie should be safe. They decide to go with her and stay together. They drive the RV through the gate, but then another series of events causes an explosion, which sends the RV crashing on its side into a pond.
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Now underwater, Stef can’t get free of the seatbelt. And meanwhile, Charlie’s stuck under some debris. Darlene decides to free Charlie first, but as soon as she does, a lamppost falls on her and kills her. Charlie races to rescue Stef, but she’s already drowned. Cut to black for a moment – then Stef awakens, resuscitated by Charlie. The chain’s broken, and Death’s finally defeated.
Cut to sometime later. Stef’s about to head back to school, and Charlie’s headed off to prom. They go to Charlie’s date’s house, who is dressed remarkably like Iris. Stef sees a car drive over some train tracks – an old car that looks just like Iris and Paul’s. Meanwhile, a penny that some lady dropped gets stuck in the track.
Stef and Charlie talk to one of the guys there for the prom, and he says that even though it’s miraculous that she survived, Stef didn’t really die. She was just unconscious. Uh-oh. The oncoming train derails and crashes into the neighborhood. Stef and Charlie run from it, nearly escaping – until a ton of logs fly off the train and crush them. Yep. Classic Final Destination.
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I only recently, within the last few years, got into the Final Destination flicks. I didn’t watch them before because I figured they were going to be cheesy and goofy – and they are. But after I watched the original and then the sequel, I was hooked. It’s hard to describe, but any fan of Final Destination knows that it’s its own subgenre, equal parts disgusting, silly and hilarious. It has such a unique story structure – one that definitely isn’t art-house, high-brow cinema. It’s just fun. And to write a Final Destination flick means being a stickler for tiny details, so it takes its own sort of talent to pull it off.
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It’s been 14 years since the last flick in the series, and technology has changed so much in that time that trying to reinvigorate the franchise for a new generation is a risky venture. It’s entirely possible that Final Destination was so unique to its time that to remake it would just mean turning it into something it was never designed to be.
Thankfully, the directors and writers of Final Destination: Bloodlines are clearly huge fans of the series. They put a slightly different spin on it by making the doomed heroes descendants of the survivors rather than the survivors themselves. And by taking the initial catastrophe way back in time, they gave the old Final Destination structure a new look and feel without changing it so much that it’s unrecognizable.
I must also give props to the directors for giving Tony Todd that terrific scene. Tony’s been the face and voice of Final Destination since the beginning, so I’m glad that they made sure to include him. It was also incredibly cool that they let Tony improv his final lines of dialogue, so that he could speak to the fans directly and say his goodbyes before his death.
So many times, attempts to remake older flicks – or to restart dead franchises – end up delivering nothing but mediocrity. Thankfully, Final Destination: Bloodlines didn’t fall into that trap. It’s revitalized, reinvigorated and just as gory and darkly, tragically funny as ever. Final Destination: Bloodlines is a gift for horror fans, and I can’t wait to see what new disaster they come up with next.
Directed by: Zack Lipovsky, Adam Stein
Written by: Guy Busick, Lori Evans Taylor, Jon Watts (story)
Release date: May 18, 2025
Rating: R
Run time: 1hr, 50min
Distributor: New Line Cinema/Warner Bros. Pictures
- FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES Spoiler Review - May 20, 2025
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