Final Destination: Bloodlines

Grade: B+

In the world of Final Destination, characters survive something they weren’t meant to, so Death/Fate/whatever goes around evening the score, like an accountant balancing the books. It starts with something like a handful of people getting off a flight at the last minute, and the plane explodes/crashes on takeoff. Lucky, right? But they were supposed to be on board, and Death/Fate/whatever knows it – so they are now susceptible to being victims of a sinister, convoluted freak accident. I’d steer clear of log trucks and roller coasters.

Final Destination: Bloodlines has a marvelous opening scene. Set in beautifully filmed 1968, we meet Iris and her soon-to-be fiancée Paul. He has scored a reservation for dinner at the grand opening of the Skyview Restaurant, which is at the top of a skyscraper, and looks like Seattle’s Space Needle. A penny – that a security guard warns a kid not to throw off the lookout tower – makes a journey that sets into motion a grisly end for everyone. We actually continue to see the penny throughout the decades, leading up to the present day.

But that’s not how things played out that day. What we saw was Iris’s premonition, which her granddaughter Stefani has recently been seeing, via a recurring nightmare. Iris warned everybody, and brought them to safety before catastrophe struck. This means that the people who were supposed to have died in the Skyview (or on the ground) went on to have lives, start families, and bring into the world children who shouldn’t have been born. This makes matters complicated for Death/Fate/whatever, who is now picking off the survivors and their descendants, one by one, in birth order.

Though Bloodlines is the sixth Final Destination movie (after 14 years since #5), it’s the first one I’ve seen. What drew me to it was the teaser trailer, taking place in a tattoo parlor. It’s basically the whole scene, and it’s very well done. The word “misdirect” will be used frequently in reviews/comments, and it’s so apt. Final Destination: Bloodlines (and, I hear, the whole series) is the king of misdirects. The tattoo parlor trailer looks like a pretty done deal, but now that I’ve seen the whole movie, there is more to it. The penny at the beginning doesn’t do what you’d think, neither does the MRI machine, the speeding garbage truck, the lawnmower, or the shards of glass that get into the ice in people’s drinks at an outdoor barbecue.

This is the perfect kind of horror for me. Anything involving a killer, creature, or jump scare makes me too uneasy to really enjoy it – but I’m ok with looming dread, and gore. I can SEE literally anything. I just have a problem with things jumping out suddenly. The writers and directors give us a family tree (stemming from Iris and Paul) with amusing, well-fleshed out characters that I liked and could keep track of. I came away with a new Straight Man Crush. Richard Harmon as Erik (the tattoo artist we meet in the first trailer) has piercing intense whimsical eyes, cool hair, and a great small, sandy beard. He presents his role with convincing humor and drama, and he is an actor I’ll remember and follow. He takes part in a bit which got my biggest laugh. It involves a baby, and it’s extremely morbid.

The movie has surprises and misdirects for us right up to the last few seconds. Thinking about the mortality piece made me realize how futile all this might be. For six movies, characters have been trying to figure out how they can be safe, but is anybody ultimately safe? If it’s not on a plane or a rooftop restaurant, Death/Fate/whatever is going to come for us all one day, one way, anyway. Nobody lives forever. Don’t think about this too much. It doesn’t make Final Destination: Bloodlines any less fun. The penny keeps rolling.

Grade: B+