Final Destination: Bloodlines—Death Returns, But the Scares Don’t Hit as Hard

Okay, let’s talk about Final Destination: Bloodlines. I’d been waiting for this movie for what feels like forever because I’ve been obsessed with this franchise since I was a kid. 14 years. FOURTEEN YEARS since the last one. And now it’s finally here, and honestly? It’s…fine. Just fine.

As someone who spent the week before the release rewatching all five previous movies (multiple times!!), Bloodlines delivers exactly what you’d expect from a Final Destination movie. Nothing more, nothing less. And maybe that’s the problem.

The franchise that made us paranoid about everything comes back swinging, but lacks the brutal edge that made us obsessed.

TMJ Rating: 🍿🍿🍿/ 5

Final Destination: Bloodlines - What You Need to Know

So here’s the deal. Instead of the usual “person has vision, saves people, death comes for them” setup, we’re following Stefani (Caitlin Santana), a college student who keeps having visions of some 1960s disaster at this fancy restaurant tower called Sky View.

Well, her grandmother escaped that disaster decades ago, and now death is basically saying, “Hey, your whole family line was supposed to end that night, so I’m coming to collect.” It’s actually a pretty clever spin on the formula, and I was here for it.

“I saved a lot of lives that night…Lives that were never meant to be saved. But death doesn’t like it when you mess with his plans.”

The “death dominoes”

The opening 1960s sequence is genuinely spectacular. It’s beautifully shot, the period details are on point, and watching all those dominoes fall is exactly the kind of elaborate death machine we come to these movies for.

Cinematography and Visuals

Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein clearly get what makes these movies work.

The camera moves with that signature Final Destination energy where every mundane object suddenly becomes terrifying. They know how to build tension, misdirect you, and then hit you from an angle you weren’t expecting.

Remember how cheap some of those disaster sequences looked in parts 3 and 4? Not here. The Sky View collapse actually looks convincing and doesn’t pull you out of the movie.

I also love that they’ve been showing behind-the-scenes stuff on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and any other place they can. You should definitely check it out if you haven’t. Their enthusiasm for making this movie really comes through.

The People (and Tony Todd)

Caitlin Santana does her job as Stefani. She’s good at looking scared and confused, which is basically the entire job description for a Final Destination protagonist.

But here’s where I have a major gripe with the whole setup: Stefani doesn’t get a premonition scene. You know, that moment where our main character sees the disaster about to happen and saves a bunch of people? It’s literally the DNA of every Final Destination movie.

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In Bloodlines, that only happened in the 1960s flashback with her grandmother. Stefani just gets visions of past events, not future ones. Everything else is based on “math” and “probability”. That felt really wrong to me. It’s like making a superhero movie and forgetting to give the hero powers.

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And Owen Joyner, who plays Bobby, was also in Julie and the Phantoms, and it’s such a stark contrast seeing him go from that Disney-esque musical to getting brutally murdered by death itself. His acting is genuinely phenomenal. He brings this vulnerability and desperation that really sells the terror.

Let’s talk about Tony Todd. Man, this one hit me in the feelings. Knowing this was his final appearance as Bloodworth, and that he filmed it while battling the illness that eventually took his life, adds so much weight to his scene. It’s a proper goodbye to a horror legend, and I’m not gonna lie, I got a little emotional watching it.

Story and Pacing

This is where Bloodlines really stumbles. It’s easily the slowest Final Destination movie. There’s way too much dead time between kills, and most of it is spent on family drama that never quite works.

There’s also this whole subplot about Stefani’s estranged mom, which didn’t contribute much. I did care about these two siblings (Stefani and  Charlie, her brother) trying to survive together, but overall, the character work is weak sauce.

The Kills (The Real Reason We’re Here)

We watch Final Destination movies for the deaths, and Bloodlines has some good ones. There’s this hospital sequence that’s absolutely bonkers and might make my top 10 for the whole franchise.

My biggest disappointment, and I cannot stress this enough: the deaths aren’t brutal enough. This franchise built its reputation on traumatizing audiences, on making you paranoid about everyday stuff. I wanted to leave this movie, afraid of elevators or construction sites or whatever.

Sadly, the kills are pretty obvious. You can see them coming from a mile away. The earlier movies would mess with your head for weeks. This one? I left entertained but not genuinely disturbed. It didn’t give me any trauma, and I was expecting way more.

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Comedy vs. Horror

Bloodlines leans way harder into comedy than any previous entry. Sometimes it works, but other times it feels like the franchise is becoming a parody of itself. There’s literally a scene where the grandmother shakes her fist at the sky and yells at death. It’s goofy in a way that doesn’t fit.

The early movies found this perfect balance between dark humor and genuine scares. Here, the comedy kind of overwhelms the horror. It’s fun, sure, but it lacks that edge that made the originals so memorable.

My Final Verdict - Should You Watch It?

Final Destination: Bloodlines is a welcome return for the franchise, but it’s not the triumphant comeback I was hoping for.

If you’re a fan like me, yeah, absolutely. It scratches that Final Destination itch, and seeing Tony Todd one last time is worth the price of admission. For newcomers, it’s a decent entry point that won’t scar you for life.

Ultimately, I was hoping for more. I wanted this movie to mess me up the way the originals did. Instead, I got something that’s entertaining yet safe. And “safe” isn’t really what Final Destination should be about.

I’d still watch another one, though. Hell, I’ll probably be first in line no matter what.

What did you think of Bloodlines? Drop your thoughts in the comments and let me know which Final Destination death still haunts you.