Final Destination: Bloodlines

No one can escape death. At some point in our lives our physical body will shut down and we have to accept death. I am personally not afraid to die, perhaps because i have seen dead people in health care jobs since the summer of 1999. No matter how you feel regarding death, try to look back at the best moments in your life and appreciate those moments. But what if you found out by sudden premonitions that you are warned about future major disasters, where you may be chosen by an unseen force described as Death itself, where you may be chosen to die? That is a small piece of the premise of the beloved horror franchise known as Final Destination. Back in the year of 2000 when the first film came out in the spring, i remember i had doubts if it would be any good. Why you might ask? The poster looked like another college horror film and for that reason my expectations were pretty low. Then i saw the trailer in cinema of Final Destination before i was about to see The Green Mile on the big screen. The trailer did make me curious in this film, the premise seemed different than most horror films at that time. I decided to watch this film in cinema after all and i was pleasantly surprised. The idea that a teenager can have a premonition of catastrophic plane explosion, that gives the plot some interesting twists and turns. I would say this is still a solid horror film today from director James Wong ( who directed the Dragonball Evolution live adaptation film as well ). And i have to say most of the young cast did solid performances. Of all of the sequels that followed i enjoyed Final Destination 2 most of them all. The other ones are enjoyable but to me the fourth one is my least favourite. After many years away from the Final Destination franchise it was announced a sequel was coming out in 2025. So here we are with the next chapter in this film series simply called Final Destination: Bloodlines. Is this one of the better sequels in this franchise or is this not a worthy sequel that fans were hoping for?

In 1969, Iris Campbell ( Brec Bassinger ) and her boyfriend Paul ( Max Lloyd-Jones attend the grand opening of the Sky View, a high-rise restaurant tower. Iris has a premonition of a chain of events that causes the tower to collapse, killing everyone inside. Iris warns the tower´s attendees and prevents the collapse, but in doing so disrupt Death´s design. Fifty-five years later, Iris and Paul´s maternal granddaughter, college student Stefani Reyes ( Kaitlyn Santa Juana ) is plagued by recurring nightmares of the averted accident at Sky View. She decides to locate her grandmother Iris ( Gabrielle Rose ) to get answers to her recurrring dreams. She manage to locate her and finds out that the whole family is cursed.

Wow!!!!

Talk about the biggest comeback in a horror franchise in a long time. Final Destination: Bloodlines does not only find the perfect tone how to make a worthy sequel to this specific franchise, this film also manage to find a way to connect the past in a very clever way with the timeline of the previous films. As most of horror fans know making a really solid sequel is very rare these days, we saw what happened with The Conjuring spin off films known as Anabelle ( where i felt Anabelle Comes Home was the weakest film, so far ). Thankfully you can tell that Final Destination: Bloodlines really worked hard to please not only the old school fans of the franchise while trying to seduce a younger horror fan generation as well. I will get to some things i really appreciated with this film, but let´s talk about some of the characters for a while. Lead actress Kaitlyn Santa Juana ( this was the first time i have seen her acting ) really put in a lot of effort into her character Stefani Reyes. To be honest i was impressed how good she did this performance considering this is her first big lead role. Actor Richard Harmon ( who i enjoyed watching in the post-apocalyptic science fiction TV series The 100 ) is definetely the most charming character in this film playing the wacky character Erik. Actress Rya Kihlstedt ( who is great in the 2015 horror film The Atticus Institute, worth a watch ) deliver a solid performance as struggling character Darlene. Of course in Final Destination: Bloodlines you see the final acting performance by legendary actor Tony Todd and give us one of his strongest acting performance ever, and it is very difficult not to get emotional. His character William Bludworth have been a part of this franchise from the very beginning. One very important detail in this sequel is how gory a lot of the killing scenes are, and i feel it wouldn´t have worked if they cut down on the violence. And i am so grateful seeing bodies being torn apart, heads exploding, all of this is beautiful to witness. The puzzle that lead character Stefani tries to learn to figure out who will die  next works really well with the main plot. Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein deliver one of the best horror films of this year and finally give new life to the Final Destination franchise. Definetely a must watch if you are a true horror fan.

Rating: DDDD