Movie Review: Final Destination Bloodlines

 

The Final Destination franchise is returning to a much different horror climate than the one it left when it delivered its intended finale with Final Destination 5 back in August 2011. With this in mind, the path to reviving this franchise after 14 years away wasn't going to be to simply bring back the scuzzy 2000's sheen of the early installments or gleefully schlocky 3D-enchanced deaths of the latter two sequels from its initial run. A modernized reboot of Final Destination was destined to be one thing and one thing only: an exploration of the effects of generational trauma. It's a natural fit for a series that's all about death coming to collect the souls that cheated their fate and that's exactly the angle Final Destination Bloodlines choses to explore. By focusing on a family that's spawned three generations of broken people after their grandmother (Gabrielle Rose in the present day, Brec Bassinger in the 1960's flashbacks) saved dozens of lives by preventing the collapse of a newly opened high-rise restaurant before it happened and subsequently became paralyzed with fear that death was coming to kill her and everyone she cares about as payback for the lives she saved that night (Spoiler: She was right!), Bloodlines provides a clear illustration of how the ramifications of one person's scars can radically impact people for generations if the seeds of their pain remain strong enough to keep growing. The cruel irony is that like the fucked-up family that has just learned from their estranged grandmother that they've been marked for death, Final Destination Bloodlines is also facing a crippling crisis in the form of a major paradox that sitting at its core that frequently gets in the way of its aspirations to be an "elevated" take: It's absolutely obsessed with the franchise's past history. This hypocritical dichotomy turns what could've been a winning reboot into a maddening disappointment.

To be fair, the problem isn't that Bloodlines contains fan service, it's that the fan service is delivered with the degree of relentlessness that is typically reserved for an MCU movie. The most egregious instances of such come in the final 5 minutes and while I can't even hint at what they are without delving into the biggest spoilers of the entire movie, let's just say that I left the theater absolutely disgusted by the pandering callbacks that I had just witnessed. Making a more "serious" Final Destination movie that also contains a treasure trove of references to the previous films is some elite level talking out of both sides of your mouth from the creatives behind the film (directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, writers Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor, producer/story writer Jon Watts, etc.) that makes me believe there wasn't even a sliver of purity behind their intentions to bring this franchise back from the dead. Having cool, over-the-top death scenes and a legitimately heartfelt goodbye to the late Tony Todd can only take you so far when the people behind the movie compromised truly committing to their "fresh" modern reboot in favor of trotting out a bunch of point-and-clap bullshit. 

I'm going to fucking puke when the seventh installment is inevitably greenlit and they bring back the surviving members of the Final Destination 2 cast so they can replace Todd's William Bludworth as the death experts for whatever doomed pricks survive a sinking booze cruise, nightclub collapse or accidental poisoning of the Rosemary Parmesan bread at Jersey Mike's. Why stop there? Surely, they can retcon some deaths and make a Final Destination all-star edition where fan favorites get dismembered for a second time! Anything goes on the Shameless Fan Service Express!

This full-throated embrace of all things fan service is the type of thing that makes me cynical about where movies are heading in the future. When a whole movie is built around nostalgia and referencing the previous movies that birthed the new installment, wouldn't it just make more sense as a fan to revisit the old movies instead of watching something that is more concerned with past glories than creating a new cinematic memory that you'll cherish for years to come? I'll never understand the appeal of "I understand the reference!" cinema and it sucks to watch a franchise that made a name for itself partly by successfully delivering slightly different riffs on the same basic concept for over a decade get infected with a disease that will only continue to get worse as modern audiences continue to get less inclined to check out new shit. For my money, Bloodlines is right on par with The Final Destination for the title of worst installment in the franchise by a wide margin and I'm going to have a hard time looking past its shitty DNA to truly enjoy the parts that do work in the future.       

Grade: C+