{"id":10041399,"date":"2025-05-16T08:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/?p=10041399"},"modified":"2025-05-16T08:45:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T12:45:02","slug":"final-destination-bloodlines-review-the-reaper-keeps-the-score","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/2025\/05\/16\/final-destination-bloodlines-review-the-reaper-keeps-the-score\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ Review: The Reaper keeps the score"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Every horror nerd has that one subgenre that, for whatever reason, they can\u2019t totally shake off. At a certain point, one just builds up enough of a tolerance for ghost stories or slasher flicks or zombie mukbangs that their more terrifying aspects just stop having the same effect \u2013 one knows too much about them, structure, staging, editing, etc. \u2013 that even lengthy tolerance breaks can\u2019t fully hit in the same way they did (this is also why those fans are often the most adventurous and curious: They\u2019re chasing a high that can only ever be temporarily sated by Hollywood, and seek out small-budget or foreign films to get a kick). But there\u2019s always that particular type, a subgenre or franchise or so on, that makes the skin crawl. For some, it\u2019s body horror. For others, it\u2019s a dread-heavy atmosphere that never quite breaks into the comfort of a jump scare. For me, it\u2019s the Final Destination <\/em>series, of which Final Destination: Bloodlines<\/strong> <\/em>is a more-than-serviceable entry than you\u2019d expect after a decade of dormancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me be clear: I love this series. It\u2019s the most consistently creative and entertaining franchise in studio horror, one that doesn\u2019t need the mangled world-building of the Saw<\/em> movies, the \u201cheart\u201d of the Conjuring<\/em>s, or the gimmicks that sustained its successors like the Paranormal Activity<\/em> features (every time the series tried to traffic in faddish stunts like CGI kills or 3D, it failed). The rules are simple: evade Death\u2019s grand plans and pay the price in hideously complex ways. The clich\u00e9 description of the kills being bloody \u201cRube Goldberg machines\u201d has never quite cut it for me, perhaps because of how little it captures the essentially cinematic nature of these sequences. When looking at a Goldberg machine, the viewer supplied their perspective \u2013 after all, they saw it from static positions \u2013 and here, Death\u2019s machinations guide one\u2019s attention down a parade of possibilities. Think of them as chaotic proofs: Give them an equation and variables, and it\u2019ll solve for X. They capitalize and innovate on long-standing cinematic concepts of suspense \u2013 Hitchcock\u2019s bomb if it were made from blood, bone, and irony. It\u2019s perfect fodder for an anxious mind already cursed by pattern recognition, where the puzzle itself is even worse than the solution. Nothing makes me want to fucking shout<\/em> at the screen more than enduring the set-up for some poor bastard to get what\u2019s coming to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Holding all of this tension successfully without dipping into outright nihilism or straight black comedy requires a steady hand. The Monkey<\/a><\/em> had Osgood Perkins, who skewed the balance towards the latter. In the case of Final Destination: Bloodlines<\/em>, two captains are at the helm, and they keep the whole ship on a steady heading. Looking at the resumes of Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, it wouldn\u2019t immediately be evident that they had it in them to knock a Final Destination sequel out of the park. Sure, they did the minor indie hit Freaks<\/em> with Emile Hirsch, but they also did the Kim Possible <\/em>movie for Disney, which is as disparate as a skill set as a plumber knowing Aramaic: it\u2019s not entirely impossible, but it\u2019s certainly unexpected to hear dead languages while someone\u2019s fixing your garbage disposal. One might expect them to try and be trendy, doing an \u201celevated horror\u201d riff to modernize the franchise, given that the last time it was in theaters, Barack Obama was still in his first term as President. Everyone, Osgood Perkins included, should thank God that they didn\u2019t. Lipovsky and Stein decided to make a timeless Final Destination<\/em> movie \u2013 sure, the phones and styles might be a little different, but you could easily see these characters hanging out with the folks in 2<\/em> before they got turned into red paste by a giant log careening across the freeway. The character archetypes are as stale as they\u2019ve ever been, but they\u2019re genuinely well-written and frequently funny. Importantly, they do not strive for meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, like the best horror sequels do, Lipovsky and Stein decided to answer questions that nobody asked \u2013 or, if they did, were at least one grav-bong hit away from unconsciousness when they thought them up \u2013 and they\u2019re our subjects in the grand experiment. For instance, what if a person saved enough<\/em> people from one of those mass-casualty events that it threw a real wrench into Death\u2019s plans? Say you save a few hundred people from a collapsing Space Needle knock-off like in the (astonishing) opening sequence: Death has to kill all those people in the order that they were supposed to die (as established by the rules of the franchise), and the circumstances for a good kill take a little time to unfold. So, the would-be victim goes on and gets married and has kids that they shouldn\u2019t have had. That means Death\u2019s got even more killing to do \u2013 he\u2019s God\u2019s gag writer, after all, and he has to be creative! Another thing: What if one of those kids is adopted? Another: what happens to the should-be-dead person\u2019s spouse? And what if someone figures out a way in which they can keep Death perpetually at their door?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these questions and more are answered in the most entertaining ways possible. This is the funniest possible adaptation of The Body Keeps the Score<\/em>, in which epigenetics and generational trauma quite literally make manifest in its sufferers and ruin their lives. If all of that is a ticking time bomb, it\u2019s by far the most interesting kind of metaphor for it, which is something that the Final Destination<\/em> movies have always excelled at \u2013 the first one, after all, came out shortly before 9\/11 (had it been delayed by a year, the franchise would not exist<\/em>). It\u2019s not just survivor\u2019s guilt that\u2019s stalking our protagonist (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) this time around; it\u2019s the fact that her very existence would not be possible without some bizarre intuitive intervention and that she\u2019s been living on stolen time. It\u2019s a clever inversion of how the franchise typically works, an admirable switch-up for the formula that pays off in how it makes the familiar fresh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t want to spoil any of the bloody good stuff you\u2019ll see during Bloodlines<\/em>, so let me leave you with two parting thoughts. First, that opening sequence \u2013 a \u201860s-set disaster sequence that plays like a significantly gorier Irwin Allen movie (minus the celebrities) in which No Child Really is Left Behind \u2013 makes me want a period Final Destination<\/em> so severely that I\u2019m shocked no one has green-lit it yet. Second: Tony Todd\u2019s appearance in this is a fitting tribute to the iconic actor (may he rest in peace), but seeing him on screen here in the final months of his illness is genuinely distressing. He still has the fire, effortlessly giving the scene some gravitas, but something is discomfiting about the acknowledgment of a real <\/em>death after chuckling along after, say, a bunch of people got massacred because some shithead kid decided to throw a penny off of the not-Space Needle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It breaks the illusion just enough<\/em> to start asking those uncomfortable questions, which Bloodlines <\/em>does not want to (nor has to) answer. Then again, that reality makes these movies creepy<\/em>: You\u2019re always one or two coincidences away from meeting the Reaper yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every horror nerd has that one subgenre that, for whatever reason, they can\u2019t totally shake off. At a certain point, one just builds up enough of a tolerance for ghost stories or slasher flicks or zombie mukbangs that their more terrifying aspects just stop having the same effect \u2013 one knows too much about them, structure, staging, editing, etc. \u2013 that even lengthy tolerance breaks can\u2019t fully hit in the same way they did (this is also why those fans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":10041400,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19452],"tags":[873,20180,25043,35525,24029,26409,8141],"class_list":["post-10041399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-filmtv","tag-death","tag-film-review","tag-final-destination","tag-final-destination-bloodlines","tag-good-movies","tag-header","tag-horror"],"yoast_head":"\n'Final Destination: Bloodlines' Review: The Reaper keeps the score<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"'Final Destination: Bloodlines' is a well-deserved return to screens for one of horror's most creative and inventive franchises.\" \/>\n<meta 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