Death finds new life in Final Destination: Bloodlines. The sixth installment in the popular horror franchise, Bloodlines follows college student Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) who attempts to unravel the mystery behind a recurring nightmare only to discover a deep, very deadly family secret. Directed by Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein and written by no less than five scribes including Guy Busick, Lori Evans Taylor, Jon Watts, Guy Busick, and Lori Evans Taylor, the red flags for a so-so sequel are there. But surprise, Final Destination: Bloodlines is a sick, twisted, darkly witty entry awash with waves of blood and spectacular deaths. It is sure to be the horror blockbuster of the summer.
After torturing her dorm roommate with her night terrors, Stefani takes a break from school to decompress. She heads home and is determined to reconnect with her grandmother Iris (Gabrielle Rose). Estranged from the family, Iris lives, Laurie Strode style in a heavily fortified cabin deep in the forrest certain that Death itself is always there, waiting to strike. Stefani begs for Iris’ insight on her dreams only to be told that the family is being kept safe from the curse of death. How so? Turns out that Iris prevented a catastrophe in her youth in which hundreds of people were destined to die. But Death is painfully methodical and insists on killing those who should have died, in order by going up the family tree from oldest to youngest. With cancer eating away at ol’ Iris, her death is inevitable.
Death gets right to work, killing off Stefani’s extended family all of whom are alive because Iris didn’t die when she was supposed to. The race is on as Stefani tries to find a way to break the death curse on her family. With cousins Erik (Richard Harmon), Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner), and Julia (Anna Lore), along with younger brother Charlie (Teo Briones) and mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt), the family dodges all manner of deadly dangers in their quest for safety from the sinister, and darkly comical force of Death. Every setting is lousy with deathly dangers. A backyard barbecue becomes a calamitous fiasco. A tattoo parlor with it’s needles, metal, and glass cases is now a trap ready to be sprung. A hospital, of all places, suddenly becomes to most unsafe place on the planet. Final Destination: Bloodlines does for the viewing towers, what logging trucks did for tractor trailers and then some. The kills are showy, outlandish, and at times straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon complete with absurd Rube Goldberg-like chains of cause and effect. But it’s lots of gory fun.
I have to hand it to them, Lipovsky and Stein, along with the clan of writers, all have a wicked sense of humor and a noticeable fondness for the franchise. Death is as cruel and hilarious as it ever has been and they manage to pepper the pic with nods to long time fans of the series. This isn’t A24, elevated horror, this is an homage to the simple, implausible, fun of Death as a sinister and calculating force with a taste for dramatics.
