Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

It's been a very long time since I last watched a Final Destination movie, and I'm not sure I've seen all of them. But Bloodlines has me thinkin' it's time to revisit this series.

A quick brush-up on IMDb tells me the previous entry in the franchise, the fifth, was released all the way back in 2011. In our era of reboots and legacy sequels, we should always be prepared for a familiar title like this, but few manage to handle it as compellingly or with as much artistic integrity as Bloodlines, and that's what I want to chitty chat about today. Because anyone familiar with any of these films -- or even the ideas they present, which have pervaded our culture -- knows that they hinge on an understanding of Death as a sort of disembodied god who, like a trickster, utilizes Rube Goldbergian setups to slaughter people who try to thwart or flee their demise. As such, these films provide excessively, gloriously slapstick violence that always please gorehounds and more physically-minded horror fans. 

Yet the series also provides horror and terror of unusual depth for anyone interested in more existential and philosophic concerns. These may not always be manifest in the sometimes rote screenplays and obnoxious dialogue, but the ideas are inescapable, much like Death himself, and these movies are great fodder for post-screening conversations about fate, agency, nihilism, free will, and the purpose of both life and the ending thereof. More importantly, these films have an uncanny knack for preying on and exacerbating our anxieties about fairly common occurrences: trucks with lumber, tanning beds, and LASIK surgery stick out as prime examples (and if you know, you know).

As a standalone story, Bloodlines handles itself with aplomb, framing its concept with the effect of death (read: trauma, family curses, etc.) as it stretches through generations. Opening with the much-publicized sequence in which a 1960s young couple goes to a newly opened restaurant tower that rather resembles the Space Needle in Seattle, the screenplay keeps going back to this massive disaster as a touchpoint. We eventually learn that the disaster was averted due to a well-timed premonition, and that, ever since, Death has claimed all survivors of that day. They were never supposed to continue living, you see, and so their offspring and families and careers have been, from Death's perspective, ill-gotten. We learn about all this through our present-day protagonist, the granddaughter of the premonitory woman who is now a paranoid recluse, and Tony Todd as William Bludworth.

The latter is a poignant and charming addition to this revitalization of the franchise, as Bludworth has appeared in some previous entries, and Todd's considerable gravitas and humor as a performer has made the role iconic. Todd's inclusion here -- significant due to his passing last November -- and the film's dedication to him wrung moisture from my eyes, and his single scene ends with an affirming farewell (that he reportedly improvised) that will haunt you. More pointedly, his role underscores the legacy element of this legacyquel, as he was also a survivor that day in 1969, a revelation that provides more nuance and purpose to his role in the series.

The main plot, in the present day, offers no less thematic concern, as it centers around an extended family who are apparently the last intended to be claimed by Death. As the grandmother eventually shares, all others who were supposed to have died in the tower disaster have, by now, died in extreme and weird circumstances. Her descendants band together, despite their longtime estrangement, to pore over her notes and concoct a plan to escape their respective dooms. It's a riveting, fun ride, and all the more so when it's littered with bizarre, funny, grisly, shocking deaths. 

Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein (who directed Freaks in 2018 but nothing else I've seen) pull no punches in their highly stylized approach to this material, and it's clear they have both a deep understanding of this franchise and what fans want from it as well as a rich sense of humor and joy in bringing the sometimes unwieldy material to life. And that's no diss on the writers, including Lori Evans Taylor, Guy Busick (who often works with Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett), and Jon Watts (Clown, Wolfs, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, and the MCU's Spider-Man trilogy). This writing committee here crafted an admittedly detailed and weighty story that, in the wrong hands, could have lost a lot by way of tone, style, and metaphysics. There's a joie de vivre on display here that frankly we don't see a ton of in contemporary horror; stylistically, it feels not unlike some of Sam Raimi's work, a la Evil Dead. And the soundtrack is... well, it's a delight, and I won't spoil it.

You can always tell when a death is coming because the astonishing editing (Sabrina Pitre) and cinematography (Christian Sebaldt) draw relentless attention to potentially dangerous items or events in the immediate vicinity of the characters in a given scene. A tree trimmer leaning against a trunk, a man blowing leaves nearby, kids kicking a soccer ball, and a trash truck rumbling up the street: you've got yourself a new disaster in the making, and the film is begging you to fantasize about the order of operations for yourself. Which of these Chekhovian guns are going to "go off" first? Extreme closeups and amplified sound effects feed into our expectation of fulfillment: like the reverse of a murder mystery, we know someone will die, we just don't know how yet. Instead of too many suspects, as in a whodunnit, here we have too many potential killers, and they're almost all mundane objects and simple mechanical processes. Just remember that a penny is never lucky in a film like this, and a train isn't just a vehicle to get you from place to place.

I won't spoil anything else, but I don't pick pennies and trains obliquely. These feature in repeated motifs in this film, and I think those are pointed at cultural critique of common conveniences. Make a cloud of associations with pennies, for example, and you'll note "pennies from heaven" and luck along with pennies killing people when dropped from the Empire State Building or the pennies placed on the eyes of the dead before they are ferried to eternal rest. Am I digging too much into this film? I think not, and with all these ideas in mind -- and with, frankly, the metafictional yet also very literal affirmation from Tony Todd -- I don't think it's a stretch to say that this is the best film in the franchise, and a damn good film in its own right. I never expected to genuinely enjoy all of a Final Destination film, yet this one handles both comedy and existential horror with a mastery and sense of artistic vigor we rarely see. It's a consummate meditation on life's purpose and how we can go so terribly awry in the face of metaphysical dread.

47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019)

Score: 3 / 5

Trapped in a ruined, underwater city with blind, ravenous sharks? Yes please!

The sequel (that really isn't a sequel at all) to 47 Meters Down shares a title with its predecessor even though the characters are almost certainly not that far down. They are, however, notably "uncaged" as the subtitle declares, if you don't count the crumbling walls and pillars and ceilings of a temple where Central American natives made blood sacrifices as a cage. Whereas the original film straddled a disturbing line between an agoraphobic ocean floor and a claustrophobic sense of darkness and pressure, Uncaged is so claustrophobic it would have been scary enough without the sharks.

Terrible title aside, this movie's fabulously absurd premise -- like so many horror movies -- makes for an effective thrill ride. It's one of those where almost everything that could go wrong does, and you're giggling even as you gasp. A group of young women, alone in an idyllic lagoon that nobody knows about, decide to utilize some scuba gear and investigate the antechamber of the underwater Mayan temple. Of course, they'll just circle around once and come back out, right? That's the plan, until one of them chases a strange-looking fish around a pillar. It screams at her -- yes, the damned thing screams -- and it's so weird and funny I almost forgot what movie I was watching. In her fright, the woman collapses the pillar, separating the girls in blinding sediment and blocking their escape route.

Apparently the collapse also attracts (perhaps opens the way) for predators as well, as suddenly the shape of a great white looms large in the confined space. It's remarkably scary, seeing a gaping maw of jagged teeth approaching you in the dark tunnels with hardly any wiggle room. And while the sharks are, by nature, frightening, these sharks have some additional spooky qualities. Having apparently gone blind in their hellish tunnels, the sharks seem to have a heightened sense of hearing. At least so the pitiful dialogue proclaims multiple times, attributing it to evolution (though I don't think that's how the process works). I had hoped this element would turn the film into a sort of underwater version of Don't Breathe, but it doesn't.

Lost opportunities aside, the film plays out instead like The Descent, if with a larger budget and more spectacular delivery. Director Johannes Roberts has a knack for weird, interesting, and funny images that are also quite disturbing, and they blast out here in full force. My favorite includes a scene in which the women, having found John Corbett's "Dad" character, follow him to an escape route: another isolated sinkhole with a rope to climb. Of course the exhausted girls will have trouble ascending, but when the sharks begin to circle beneath them, one panics and -- a magnificent moment -- flips upside down on the rope so that her head falls into the water and she screams as the shark approaches.

It all gets really weird before it's over, including the completely bonkers inclusion of an underwater whirlpool -- remember, we're supposed to be in a submerged temple -- and I worried briefly we'd have a subterranean sharknado. But the weirdness works if you just let it take you, and we end up with a really fun ride. It could have leaned into its own absurdity more, but isn't that true of all of us?