Film Review: Final Destination Bloodlines

Welcome back to the blog readers. As you may know by know, my relationship with horror films is akin to the one someone would have with a toxic ex: sometimes they are good but most of the time they will wind up letting you down. This has been a pretty good year for horror so far with some big-profile ones on the way. Would this franchise film be a worthy installment in the 2025 horror genre? Stick around to find out.

Final Destination Bloodlines was directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein from a screenplay by Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor and a story by Busick, Evan Taylor, and Jon Watts, based on characters created by Jeffrey Reddick. The film stars Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Anna Lore, Rya Kihlstedt, Gabrielle Rose, Brec Bassinger, and Tony Todd in his final role. In the film, a college student inherits strange premonitions from her grandmother as a warning that Death is coming for her family.

Now on to the shocking part. I have never seen a Final Destination (2000-) film in my life. I know that these films are pretty popular and this film was tracking to have the biggest opening and best critical score of the franchise so far. Suffice to say I was pretty intrigued with this film. And I am happy to report that this film was an absolute blast. Great performances (especially from lead Kaitlyn Santa Juana), great heart, great humor, and great kills all won the day with this one. Lack of story be damned, it was still awesome.

I want to start by talking about the performance of our lead, Kaitlyn Santa Juana. Santa Juana has not been in many roles in her young career, only appearing in two episodes of The Flash (2014-23) and smaller unknown films. But this role may just be the breakout that she needed to kickstart her horror career (or other films if she so chooses). In this film, she has to be the connective tissue that bridges the audience to the unusual plot that really works, and her genuine and grounded performance is definitely the one I took away from this film.

Now I want to talk about the deaths in this film, and it suffices to say there is a whole lot of it that happens in this film. From the opening 15 minutes, we can see that this film decides to take a no-holds-barred approach when it comes to the deaths and who is and isn't on the table. And as the film goes on, the kills get more and more creative and I am left shocked at how they are able to handle things. I think so far these are some of the most creative kills I have seen all year. Who knew an MRI machine and a vending machine could team up to be such a killer combination? Pun definitely intended here.

And I want to end on the heart and humor I alluded to at the start of the review. From the previews I saw, I never expected this film to take itself seriously since we have a bunch of oddball characters in oddball situations. Like the trailer starts with the family barbeque and all hell breaks loose from there. What the trailers do not have in them is the heart that this film does. You actually begin to feel for all of these characters by the end, and when the ending of this film comes around I was left both satisfied and surprised. And the humor is there as well. And I love the humor that doesn't feel forced in any way; it was genuine and I believed it.

In conclusion, Final Destination Bloodlines is a blast that leaves you crying (and dying) of laughter and shock all mixed into one. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.