Final Destination Bloodlines: Uhh, It’s Fun

If Final Destination Bloodlines (2025) can bear an explication de texte, I am not the man for it. At least not right now, not at this point in my life. I have no doubt that an interested party could speak to its brilliant uses of CGI and its subversion of tropes implied by its formal and generic shapes. In the distance, I think I even see the explication breaking through, its shell giving way to reveal more socially attuned analysis. On the horizon, yes. There it is: words take shape, forming sentences about the movie’s reflection of our moment’s obsession with genealogy and heredity. 23andme has gone bankrupt. Final Destination Bloodlines knows this.

But I am not the man for that job. I report in from the frontlines with a singular, mundane missive. Final Destination Bloodlines is fun.

Few series better encapsulate the opposite of “elevated horror” than Final Destination (2000-Present). There are differences between entries. The first (2000) takes its doomed teenage protagonists on their own terms, gives them space to develop into something resembling characters. Then it kills them. The second (2003) revels in squished bodies and careening cars, shunting character development off to its forgettable interstices. In the end, however, each entry promises thrilling teen (and adult!) deaths, triggered by delightfully unforeseeable series of tragic events. Sometimes, they even (mischievous as they are) mislead the audience a little. As a treat.

The latest entry understands this purpose and excels in it.  A soccer-ball strike sends someone flying into a garbage compactor.  A characters ironically survive because the man they think is their dad really isn’t (death, in this film, is after a bloodline. Duh). The CGI isn’t half bad. And if you like seeing heads explode, this one has that in spades, in all its possible computer-generated glory.

I found the film’s directness refreshing. Fan service without any winks or nods. What’s more to say? If the inevitability of death in no form but its effects, played for a mixture of screams and laughs is for you, get down to the multiplex.