- Tony Todd, Rya Kihlstedt, Max Lloyd-Jones, Richard Harmon, Brec Bassinger
- May 14th 2025
- 110
- Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein
Stefani is haunted by her grandmother’s premonition of a tower collapse and returns home to get answers.
The Final Destination horror franchise has been resting for the past 14 years but now it’s back with a bang with Bloodlines.
The sixth film follows Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), who is plagued by the same recurring nightmare about a tower collapse in the ’60s.
But it’s not a nightmare – she keeps re-living the premonition her grandmother saw before she prevented the catastrophe and saved hundreds of lives.
As we know from previous instalments, Death doesn’t like people messing with its design and slowly works through the survivors of a disaster, killing them in cruel and gruesome ways.
Bloodlines tweaks the tried-and-tested formula by presenting the opening premonition as a flashback rather than in the present, and increasing the number of survivors.
It expands upon the established rules of the franchise by exploring what happens when there are hundreds of survivors and it takes Death decades to kill them all. What happens if they have children in that time?
Later films in the franchise descended into kill-after-kill territory, where the story and character development were flimsy, but Bloodlines corrects that and tells a substantial story.
After the franchise’s longest and most detailed opening premonition, the film takes a while to find its feet because there are lots of new characters and dynamics to establish first.
But rest assured that there are still plenty of kills in here and they are as creative, brutal and gory as ever. You’ll never look at certain garden and hospital equipment in the same way again!
What’s most surprising about this instalment is its sense of humour – this is the funniest edition by far. Richard Harmon is hilarious as Stefani’s cousin Erik and there are moments of comic relief peppered throughout the film.
Harmon is the best of the new bunch as he has such a distinctive personality and memorable lines, but of course, it’s always great to see the late Tony Todd back as William Bludworth, who has been popping up here and there throughout the franchise.
This revival could have easily followed the established formula of the previous five, but it dares to be different and try something new.
It doesn’t forget what came before though – see if you can spot all the nods to the originals!
In cinemas from Wednesday 14th May.
By Hannah Wales.
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