Film Review - Final Destination: Bloodlines, and a lookback at the franchise

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On May 6, the sixth installment of the seminal horror franchise Final Destination, opened to rave reviews and applause from dedicated fans. The film has gained $235 million worldwide and reignited fans' love of the franchise that thrives on cathartic kills.

The Final Destination franchise premiered in the year 2000 with the first film, which followed Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) and Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) as high school students who, with their friends, avert disaster after Alex has a premonition of their plane crashing shortly before taking off on its way to Paris for a class trip. Chaos ensues as Death claims each one of them one-by-one in gruesome kill scenes.

That premise repeats for the following six films in some new way, where someone has a premonition of a disaster, saving a handful of lives, but then must survive the fate that Death planned for them. In the movies, they say Death doesn't like to be cheated, so Death plans to take them one way or another.

In the first film, the disaster was an airplane crash. Then each disaster of each film followed: highway pileup, rollercoaster derailment, a racetrack crash, a bridge collapse, and now, a high-rise restaurant collapse.

The franchise has seen a widely varied reception from fans and critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, no film had reached higher than a 63% (the fifth film) until the sixth film, reaching a 92% score, a record for the franchise.

In the latest installment, terror ensues when the descendants of the last survivor of the high-rise restaurant collapse fight to stay alive. The new film creatively turns the traditional format into an innovative and new approach to the franchise. The film made clever tie-ins to the previous installments and concluded by paying homage to the franchise mainstay, Tony Todd, who appeared in five of the six films, and passed away in November of 2024.

Rave reviews and high ticket sales indicate that this isn't the franchise's "final destination." Creatives behind the franchise have signaled that this is likely not the final instalment, and that fans may eagerly expect a continuation.