Final Destination: Bloodlines Review: Death’s Back, but the Franchise is Running on Fumes

by Tom May 17, 2025

After more than a decade in limbo, Final Destination: Bloodlines arrives with the weight of nostalgia, a promising concept, and the return of a horror icon. Unfortunately, the sixth installment in the long-running franchise can’t outrun its own flaws. While it opens strong and pays fitting tribute to a beloved character, it quickly stumbles into the same traps that plague many late-stage horror sequels: weak writing, unmemorable characters, and an overreliance on visual effects.

Final Destination: Bloodlines Review: Death’s Back, but the Franchise is Running on Fumes

– The latest in the ‘Final Destination’ franchise, ‘Final Destination Bloodlines,’ directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B Stein, features elaborately staged death scenes described as “slapstick.” The series explores free will, destiny, and karma themes by presenting elaborate death sequences.
– The film is centered around generations of an extended family.
– Includes the final performance of Tony Todd, lauded as one of his best, where his inevitable real-life death intensifies his scene’s impact, highlighting the duality of death’s reality and its cinematic representation in the franchise.

To its credit, Bloodlines starts with a bang. The franchise’s signature set piece, the massive, fate-triggering disaster that kicks off each entry, is one of its best yet. Set in a 1960s observation tower, the opening sequence is masterfully crafted, filled with dread, subtle cues, and the Rube Goldberg-style chain of events fans crave. It is visually striking, tightly edited, and shockingly tense. This is the Final Destination formula firing on all cylinders, and for a brief moment, it feels like the series might actually have something new to say.

Following that high point, a handful of early scenes carry real tension. Director Zach Lipovsky shows occasional skill in creating unease from small details, a cracked floor tile, a precarious coffee pot, a squeaky escalator, all play into the series’ established language of misdirection. These sequences are where Bloodlines feels most alive, inviting the audience to scan every frame for what might kill the next unlucky character. It’s a game of death-fueled Where’s Waldo, and it remains fun in small bursts.

However, those highs are quickly buried under a mess of a plot and a deeply unengaging cast. The story hinges on a generational curse linked to the original 1960s disaster, bringing the franchise’s death-dodging mythology full circle. On paper, this sounds like a great way to expand the universe. In practice, it feels like a confusing retcon paired with clunky exposition and shallow backstory. There is no emotional hook here, and the mechanics of Death’s design, once eerily abstract, are now overly explained and stripped of mystery.

Kaitlyn Santa Juana, cast as protagonist Stefani Reyes, is a curious choice that never fully works. While she gives the role her all, she feels miscast from the start. Stefani is written as a headstrong but emotionally burdened young woman trying to uncover her family’s hidden trauma, yet the performance never quite lands. The character comes across as forced rather than compelling, and the film makes little effort to build her out beyond a vague connection to past events. Her interactions with the rest of the cast feel stilted and devoid of chemistry, leaving the viewer with no one to really root for.

This issue is only compounded by a supporting cast that is largely interchangeable. No one has a distinct voice, backstory, or arc. Their deaths are more interesting than their lives, which might be acceptable in a slasher, but Final Destination always prided itself on making us care at least a little bit before Death came calling. Here, the kills are elaborate but the people are cardboard.

Then there is the overreliance on CGI. The original films used a mix of practical effects and visual trickery to sell the deaths as grounded, brutal accidents. Bloodlines instead goes full digital, and the results are often jarring. Whether it is a digitally enhanced backdrop, an implausibly rendered train, or blood splatter that feels like a PS3-era video game, the use of CG saps the impact from what should be horrifyingly tactile moments. The audience is left watching pixels collide rather than feeling the crunch of metal or bone.