Review: FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES

A young couple in the '60s go to the opening of a new skyscraping landmark in their city. By Rub Goldberg increments, the building explodes and collapses, killing everyone, just after he proposes marriage and she confesses pregnancy. Cut to now and uni student Stephanie is being robbed of her sleep because she keeps getting woken by nightmares about the building disaster. She gets back home mid-semester to track down the truth and exorcise the terrors. A visit to her grandmother clears a lot up, including the horrifying news that she and her current family also are in line for Death's ire because Aunt Iris cheated and lived. So, this is a franchise film and we are in for a series of orchestrated kills and circumventions.

As that is the entire plot, I'm going to leave it there, keep this short and rant a little.

I saw the first Final Destination movie at the cinema when it was a new release. It was fine, some very inventive kills and a cameo by the great horror icon Tony Todd (most famous for Candyman). The franchise kept going, essentially repeating and riffing on audience expectations. What's wrong with that? Nothing at all, that's the way horror franchises are meant to work and it's why I avoid most of them. So, what's my problem with this one?

Well, it's historical. The first one was released in 2000. This was a time when mainstream horror had grown bloated by big budgets which saw them paralysed by massive CG effects but also a smoothing of any scares that might alienate the maximisation of their audiences. From the top dollar blandings of Coppola's Dracula and Branagh's Frankenstein, Blade, the cruddy remake of The Haunting, Darkness and too many others, Hollywood's snatching of the genre meant it got richer and stupider and stopped working. The maverick hit Blair Witch Project white anted this over the next decade and horror once again, aided by accessible technology, had a healthy undercurrent. 

This happens in cycles and we're once again at the peak of one whereby ineffective garbage like this, the Waniverse (Conjuring etc.) and so much else, rules the cinema screens and the streamers with nice and toothless horror. What is different this time is that the undercurrent is not affected by this and remains active and successful. So, again, why should I care about this one, can't I just live and let live?

Well, no. It's always worth calling out how a mighty genre can turn into soft serve and rake it in when stuff much tougher still struggles for clicks in the margins. A string of selfconsciously clever kills of people I cannot care about doesn't cut it. When I can be reassured that folk like the Philippou brothers are here to stay and will keep pushing their own envelope so that the big overstuffed popcorn muck like this can take its rightful place in the family safe section.

Tony Todd's cameo in this was his final screen performance before his death last year. It is the sole poignant moment in this movie and, for all its brevity, outclasses the rest of it. In memoriam.