Movie Scene: Final Destination: Bloodlines

As films asking their audience to defy belief go, the ‘Final Destination’ franchise is up there with the most incredulous of them.

Now six films deep, it continues riffing on the idea that ‘death will conspire to get you in the end’.

After a long break, the series gets revived with ‘Final Destination: Bloodlines,’ released last week.

A pre-credits sequence sees Iris (Brec Bassinger) and her fiancé get caught up in a fire at a hip, ‘60s, high-rise restaurant where fate conspires through a series of coincidences and plain bad luck, to burn the place down and kill almost everyone there.

Fast forward to the present day and that sequence is the nightmare plaguing college student Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), Iris’s granddaughter.

Dear ol’ gammy actually survived it and lives alone in a compound as a survivalist/crazy cat lady.

Stefani tracks Iris down, who tells her that death is coming for them all as she shouldn’t have survived the restaurant fire and gives Stefani a book, so that she can figure out how to ‘cheat death’ and save her family.

Full disclosure: I was never much of a fan of this franchise; the whole thing got ‘same-y’ after the second one and I stopped watching. That said, I kinda enjoyed this one.

The pre-credits sequence sets the tone in terms of deaths which are claret-filled, gooey and gruesome throughout and this prologue is played totally seriously.

I wish I could say the same for the remainder of ‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ which seems to be played for laughs even if directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B Stein didn’t intend it that way.

The script, written by Jon Watts (of Spiderman fame), Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor, doesn’t reinvent the wheel in many ways but the idea of the descendants of people in death’s hit list being targeted is fresh.

The domino-effect structure of the various deaths – with ‘Bloodlines’ offering up obvious kills with obvious misdirection – involves weather vanes, MRI machines, lawnmowers, pennies, fans and other items which elicit laughs rather than any sort of horrific reaction.

Plot contrivances also go by with nary an explanation.

Another thing which gets conveniently overlooked is Stefani’s ability to see deaths in some instances and not in others.

The no-name cast offers little, going through the motions with Richard Harmon as Erik the standout and it was great to see horror icon Tony Todd get a final send-off. If you can get past these issues, just sit back and have a laugh.

‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ is a somewhat fresh if inert new entry into the franchise.