110 min | R | May 16, 2025 | Warner Bros. Pictures
Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein resurrect Final Destination and discover what the franchise always had in it. This is precision horror filmmaking disguised as crowd-pleasing spectacle.
The Final Destination films follow a formula. Someone has a premonition. Death gets cheated. Death comes back for everyone in elaborate kills. The series has been delivering variations on this premise since 2000. Bloodlines takes the formula and finds something new by going back to the beginning. Stefani Reyes inherits visions from her grandmother who had a premonition in 1969 that saved dozens of people from a skyscraper collapse. Death has been hunting the bloodline ever since. The multi-generational angle gives the film stakes the other entries lacked.
Kaitlyn Santa Juana plays Stefani with genuine terror and determination. She is not trying to survive just for herself. She is trying to break a curse that has killed her family for fifty years. The supporting cast, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Anna Lore, Brec Bassinger, all inhabit the doomed victims with enough personality to make their deaths land. Tony Todd returns one final time as William Bludworth and brings gravitas to every scene.
Lipovsky and Stein directed Freaks and Kim Possible. They understand genre mechanics and how to subvert them without being cute. The death sequences here are the most inventive in the franchise. They are Rube Goldberg machines of violence that build tension through misdirection and payoff. The filmmakers shoot for IMAX and use the format to create scope and scale. The production design recreates 1969 with period accuracy that serves the story. The editing maintains momentum across two timelines without confusion.
This is what happens when filmmakers who care about craft take on franchise material. The formula remains but the execution elevates it. This is the best Final Destination film and demonstrates what horror franchises can achieve when they stop coasting on formula.