The Fantasy Review’s review of Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025).
Final Destination once again drops a movie designed to make everyone never want to leave their homes. This latest entry in the Final Destination franchise is worth watching for the inventive kills and some extra lore, but it’s a pretty generic watch.
Spoiler-Free Review of Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)
As always in this franchise, the characters suck. The cast is strong, and they give entertaining and emotional performances, but the personal stories they are given are of little interest. As stereotypes, they work well as entertaining cannon-fodder for death.
Speaking of which, this movie has some great kills. I feel like if the only thing you care about is entertaining kills, this franchise was made for you. And Bloodlines certainly delivers. Every death is fun and inventive, with mildly better effects than the 00’s movies!
When it comes to lore, this franchise has none. I’m a big fan of Saw, Scream, Child’s Play, etc, so when I’m watching a horror franchise, I’m looking for lore building throughout the movies. In Final Destination, it never feels like the next movie adds anything, and there have been six of these things now.
Bloodlines attempts to ground the narrative in its characters. As the title would suggest, Death is coming for a bloodline – a family – so the story should make us care for and love this family. No such luck.
Instead, we get the stereotypical 90’s characters these movies have always had, and when they die in various, insane ways, there’s no emotional link to give a crap.
To be fair to Bloodlines, it does try to do something different to the other five movies in the franchise. I appreciated that, and to be fair, after the premonition scene I was hooked on the mystery – but it’s quickly resolved and the movie deteriorates into a standard, slightly slapstick (but not funny) kill-fest.
The only movie in the franchise worse than Bloodlines is The Final Destination (2009) – but it’s not hard to be better than whatever the hell that movie was.
Overall, Final Destination: Bloodlines was a Final Destination movie. It exists. You can watch it. People die. The end.
