Just the Ticket #182: Final Destination - Bloodlines
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster.
There are countless movies, television shows, video games, and other media with Bloodline or Bloodlines in the title, and it's a fairly common subtitle for horror movie sequels. It's even more common than setting a horror sequel in space!
Just look at Hellraiser: Bloodline, Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines, Tremors 5: Bloodlines, Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, Day Of the Dead: Bloodline, and of course, today's movie up for review (if you couldn't tell from the post title, the thumbnail, or this week's Zenescope - Omnibusted), Final Destination: Bloodlines.
But is it good, though?
Well...it's a Final Destination movie.
That means that fans of the franchise (of which I am one) are in store for everything we've come to expect from the average entry: a spectacular opening premonition, metatextual needle-drops, an MCU amount of franchise Easter eggs for a good re-watch factor, hilariously over-the-top practical/digital gore effects, suspense-building misdirects, and Rube Goldberg deaths that either obey or defy the laws of physics at a roll of the dice. Also, there's the formula of progression as I laid it out in my Spring Break miniseries review (linked above).
The twist this time is that the opening premonition is from the past rather than a possible near-future.
Iris (Stargirl's Brec Bassinger in the premonition, Jennifer's Body's Gabrielle Rose in the present) and her fiancé-to-be plan to share big revelations with one another atop the Not The Space Needle (which "benefited" from rushed construction and has a glass dance floor) when staff carelessness and an entitled little asshole with a stolen penny cause a gas explosion that kills everyone in attendance.
In modern day, Iris' granddaughter Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana, The Friendship Game) is having this premonition as a recurring nightmare that's affecting her college life, so she seeks out Iris in hopes of stopping the dream.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you're someone with a bunch of Unanswered Questions about the Final Destination franchise), this turns out to be exactly what Mac Daddy Death wanted all along, as Iris' ensuing death by weathervane (though I struggle to believe that she built a gated compound lined with barbed wire, steel plating, and sharpened logs without the Reaper at least trying a few hundred things; it's kind of like a mouse surrounding itself with mousetraps to protect its cheese supply while a cat watches) kicks off a new string of deaths and opens up the world of Final Destination on an unprecedented scale.
See, the opening premonition that Stefani had as a recurring dream was also Iris' original premonition, and because Iris (and presumably most of the people she saved from the tower collapse that day) stayed alive long enough to have families of their own, there are now entire family trees (Bloodlines, if you will) of lives that were never meant to exist. So Death has to go down every branch in generational order like a 23andMe search algorithm and pay off His liabilities in blood and spectacle, all the while armed only with a penny and some broken glass. We see from snippets of Iris' journal that the events of every previous entry were part of this messy cleanup effort, and Stefani and her dwindling handful of relatives (including her brother, played by Teo Briones, a.k.a. Junior from the Chucky TV series) learn of someone named JB, who may have answers about how to survive Death's design.
Of course, this is the obligatory encounter with William Bludworth (Tony Todd) that happens in all but the third movie, and while his performance lacks the expected personality and creepiness here for obvious health-related reasons, it may be the chief reason why this entry is so well regarded right now.
This was Tony Todd's final film role before his death from terminal stomach cancer at the nice age of 69 (which, if you rotate it 90 degrees, looks like the zodiac sign for Cancer, which is eerie and not at all nice), and he was allowed to improvise Bludworth's final lines, telling the world that we should all make the most of the time we are given because life is precious and fleeting. As with many things about the movies I review, my research lessened the impact of this moment after the fact (learning that it was planned and not some morbid coincidence), but in real time, it gave me chills, and it is a testament to the production that such a touching farewell ended up in the final cut. RIP Tony Todd and thank you to the Bloodlines crew.
Tragedy and meta-narrative aside, Final Destination: Bloodlines has some amazing and hilarious kills. The polished look of the film, the modern CGI, and some of the uneven fakeout pacing broke my immersion with a few of them (the premonition scene was almost entirely green screened with digital fire and rubble of a The Final Destination quality), but I particularly enjoyed the elevator bisection, the asshole child getting Looney Tunes'd by a piano, the lawnmower, the garbage truck, and the MRI sequence.
I got so into the references, kills, and character interactions (even if one of the death orders didn't make a ton of sense given the established rules) that by the time the movie was over, I felt as if I had only watched Part One of something (not uncommon in the age of Dune and Wicked). I wanted more movie out of my movie, and it just...stops‽ Where's the focus? What was the point?
I had this whole closing section of the review written where I talked about the third act having a rushed, abruptly edited feel to it that was uncharacteristic of the franchise, complete with puns about the editor "logging her time before she lost her train of thought."
But on re-watch, I saw that I was wrong. While I stand by my feeling that the movie ratcheted up its momentum like there was going to be more to the movie, only for the family's last stand at Iris' fortress to come off as a script contrivance to get everyone in a single location and kill them off, the transition from the burning carnage to the bright, happy, literally off-the-rails ending did give the characters and the movie itself room to breathe and grieve before the inevitable rug-pull.
Bloodlines is a movie about family (most obviously), as well as paying respect to the past, being aware of the present, and preparing for the vanishing, cyclical, uncertain potential of the future. The journey is what matters, and the connections we foster along that journey, not the Final Destination.
And that's my two cents, Ticketholders!
A-
Aside from tomorrow's Time Drops, this was the Final Destination of my content for the week. Next week, it's back to minimal content because my work hours are picking up again and I need time to binge My Hero Academia so that I can move forward with more of the Anime Spotlight. Stay Tuned and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read so I can afford more than two cents worth of opinions in case the penny dies, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my intricately designed content.
Ticketmaster's Note: Included here for posterity (and because I think it's well-written, even though I objectively got the facts wrong) is what I'm calling the "B Minus Cut" of my final judgment on Bloodlines.
"If I had a better understanding of things, I would have taken pride in making a cringeworthy pun about how the journey is the point, not the Final Destination (which I guess kind of is the message that the third act is laying out, what with Stefani and her remaining family literally going on a journey back to Iris' fortress for...some reason besides the script having every one of Death's targets in a single location, I'm sure). But just when things started ramping up and I thought there would be another half-hour at the very least, it was like I had blinked too long and missed a transition to the "some time later, the main character and another character think they're safe because they didn't die yet, but JK RIP LOL fade to black" ending sequence. Usually, said transition has typical horror movie sequel bait pacing where the survivors get to be grateful and grieving; to shudder at the carnage and appreciate their continued ability to breathe. But here, it's like the editor didn't think there was enough time for Bloodlines to feel like a Final Destination movie all the way through, and just made a jarring cut to get it over with and...log her time before she lost her train of thought.
But that's just my two cents."
But that's just my two cents."
Ticketmaster,
Out.
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