Final Destination Bloodlines’ Most Horrifying Deaths, Ranked

It’s incredibly rare that a horror franchise sequel is not only the most well-reviewed of the lot, but the most financially successful, as well. That’s the case for Final Destination Bloodlines, with its fantastic Rotten Tomatoes score and franchise-best opening. More impressive is the fact this comes after a 14-year gap between installments. Clearly, there’s still a market for this IP, as long as the newest movie delivers on what is promised. Specifically, elaborate Rube Goldbergian death scenes for characters both major and minor. It’s a franchise where no one is safe, and in that regard, Bloodlines is certainly no different.

But, of Bloodlines‘ character exits, which is the most grisly? The most elaborate? The one that is most likely to elicit winces from the audiences? Let’s find out and, yes, spoilers for Final Destination Bloodlines follow.

7) Squished by Logs

Bloodlines‘ protagonist, Stefani Reyes, seems safe (comparatively) throughout much of the film. By having nightmares about the deathly premonition her own grandmother had decades prior, it’s almost as if she’s being given hints on how death is coming for her and the remainder of her bloodline.

But she and her younger brother Charlie are in a Final Destination movie. There’s no such thing as safe, even comparatively safe. She thinks they’ve beaten death by drowning Charlie then performing CPR on him. But he didn’t die, he only came close, so death’s cycle is still in full swing. She and her brother are smashed by logs that have been flung off a truck that has been flung off a crashing train. It’s tough to watch them go, but it’s certainly a quick way to die.

6) Weathervane to the Head

Iris is the first Final Destination visionary to not also be the protagonist. That is, save for in the 1968 flashback sequence. She’s also the first Final Destination visionary to be knocked off first.

Her goal is to get her granddaughter, Stefani Reyes, to believe her story about Death’s methodical plan. She even offers a book explaining how it all works. But Stefani doesn’t take it. So, Iris, who has been holed up in her little cabin for decades, chases her outside and makes one final play to get her granddaughter to take her seriously. She sacrifices herself by taunting death, at which point a weathervane drops down and hits a fire extinguisher. The extinguisher blasts the vane towards Iris and through the back of her head, poking out of her mouth. At least she goes quickly.

5) Smashed by Lamppost

Darlene is Iris’ daughter and the mother of both Stefani and Charlie. Like with those characters, her death is fairly quick, but it also looks a bit more painful.

Darlene goes to her now-deceased mother’s cabin. Earlier, when Stefani had visited, a hanging potted plant had been slightly burned to the point it was close to dropping. During this visit, it does fall, which sets off a series of events that lead to the cabin exploding. Darlene, along with Charlie, are injured but alive. Darlene saves Charlie, but before they can leave together, a lamppost falls on her, bisecting her.

[RELATED – Final Destination Bloodlines‘ Sequel Chances Get a Disappointing Update from Horror Directors]

4) Squished by Garbage Truck

Julia is one of Stefani and Charlie’s cousins, and while her death is drawn out, it doesn’t look quite as bad as the fate of her brothers, Bobby and Erik. To put it in succinct terms, she’s crushed in a garbage truck.

The Rube Goldbergian sequence goes as such: a saw is lodged in a tree, and it falls down onto a man using a leaf blower. The leaf blower sprays a bunch of leaves over into some kids’ eyes, who then misdirects the aim of their soccer ball. It konks Julia in the head, which sends her tumbling back into a trash can. A trash can which is then picked up by the aforementioned truck and dumped into its tailgate, the lid of which crushes her head and arm.

3) Vending Machine Spring to the Head

Like their cousins Stefani and Charlie, Bobby Campbell and his older half-brother Erik are told by Tony Todd’s William Bludworth that forcing death and then getting revived essentially negates death’s plan. Bobby is deathly allergic to peanuts, so Erik suggests he eat a peanut bar, at which point Erik will revive him with an EpiPen.

Unfortunately, the bar gets stuck in its housing vending machine, at which point Erik bashes the machine, cracking the glass. They shake the machine, which loosens a spring. They’re able to get the bar and then lock themselves in an MRI room. Erik leaves to get a wheelchair so he can take Bobby to some doctors, but as soon as he closes the door a clipboard falls onto a button which activates the MRI. Erik returns, they kick off their peanut bar plan, and Bobby panics as he suffocates. The magnetic MRI yanks Erik’s cellphone towards a button, which pushes the MRI to its maximum strength (resulting in Erik’s death, more on that in a second). Bobby, having just lost his brother, injects himself with the EpiPen and begins to breath once more, only for a doctor to open the room’s door to check on the commotion, at which point the magnetism of the MRI machine yanks the broken spring from within the vending machine into the MRI room and into Bobby’s forehead.

2) Lawnmower Takes Face Off

Like his mother Iris, son Bobby, daughter Julia, and adoptive son Erik, Howard Campbell simply cannot escape death. His offing takes place during the film’s most advertised scene: the family picnic.

First, Bobby accidentally knocks a glass cup over, which shatters. He cleans up most of the shards, but fails to realize one has gotten mixed in with a cooler’s ice. That shard ends up in Charlie’s drink, but doesn’t at the last moment when Bobby asks him to jump on the trampoline. Howard’s wife, Brenda, knocks a bottle of beer of a table, which inadvertently turns on a garden hose. The hose inflates, jostling the gardening tools surrounding it, at which point Bobby breaks through the trampoline’s polypropylene mesh, startling Howard’s daughter Julia, who was playing with a Jenga tower. The tower knocks over the cup with the glass shard in it, which Howard steps on. This happens just as the flailing hose hits the family lawn mower’s power button, which sends the mower running wild … right over Howard’s face. Between the shard in the foot and the torn-up face, Howard gets a pretty rough send-off.

1) Piercings Ripped Apart by MRI

Getting a tiny spring drilled into one’s head isn’t pleasant, but Erik Campbell still gets it worse than his brother. When the magnetism of the MRI machine pulls his phone towards it, it also begins to pull the many piercings in Erik’s face.

Each of those piercings is painfully and bloodily yanked from his face (and nipples … and groin). Then, the wheelchair he brought in to take his brother to the doctors pushes him into the MRI machine. Both it and Erik are brought into the machine with ever increasing strength, at which point Erik is snapped unnaturally backwards and the wheelchair breaks, with all of its various newly pointy parts going through his gut. Erik is then sucked into the machine fully, breaking his back and killing him for good.