The Final Destination franchise was, at one point, a major force in the world of horror, as the first five entries were all released within the span of 11 years. Despite the series still having a large following, it’s been 14 years since fans have gotten a sequel, leaving many to think a new entry is long overdue. All that is set to change with Final Destination Bloodlines, though, which hopes to deliver everything audiences have come to expect from the franchise, while also injecting some new perspectives into the experience to draw in all-new viewers. Final Destination Bloodlines is set to hit theaters on May 16th.
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“It started with Jon Watts’s idea, which was both opening in the past and having the mystery of why, in the present, as well as centering it around a family. Those two things really allowed us to take the formula for Final Destination and, while still servicing it, slightly shifted just enough that both gave it a procedural mystery, why is this happening, as well as making it emotionally grounded because it was happening to a family,” producer Craig Perry shared with ComicBook of why the time was right for a sequel. “Those two things are the things that made us realize there’s a pathway now that makes a lot of sense, and there was a lot of things that happened in between our release date coming up and shooting with COVID and strikes. And, also, it’s the natural evolution of the movies, but once those things landed conceptually, we knew that there was a movie to chase, and we chased hard.”
While there are assuredly horrifiying sequences, Bloodlines might offer audiences more laughs than ever before.
“I think they added a lot of comedy to this movie … It’s probably the funniest Final Destination,” producer Tim Wynn confirmed. “I couldn’t take my eyes off [Kaitlyn Santa Juana’s] Stefani, Richard [Harmon’s character], all the actors that were on it. I thought everyone did a brilliant job.”
Director Zach Lipovsky added, “I think a lot of Death’s humor comes from how clever he is. Death is there to have fun. Death could just kill these people quickly. Even Death, to some degree, maybe is the reason that they got away in the first place, and he’s coming for them again, just so that he can have some fun. So he likes doing these long-game setups and payoffs and misdirects, because that’s what keeps things interesting for him.”
The filmmakers didn’t entirely attempt to reinvent a winning formula, but found ways to put their own mark on the series’ tried-and-true formula.
“I think the Rube Goldberg machines are really the hallmark. For us, that was the most exciting part because as filmmakers, you don’t have a villain coming at you with a knife,” director Adam Stein shared. “The villain is the filmmaking. These insert shots, closeups of objects building this mousetrap, so that was really fun to do. Like Zach was saying, the hallmark of death marking these people and figuring out the order of who’s next is part of all the movies, but we really wanted to figure out a way to keep that unpredictable, where you think you know the order, but then you don’t because there are secrets that haven’t been told, so that it fits within the rules, but also kept you guessing.”
“We were fans, so we trusted our gut when it came to what to do with this movie and we knew that Final Destination is awesome because of its structure, its formula,” Lipovsky detailed of bending the rules of the franchise without breaking them. “That’s why everyone’s coming, but at the same time, we love making movies where you can’t predict what’s gonna happen next. And with Final Destination, you know, ‘Okay, a bunch of people are gonna be marked for death and they’re gonna die.’ We wanted to make sure that even the diehard fans were gonna be thrown for a loop as far as, ‘Wait, this is different than what I’m expecting. What is gonna happen here?’ We wanted to do that with the premonition, even, in and of itself, so that you’re wondering, ‘How does this even fit within the canon?’ But then slowly, as the movie unfolds, you realize that it does and it follows all the rules we love, just to always create that feeling of unpredictability. We tried to do that even with the set pieces themselves, create set pieces that don’t follow the same structure of the set pieces we’re used to, where, normally, you cut to one person alone in a location they shouldn’t be. We kept trying to play with that structure all the way through.”
Speaking of their fans, the pair also made sure to inject Bloodlines with plenty of callbacks to the franchise’s past, some of which even they are still discovering.
“There are tons of Easter eggs, whether it’s license plates, things written down in the books, things hidden in the walls. We wanted to chock full it with Easter eggs,” Stein teased. “There are even some that we’re still discovering because we told the crew, ‘Fill this with Easter eggs, don’t even tell us you’re doing it, but do it in a way that new fans don’t feel like they’re left behind if they don’t get the reference.’”
Lipovsky added, “My favorite Easter egg in the movie is actually one of the characters who’s covered in tattoos. As he’s ripped to pieces, his skull tattoo is revealed and metal comes piercing through his body, mirroring exactly the poster from [Final Destination 5], which I was just so proud that we were able to pull that off.”
With how much time has passed since the last entry in the saga, the filmmakers had access to a variety of new tools, though also didn’t want to push the film’s effects into unwanted territory.
“We wanted to explore how to create that fear of heights in the audience, on the big screen. On an IMAX screen, how do you make them feel they’re 400 feet in the air? We used the LED volume technology to create a wall outside the Skyview to give the view. We wanted to do that so it wouldn’t be blue screen or green screen or whatever. It would have the real light coming through the glass and reflecting off the set to give you the feeling that you’re really there. It brought a lot more realism,” Stein recalled. “And then we also used interesting VFX techniques to stretch the view in the background to give you that vertigo feeling. We didn’t want to just do the classic Hitchcock push-pull dolly zoom because that’s been done so many times before. We tried to find other ways to stretch the view, make you feel unbalanced, and really add to the suspense.”
Wynn continued, “Zach and Adam, the directors, they did a great job of doing practical effects from the beginning. That’s why it feels so real. If you look at some of the other Final Destination movies, there’d be like an ax or something that would cut off someone’s head and come out of nowhere. This one, everything is pretty much real. One of the things that they did was lit on fire the oldest woman of all time. She was a stuntwoman, 71 years old. When I saw that, it was awesome, it was amazing.”
Final Destination Bloodlines lands in theaters on May 16th.
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