The sixth installment is already breaking May box-office predictions and the internet is losing its mind over the opening sequence. But is this a true revival of one of horror's most inventive franchises, or are we just easily pleased because nothing else good has come out this spring? Pick a side.
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Add your commentthe characters were always cardboard?? thats literally the point?? death is the main character in these movies and always has been. judging FD for thin characters is like judging fast food for not being michelin star cuisine
I'm 44 and the original came out when I was in high school. Seeing this with my college-age nephew and watching him react the exact same way I did in 2000 was genuinely emotional in a weird way. Like death and fear of it truly is universal across generations. The movie made me feel that.
The opening sequence alone is worth the price of admission. I genuinely grabbed my friend's arm and she screamed. That hasn't happened to me in a cinema since the original. The franchise is BACK.
I cried at the ending and I am not ashamed. Took me completely off guard. A Final Destination movie made me cry. 2025 is truly wild.
The discourse around this movie is wild to me. It's a mid-budget studio horror movie about an invisible death entity. It doesn't need to be Hereditary. It just needs to be fun and scary and it is both of those things. Why are we demanding more?
Watched it Saturday night. Packed theater, everyone screaming and laughing together. Haven't had a communal cinema experience like that since before the pandemic. Whatever the movie's flaws, it gave me that. I can't be mad.
My problem is the 'bloodlines' angle feels like they're trying to make it a mythology when the whole beauty of the original was that death was random and indifferent. The moment you start adding lore you undermine everything that made it scary.
no spoilers but can confirm there is a moment that hits different if you've lost a parent. was not emotionally prepared.
that's actually a beautiful way to put it and now i'm emotional about a final destination movie. thanks a lot
I took my 17-year-old daughter who'd never seen any of them and she was absolutely riveted the whole time. Afterwards we went home and watched the first three back-to-back. So for me personally it accomplished exactly what a legacy sequel should — made the old stuff feel relevant again.
Look I'm just glad a studio took a risk on a practical effects heavy horror sequel in a landscape drowning in superhero properties. Even if you think it's only okay that alone deserves some applause.
I've seen all five previous films and I'm telling you confidently that Final Destination 2 remains the pinnacle. The highway sequence is the greatest death trap sequence ever committed to film and nothing in Bloodlines touches it. Good movie, wrong hype level.
Hot take: Final Destination 5's ending twist is still the best ending of any horror franchise entry ever made and Bloodlines isn't even close. They should have just let 5 be the ending.
the tonal inconsistency IS the franchise's identity though. FD3 had the same thing and people consider it a classic now. you're describing a feature not a bug
Nostalgia is doing a LOT of heavy lifting in these reviews. The death sequences are creative sure but the characters are cardboard. Name one person from the new cast without looking it up. I'll wait.
3/10 seems genuinely spiteful. even people who disliked it are admitting it's like a 5 at minimum.
the communal experience point is real. horror is one of the last genres that genuinely needs a big screen and an audience to reach full power
its fine. its a 7/10 movie being treated like a 10/10 because the bar for horror sequels is underground at this point
The tone is all over the place. Some scenes play it completely straight and then there's moments of almost slapstick dark comedy that feel like they're from a different movie. Doesn't ruin it but you can tell there were disagreements in the editing room.
went in with zero expectations bc i thought the franchise died with the fifth one and walked out genuinely shook. sometimes low expectations are the secret ingredient
Everyone keeps saying 'the franchise is back' but back from what? FD5 was great. The franchise never went bad it just went away. Bloodlines is a return, not a resurrection. Small but important distinction.
The REAL question is whether Tony Todd needed to be in this. His presence as William Bludworth in the originals was genuinely iconic and the way Bloodlines handles his legacy either works brilliantly or feels exploitative depending on your attachment to the original. I'm still deciding which camp I'm in.
From a purely technical filmmaking standpoint the practical effects work they did for certain sequences is genuinely impressive. There's a scene involving a construction site that required more coordination than most action blockbusters. Credit where it's due.
The problem is every death scene is now being filmed with the assumption it'll be cut into a 30 second TikTok. The framing, the pacing, the score cues — it's all optimized for a vertical phone screen clip not a theatrical experience. It's insidious.
hard disagree. the bloodlines concept is actually the most interesting new direction this franchise could go. now there are actual stakes beyond just 'who dies next in a fun way'
Because cinema SHOULD demand more. We keep accepting 'fun and scary' as the ceiling for genre films and then wonder why prestige horror directors get no funding.
I think what this movie really proves is that IP with a clear, replicable formula will always have commercial legs no matter how long the gap is. 12 years between installments and it opens huge. Studios are taking notes and greenlight meetings are happening as we speak for every other dormant horror franchise.
this is such a reach. filmmakers have always made choices thinking about how clips will be shared. the VHS and DVD era did the same thing just differently
FD5 ending is overrated because it requires you to have the first movie basically memorized to land properly. casual audiences were just confused
Okay as a horror academic I'll say this: the Final Destination franchise has always been uniquely philosophical compared to slashers. The idea that death has a design and you are disrupting a cosmic order taps into genuine existentialist anxiety. Bloodlines extends that in interesting ways.
the mummy. scream. halloween. hellraiser. no commercial formula survives forever. eventually the well runs dry
3/10. The first 20 minutes were outstanding and then it became exactly the movie I feared. Shocking that studios still don't understand that the mystery and restraint of the original is what made it terrifying, not the elaborate Rube Goldberg deaths. Those became parody long ago.
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