Faced with the unenviable decision between reviewing the sixth “Final Destination” movie, in which you can’t put off Death from your past’s future, versus seeing The Weeknd’s apologetic, self-aggrandizing “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” I flipped an unlucky penny, which landed on [crushed] heads. “Final Destination: Bloodlines” it is.
“Final Destination” clearly wasn’t one. Twenty-five years and five profitable films after a group of high school kids temporarily cheated death by getting off a departing flight right before the plane exploded, the franchise itself refuses to die.
In each film, a premonition helps a certain group of people escape an accidental death, only to have Death itself hunt each of the escapees down.
Death is not a character like Brad Pitt in “Meet Joe Black,” but manifests via catastrophic Rube Goldberg chains of events leading to unimaginable death scenes.
The stories unfold with a Hitchcockian tension, but picture if Wallace, from “Wallace and Gromit” fame, got fired and landed a job as “how to kill people off” stunt coordinator. The result would be this film, in which everyday devices are turned into elaborate death contraptions leading to tragic, darkly humorous impalements as Death’s body count mounts in inescapable fashion. Or is it?
“Bloodlines” takes the narrative a couple steps further by introducing math, the power of observation, and family to the analytics of who Death chases next. Kaitlyn Santa Juana plays a young college student with a link to Death’s origin story in this hunt. She breaks down Death’s code, but can she break the connection in time to save her family?
On my ski trail rating system, “Final Destination: Bloodlines” earns my intermediate BLUE ski trail rating. If “Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning” is sold out at the theater this week, this tongue-in-cheek, Alfred Hitchcock “Wallace and Gromit” Smashburger is not a bad way to kill a couple hours. And Kaitlyn’s protagonist proves to be a much better runner than Tom Cruise.
“Final Destination: Bloodlines” is playing locally at Megaplex at Park City, with a run-time of one hour and forty-nine minutes. The film is rated R for strong violence, grisly accidents, language and one unlucky penny.
