THE ART OF THE KILL

Final Destination: Bloodlines reinvents the iconic horror franchise by focusing on an ancestral curse affecting a single family

- STORY: TATAT BUNNAG

The Final Destination franchise has always relished in turning the ordinary into the extraordinarily lethal — delivering a pulse-pounding cocktail of suspense, chaos and inevitable death.

Now, over a decade after the last instalment, the series is back on the big screen with Final Destination: Bloodlines, a visceral, terrifying reinvention that digs deeper into emotional stakes while doubling down on its signature Rube Goldberg-style carnage.

Directed by Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky, Bloodlines centres on Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), a college student plagued by violent, recurring nightmares. Drawn back to her hometown, she seeks out her enigmatic grandmother, Iris (Gabrielle Rose), hoping to uncover a dark secret buried in the past. What she discovers is a decades-old tragedy linked to averted disaster in 1968 and an ancestral curse that Death is determined to fulfil.

“When we heard that Warner Bros was reinventing the Final Destination franchise in a way that made it new for this age — and also much more character driven — we went through the process of trying to convince the powers that be we were the filmmakers who should bring it to life,” said Zach Lipovsky during a recent online conference along with co-director Adam Stein. “We even faked our own death in the pitch meeting to show them we understood the DNA of Final Destination.”

It was that level of commitment — and love for the genre — that earned Stein and Lipovsky the keys to Death's deadly playground. Collaborating with producer Jon Watts and writers Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor, the pair helped craft a chillingly intimate story that pulls the franchise in a new, more personal direction.