I am a big fan of the hard rock group AC/DC. This is despite the fact that they’ve been releasing what is essentially the same album—with largely interchangeable pounding hard rock riffs—for something like 50 years. I would despise any other band for this crime, but these guys have found a formula that works and they’ve stuck to it.
The “Final Destination” films are like the AC/DC of horror.
It’s the same thing every time. A group of attractive young people narrowly escape death in some kind of crazy calamity. But then death—an amorphous force angry at being denied—stalks them, taking them out in increasingly absurd ways. (That’s one of the unique things about the films: there’s no actual villain on the screen, no machete-wielding Jason or finger-clawed Freddy Krueger. It’s a bold choice.)
That’s been the formula for each of the (eight? nine?) “Final Destination” films, including the recently released “Final Destination: Bloodlines.“ But it still works.
This new installment does have a nice little twist. It’s not the main character who escaped the horrific accident (the implosion of a tall restaurant similar to Seattle’s Space Needle) but her grandmother when she was young. Because Gammy should’ve died, none of her progeny should’ve existed, which leads to the dilemma in the current day. Death is killing all the people who shouldn’t have been born.
These movies are comedies as much as horror films. There’s just something intrinsically goofy about seeing someone baked in a tanning bed or eaten by a garbage truck. When our screaming protagonist’s face is drenched in blood after someone is impaled through the skull by a weather vane, I found myself chuckling. It’s what any decent person would do.
As with any good horror film, there’s more than just spurting crimson and eviscerated bellies. There’s an emotional component, in this case driven by members of a family attempting to put aside their issues and reconnect. The pathos is so maudlin as to be silly, but I can’t complain.
The film achieves everything it sets out to do and is worth a peek.
