No Escaping Success: “Final Destination Bloodlines” Resurrects Franchise With Scary Good Opening Weekend
Final Destination: Bloodlines has scared up a historic box office this past weekend, reinvigorating the franchise and once against dispatching characters in a series of increasingly ludicrous, brilliantly conceived set pieces.
Following its extremely strong reception from critics, audiences flocked to the theater to see the revival of the horror franchise from directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, fueling a $51 million box office domestically and another $51 million overseas, settling at a $102 million total. Bloodlines, the sixth installment, has officially infused new blood into a franchise that began 25 years ago, but has been dormant since 2011’s Final Destination 5.
The film stars Kaitlyn Santa Juana as Stefani Reyes, a college student who finds out her grandmother managed to cheat death and save lives, but the consequences for doing so were, ah, troubling. Grandma’s powers are introduced in the film’s vividly intense opening sequence set in the 1950s, when Iris (Brec Bassinger), then a young woman, is on a date in a tall glass tower with her boyfriend when she has an intensely specific vision of their coming, horrific deaths in a massive inferno. Iris is able to escape her fate and save everyone around her in the process, but this upsets the franchise’s longstanding antagonist–Death itself.
The cast includes Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Anna Lore, Tony Todd, Gabrielle Rose, Brec Bassinger, and Max Lloyd-Jones.
“There’s not much more a Final Destination fan could ask for, but Bloodlines, which at times feels more like a dark satire than a straightforward horror movie, reminds us we’re powerless against the world’s morbid whims. Best we can do is laugh about it,” writes The New York Times’ Beatrice Loayza.
“You may watch Final Destination Bloodlines through fingers covering your face. But chances are high you’ll be smiling, too,” writes the AP’s Jocelyn Noveck.
“While a canonically satisfying sendoff to the late Tony Todd’s William Bludworth bolsters the series’ morbid gravitas, a cast of playful, mostly likable 20-somethings keep proceedings light in juxtaposition to the filmmakers’ fiendishly inventive kills,” adds Variety’s Todd Chilchrist.
Final Destination Bloodlines is in theaters now.
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Featured image: Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
