It 2022, it was confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter that Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts was set to produce the new Final Destination reboot. Reportedly, Watts was writing the treatment, with Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein directing. It’s been stated that the new feature isn’t exactly a reboot per se, as the title is Final Destination: Bloodlines, and the upcoming feature will host a new cast.
The official logline for Final Destination 6 is: As a group of first responders escape the clutches of death, they begin to be killed by increasingly improbable and murderous mishaps. This will be the first film from the franchise since 2012. The Final Destination series scared audiences for twelve years with all kinds of unique kills that circled around death wanting revenge. The landscape of horror has changed since then, and with a new era, that means the sequel needs to do more than just live up to what the previous films have done. Here are several things that Final Destination: Bloodlines needs to avoid.
Overly Cartoonish Deaths
Let’s be clear, the entire premise of death getting revenge for a failed premonition is a gimmick all by itself. In fact, Final Destination has one of the best horror premises in the genre. The clever thing about the premise that it’s like anthology series where the cast changes in every film. That allows for fresh stories and characters, and prevents the series from growing stale. It’s hard to come up with elevate ways to kill off people. Every death in the franchise is over-the-top and cartoonish to a certain extent, but there has to be a proper balance where we buy that these death could happen in real life.
The infamous Plane death in the first film is so iconic because it felt as something like that could happen in real life. So did the legendary highway accident in the second film. The film went in a more elaborate and cartoonish route with each sequel. Some are better than others, but the one that sticks out like a sore thumb is The Final Destination. Other than the escalator premonition, the death were cartoonishly bad. It was hard to buy that someone’s rectum was sucked through a pool drain or an engine blasting Andy through a metal fence slicing him into chunks.
The deaths were so over-the-top that it was hard to take the film or characters seriously. The scare factor is the “what if” scenario behind these deaths. There has to be a believability that it could happen in real life. The Final Destination will always be over-the-top, but The Final Destination proved that you can indeed push the boundaries too far.
Follow A Lazy Formula
It may have been 15-years since the last film, but Final Destination isn’t an old enough series for many fans to forget. Keep the basic premise of what drew people in on the first film is a must, but they should be new wrinkles added to the series. One clever thing that Final Destination 5 did was actually have someone survive the main character’s premonition. That in turn opened the story to where the survivors have to kill someone else to live.
That one change made Part 5 feel fresh, and if Bloodlines can do the same then the franchise will be all the better for it. As much as the original formula brought excitement and intrigue to the horror genre, it grew tiresome because we knew the pattern by the third sequel: a bunch of young adults escape death after the main protagonists has some freaky premonition, the survivors are picked off one-by-one in a horrific manner, the main protagonist manages to find a way to outsmart death, death gets the last laugh as a clever twist ending kills everybody. Bloodlines doesn’t have fully change the formula, it just can’t completely rehash the old one that became stale.
Creating Overly Complex Characters
Look, this is Final Destination, not Citizen Kane. The characters should be simple. Don’t get me wrong, characterization is very important. We have to understand their motivation (why is clearly escape death) and give them some dimension that makes them relatable. It doesn’t need to go any deeper than that. The series isn’t remembered for their strong characterization, though there have been decent names to root for. Getting bogged down in needless character drama that doesn’t have anything to do with the plot will only hinder the experience itself. Give the characters enough depth to make us care about them, so feel the tension whenever their life is in danger.
Follow Us
