Horror cinema has created quite a few monsters over the years, from vengeful spirits to nightmare masters, from space clowns to killers who are fans of the genre. But is there anything more frightening, more invisible, and more invincible than death itself? In 2000 – yes, it doesn't make anyone any younger – Final Destination became a cult classic for an entire generation by transforming every object, every everyday action into mortal danger.
The idea would unfold in five other films that would fuel our paranoia around airplanes, trucks loaded with tree trunks, fairground rides... until the franchise took a break in 2011. Fourteen years later, death returns in Final Destination Bloodlines and it still has plenty of imagination.
Stefanie (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), a brilliant student, has been haunted for several months by a recurring nightmare concerning the past of her grandmother Iris, who lives isolated from the rest of the family. Upon finding the latter, the young woman realizes that death is after the entire Iris line and that they will have to unite if they want to survive the Grim Reaper's plans.
Mouse Trap with real pieces of people in it
To film this new installment, fourteen years after the old one, Warner Bros put the baby in the hands of directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein. We can only advise you to take a look at their filmography, as these guys are used to the big gap and the big anything goes. From the very bad Leprechaun: Origins to the pleasant Freaks, including the adaptation of the video game – whose existence we had forgotten – Dead Rising or even the live-action TV movie adaptation of Kim Possible for Disney… Let's politely say that at least they seem to be having fun. And that may be the key to the future success of this Final Destination Bloodlines.
We appreciated the previous installments, or at least the first three, especially, for their ability to play on our real anxieties. While the how and why of the first Final Destination was often beyond all credibility, the introduction of the first Final Destination was a nightmare for those suffering from aviophobia. The merry-go-round? How many of the news stories actually took place?! And we can obviously only mention the opening of the second episode, which anyone who has seen the film immediately thinks of as soon as they are on the highway and see one of these trucks.
Except that over time, it becomes increasingly difficult for death, or for the franchise's writers, to find something to crush the characters and scare us without deploying treasures of inventiveness and thus moving us away from the "realistic" side of things.
The viewer has seen too much and is no longer easily impressed, so the sliders must be pushed further, harder, and no longer be satisfied with a brick crushing a skull. No, from now on, the brick must be just a decoy so that a tennis ball hits a windshield, surprising the driver, hitting a panel that will itself ignite a lawnmower left there as it falls, and the lawnmower will go and do its deadly work on the young woman sunbathing on the lawn. We're no longer in a macabre coincidence, we're in a bloody Mouse Trap.
Death becomes us so well
And in this game, Final Destination Bloodlines delights us with its ability to go into the grand guignolesque of a death having to hatch plans like Ocean's Eleven to shoot an extra. Stratagems relying heavily on the ridiculousness of the situation, bringing out the humorous side of the directors' careers. The film doesn't pretend to be anything other than a big mess where our intangible antagonist literally seems to have fun thwarting expectations. He becomes the main character of the story with a single mode of operation: the bigger it is, the more it goes down.
Far from being just a horror film, Final Destination Bloodlines is above all a feature film that refuses to take itself seriously. In the editing and the writing of the protagonists, we more than once touch on parody with its successive funeral scenes and actors who overact or don't act at all. Everything is done to make us side with death, each time eager for it to strike to rid us of the ball and chain or the bad boy. And when it does, it's exhilarating. We laugh and... we almost applaud.
Destination Finale Bloodlines is an ode to exaggeration and irony, including in its goriest sequences. Because yes, here too, the film goes overboard and the pieces of barbecue go hand in hand with the sound effects, accentuating the truly disgusting side of things. If you don't like viscera or faces scattered all over the room, move on. In more ways than one, this is the episode that most resembles a horse slaughter in the saga, aided by the abundance of digital effects. We can reassure those with sensitive souls that, once again, it's difficult to take the film seriously, as the rendering is so slobbery. Slobbery AND generous. You get what you pay for.
And like every opus, there is always ONE scene that stands out from the others. In this case, we must salute the total letting go of its hospital segment where the deaths are as visually disgusting as the manner is as ingenious as it is absurd.
Don't look for the plot, there isn't one
We deliberately move on to the side of the scenario, since it is sincerely the last thing the film is interested in. It does try to catch up with its predecessors with a few winks, including a final, very amusing reference in the finale, however, it feels more like a tribute than a constructed narrative. We know that there is no longer any "plot" since the third installment. The true declaration of love to the franchise is found in the last scene of the late Tony Todd, aka the medical examiner, the central figure of the saga to whom we have lent all the questions and who finds here his true story as well as his last appearance on screen. A touching little moment just before a festival of hemoglobin as we like them.
Final Destination Bloodlines no longer has the freshness of its elders and it compensates by going for the worst and the clown card. This is pure horror entertainment with only one principle: the stupider it is, the funnier it is, and the gorier it is. We may have lost what made the license paranoid, but we gained in sales of ketchup popcorn.
0 Comments