What I learned binge-watching all six ‘Final Destination’ movies

An entire generation of horror nerds has developed an abiding fear of log trucks

May 19, 2025 at 10:28 am
Image: In the Final Destination series, characters die in freak accidents.
In the Final Destination series, characters die in freak accidents. New Line Cinema
Carbonatix Pre-Player Loader

Audio By Carbonatix

I watch so many movies. If you knew the sheer number of films I consume weekly, you would wonder if I ever sleep or just slip into rest mode for a few minutes here and there so I can keep filling my brain with high-brow art, low-brow schlock, and everything in between. Because of the downright reckless number of new movies I watch, movies that I haven’t seen in 10-plus years tend to disappear from my long-term memory. Special ones are in there forever, but lots of movies eventually fade.

Since it’s been around 14 years since the most recent Final Destination movie, I figured I would jog my memory of the franchise and watch the five previous films in the 48 hours leading up to the release of the new one: Final Destination: Bloodlines. I remember enjoying most of the movies when they came out and could picture some of the deaths being downright squirmy, but my only concrete memory was the second one, where I (and an entire generation of horror nerds) developed an abiding fear of log trucks. Still, the details were all a little hazy. So, here is what I learned after consuming six Final D movies in 48 hours:

1) Each film basically has the same structure: the central character has a premonition that a bunch of people (including themselves) are going to die in a disaster of some kind. The character freaks out, tells the people around them and then they all get away before the mayhem occurs. Because all of these people were supposed to die in the disaster, Death feels ripped off and starts killing them in Rube Goldberg-ian/Mousetrap sorts of ways… in the order they were supposed to die originally. Apparently, Death is a troll with a massive sense of irony.

2) Each film also has a massive disaster as its opening set piece. OG Final D is a plane crash, D2 is a jaw-dropping multi-car crash on a busy highway, D3 is an out-of-control roller coaster, D4 is a fiery race track wreck, D5 is the North Bay Bridge collapsing, and Bloodlines sees a restaurant set up like the Space Needle explode, collapse, and do a few other terrible things. The highway crash in D2 is still the high water mark of the series, but the restaurant tower collapse is a close second.

3) The Final Destination series exists only to kill mostly annoying characters in progressively more insane and innovative ways. Rewatching this franchise, the one thing that started to get old for me was the shallowness of the characters, who are either all terrible people or paragons of virtue… no middle ground. While it’s fun to squirm in our seats while awaiting stupid characters getting extirpated by Death, it’s hard not to imagine how much more effective the series would be if we cared about these people. While the films are ultimately fun and have a few solid jumps, none are actually scary. Bloodlines easily has the most developed characters of the franchise and is close to the most effective of the entire franchise because of it.

4) The real star of the movies are the deaths, most of which are pretty gruesomely jaw-dropping. Aside from the roller coaster and race track disasters (both of which rely too heavily on shoddy CGI), each opening sets the tone for how bonkers the movies end up being. How bonkers, you ask? Final Destination 3 ties in 9/11 and the assassination of Lincoln to the mythology. Which, I mean, why the hell not?

5) The best death of the series is easily the log truck in D2, but then also, by film: I adored the bathtub hanging in the original, the sizzling tanning beds in D3, the disemboweling by pool drain in D4, death by gymnastics in D5, and the malfunctioning MRI machine in Bloodlines. I will now have all of these gruesome deaths in my brain until I watch another few hundred movies and must eject them to make room.

6) We still need answers for what is going on. Why does Death kill everyone in such convoluted ways? Can’t he just give people a heart attack? Why do people have premonitions of their death and get saved in the first place? Is there an opposing deity who likes taking the piss out of Death? Why do they both have such strong senses of irony? Will I ever stop being afraid of log trucks?

Honestly, Final Destination: Bloodlines is much better than it has any right to be, with solid performances, seat-squirmy deaths, genuinely inventive filmmaking, and a lovely goodbye to the dearly departed horror icon Tony (Candyman) Todd. What the filmmaking team here has done is nothing short of miraculous: not only have they resurrected a long-dormant horror franchise from the dead, but they’ve also put out what is arguably one of the best of the series. I would gladly sit through a new one of these movies every year for the foreseeable future, just don’t expect me to run the franchise from the beginning again… that was a lot.

Grade: B+