It’s been nearly 15 years since Final Destination 5, the most recent installment in the horror-movie franchise where someone responds to a premonition about deadly disaster by saving the victims, who death then jealously pursues in the order they should have died, through a series of ridiculous contrivances. The series revives with Final Destination: Bloodlines, which puts a new twist on the gimmick: This time around, one survivor of the original disaster staved off death long enough to have kids and grandkids, so death chases them down too, in order of birth.
For a lot of filmmakers, that time gap would be a reason to start from scratch as much as possible, to revamp and update the franchise. Directors Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky (who also made the fascinating 2018 sci-fi puzzlebox movie Freaks, now on Netflix) certainly do some of that — including using their framing for an IMAX version of the movie they say will never be seen in any other format. But they also told Polygon that they went back to study the franchise’s previous films in obsessive detail, to capture everything that made these movies work.
“There are key shots in the previous movies that are iconic,” Lipovsky told Polygon via Zoom. “We just were so inspired by them. We even took it to the next level — we analyzed every single death set piece in all the previous movies, and built this incredibly complex spreadsheet with how many omens they had, what type of death it was, and what the other deaths were that came after it, to see what the pattern of death was, and which ones worked really well, and which ones didn’t. We really analyzed the key DNA pieces, the set pieces we could best learn from and bring into our movie.”
Photo: Eric Milner/Warner Bros. Entertainment
He says previous Final Destination movies showed death’s impending arrival on a scene in a variety of ways, “whether that’s through wind, or the way the camera moves, or the way water drips, or things like that,” which the directors picked up for Bloodlines. “But even the fun they had with the way they transition from one scene to the next, we were really inspired by that as well. One of our all-time favorite shots is when [2006’s Final Destination 3] cuts from the two tanning beds to the two coffins. It’s cinematic, but it also has an irony and a fun to it. That’s the tone you’re always trying to capture.”
The “arrival of death” tipoffs in a Final Destination movie also include creepy music cues, and ominous shots of the various mundane objects that are about to self-assemble into a murderous Rube Goldberg device leading to a messy death. But with Bloodlines, Stein says, the team added in IMAX camera cues.
“Because we got to work with the IMAX team, to film it for IMAX with their cameras and their specs, they really encouraged us to see if there was a way we could use the IMAX aspect ratio shift as a creative tool,” Stein says. “And that got us really excited to use it almost as a omen in itself. In the IMAX version of this movie, there is a specific shot where we have a creepy push-in for each death sequence that we designed to be the moment where we expand to the IMAX aspect ratio right as death arrives. It’s the harbinger of death.”
That effect won’t be visible at all for people in regular theaters, or watching the film later in home formats, Stein says. “It’s only in the IMAX version of the movie, which you can only see opening week in IMAX theaters. It’ll never be released on home video or on streaming. So for audiences that don’t know that’s what’s happening, they’ll just feel it as a bit of an increase in the intensity in those moments, as they get sucked into that bigger aspect ratio. And for the IMAX fans who have a keen eye, who are looking out for it, they’ll be able to see those particular shots where death arrives and leaves each scene.”
Photo: Eric Milner/Warner Bros. Entertainment
Stein and Lipovsky’s enthusiasm for the franchise shows through when they talk about the details of their plot, with the central family facing death one by one. But they light up even more when talking about the filmmaking process. “Final Destination is the ultimate treat for a filmmaker to shoot, because there is no personified antagonist,” Lipovsky said. “There’s no monster, there’s no man with a knife, no nothing. It’s just shots of objects and the wind, and the way the camera rotates slightly and pushes in. Ultimately, it’s really the filmmaking that’s coming for these characters, and all the clever ways these objects are misdirecting them and moving around them — which is ultimately us.
“So basically, Adam and I got to be death, to build all these crazy machines and use all the tools of cinema we delight in to create tension. And that’s a really just a beautiful gift as a filmmaker to indulge yourself with, and to play with all the incredible technicians we collaborated with, to just give the sense that there’s an evil force there, even though you don’t see anything.”
Stein says that dynamic — getting to “play death” in every sequence — made the project fun for him and Lipovsky in a way that they hope carries over to the audience. “A lot of people assume horror movie sets are very bleak, but there’s a great sense of playfulness and fun in horror,” he said. “Because you’re letting loose with your dark sense of humor, and all the technicians are having so much fun with being covered in fake blood, and having fake bodies being torn apart by puppeteers. All those practical effects bring a lot of fun to the set, as everyone’s figuring out how to do all this stuff.
“And I think that comes across on screen, especially in a tone like Final Destination’s. We always said we wanted to create a movie where you have to watch it through your fingers ’cause it’s so intense, but you’re also laughing at the same time. And when you see this movie in a packed theater with an audience that is really coming into the audience experience in that way — everyone is horrified, and they have to look away. But they’re also laughing uproariously, which I think surprises some people when they really see this movie in a packed theater.”
Final Destination: Bloodlines opens in theaters on May 16.