I Felt Seen by Final Destination: Bloodlines
How the sixth film in a normally shallow franchise got its hooks in me.
Before I even had vocabulary to describe it, I was an extremely anxious child, and that anxiety manifested itself in curious ways.
When I was young (but older than is cool to admit) I would have to
inform my parents of everything that I felt I did wrong that day (hurt someone’s feelings, performed poorly on a test, etc.) before I was able to fall asleep at night.
Later that anxiety started to cause compulsive behaviors: obsessive hand-washing, checking locked doors over and over) When I learned how to drive, my mind was overrun with the incessant idea that I might suddenly jerk the wheel and send the car into a cyclist or oncoming traffic.
Anxiety I understood, but I — like many people — had no idea that there was a connection between my more tangible symptoms, and the strange impulses, or mental intrusions I was experiencing.
Stay with me now: the feeling I’ve just described is what the film Final Destination: Bloodlines is about.
Traditionally, there’s been nothing all that nuanced about the Final Destination franchise. Each film is more-or-less the same: our protagonist has a premonition of an accident which will cause multiple deaths. As a result of the premonition, they prevent the accident and therefore cheat death. Death then pursues the survivors one by one to even the score.
The appeal of the Final Destination franchise is not… intellectual. Instead the thrill comes from the iconic, elaborate, Rube Goldberg-esque kills that constantly make the rounds on twitter.
Bloodlines was something different. As usual, the film opens with young Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) dreaming a premonition. But this time, it is not a premonition of what’s to come, but what was already prevented.
In her dream, she sees the same accident that her grandmother once anticipated and prevented back in the 1960’s. Since several hundred lives were allowed to continue past their date with the reaper, Stefani discovers that generations of people that should have never been born — including herself, and her extended family — have been dying out in tragic accidents.
Pictured: Stefani’s Premonition…
Now here’s where the film gets interesting.
The premonitions of death in this series already resemble the kind of intrusive thoughts that those with anxiety, obsessive compulsives, and paranoid schizophrenics suffer from. In the past, it might have felt generous to credit these films with that much consideration, but Bloodlines takes this subtext, and quite cleverly makes it text.
When Stefani seeks answers from her Grandmother, Iris (Brec Bassinger), her family is quick to dismiss her claims. The estranged Iris has become a pariah to her family, who now describe her as a paranoid freak who tortured her children with persistent visions of their impending deaths.
Stefani eventually finds Iris entrenched in a gated compound which she has not left in many years for fear of death finding her. Her paranoia, agoraphobia, and never-ending visions of the accidents which could cause the death of her and the family that abandoned her, function as a surprisingly poignant metaphor for a kind of mental illness I found eerily familiar.
As silly as it sounds, in the clutches of my own intrusive thoughts and compulsive actions, I felt as though I was constantly dodging death or injury for myself and my loved ones.
If I didn’t wash my hands for exactly ten minutes before bed, I might allow that one particle to take root and kill me in my sleep. If I didn’t check this door lock until I was completely sure it was secure, someone might have chosen that night to break into my home — and whatever happens will be my fault.
OCD and other anxious disorders sometimes do not allow you to trust your own eyes, or worse even, your own rational thinking.
Stefani knows that what her grandmother is telling her, that death is reclaiming the people that she cheated from him, is not rational. But rationality is not enough to fight these compulsions. I know for example, that if I didn’t wash my hands for ten minutes (or at all for that matter) that I would be perfectly well. But that doesn’t matter.
As Iris puts it, “Seeing is believing.” Desperate to prove that her claims are the truth, she lets her guard down for a brief moment… and death quickly claims her, thus cementing Stefani’s belief.
The rest of the film is spent with Stefani trying in vain to save her brother and her cousins. She frantically watches every rake, lawn mower, passing bike, and potential allergen — all while they willfully dismiss her fear as a hereditary inheritance from their crazy grandmother.
Of course the film finds time to deliver some wonderfully over-the-top kills. It’s characters are memorable, and it even finds time to offer fans of the franchise some pretty elegant fan-service.
Bloodlines shows that in the right hands, great ideas can be shoe-horned into even the most tired franchises. These movies have never really been ‘scary,’ and this film is not an exception — there’s never a moment where you’re compelled to look away. Instead, this iteration stands out because it understands that the build-up to the kills triggers a very uncomfortable fear of the world around you, rendering the most mundane of everyday objects into a murder weapon.
If you’ve ever been prone to intrusive thoughts, compulsive actions, or anxiety in general, this might sound like your nightmare come to life. I’m not sure I would have seen it had I known anything about it beforehand but now I truly believe that you should subject yourself to this movie. Counter-intuitive as it may be, I found it deeply cathartic.