If you’re a horror movie fan, you’ve got to be pretty happy with how the last several years have gone. For decades, the genre has been treated like the black sheep of cinema. They were seen as trashy and subpar for the most part, the types of movies an actor did at the beginning of their careers before moving on to “real” movies. Now, however, times have changed. Horror films are not only popular at the box office, but they’re critically acclaimed too, and a few, like The Substance, were nominated for Academy Awards. The phrase “Horror is back” has been used so much in recent years that it’s become a joke, but it’s never been more true. Every subgenre of horror is clicking, which makes now the perfect time for the return of the Final Destination franchise. After a 14-year absence following Final Destination 5, Death is making a comeback with this year’s Final Destination: Bloodlines. If the filmmakers tap into what’s working with today’s horror, we could be on the verge of seeing the best entry yet.
‘Final Destination’ Came Out During a Difficult Time in Horror
After horror did big business thanks to the slasher wave in the 1980s, fans turned away from the genre in the ’90s. With computer technology truly taking off in this decade, big spectacles like Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park became what left us in awe. Horror was left in between eras, not knowing what to do next. It ironically took going back to the past to find the way forward. Wes Craven, who directed A Nightmare on Elm Street, thus giving us the biggest horror icon of the 80s in Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), tried and failed commercially with 1994’s meta A New Nightmare. However, just two years later came Scream, again with a meta approach, and this time exploring slasher tropes. Its success led to a wave of imitators, but by the end of the ’90s, fans were once again tired of seeing the same old glossy slashers.
Horror went through another unsure period, and one of the products of this time was 2000’s Final Destination. It had some of those familiar slasher tropes of gory kills, final boys and girls, and character stereotypes; but while it felt like a slasher, it was the unseen hand of Death who was the killer this time. On paper, Final Destination, with death coming back to collect those who escaped it in the most disgusting of ways, with no one surviving, might have sounded pretty dark. But the final product is rather fun.
The deaths were bloody, but they were also thrilling because it was the suspense leading up to the moment that the fear came from. The death itself was the payoff. Tragically, just a year later the world was changed due to the 9/11 terror attacks. Horror has always reflected reality, and now it turned from fun to seriousness with the horribly named “torture porn” era. Saw and Hostel took over horror cinema, but Final Destination was still there too, putting out popular sequels every few years to remind us that horror could still be fun escapism and not something to wallow in.
Recent Horror Has Shown the Way Forward for the Genre
Like with every other horror era, the super-gory films eventually lost their impact. You can see that directly in how 2009’s The Final Destination was the highest grossing in the franchise, making $66 million, but only two years later, Final Destination 5, despite being a better movie, had the worst gross, dropping to $42 million. Audiences had grown bored with blood and guts. That gave way to horror’s most serious timeframe with more “elevated” offerings. This was represented by movies such as It Follows, The Babadook, and more recently, Hereditary, Midsommar, and Talk to Me. Horror had become high art, and now even critics were taking notice.
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Still, as good as “elevated” movies are, even that begins to lose its effect when every other horror movie is about trauma and grief. It even seeped into 2018’s Halloween and was made fun of in Scream 5. In the 2020s, the genre has undergone an interesting development. Horror has become fun again, just like those Final Destination movies were, but it hasn’t done so by returning to the ’80s cheese and stereotypes. Slashers such as Thanksgiving and Heart Eyes might feel like throwbacks to the past, but they also have an interesting message and complex characters thrown in with the mayhem. In a Violent Nature took Friday the 13th and tipped it over by deciding to make an art film told from the killer’s POV. And then there’s Terrifier. A movie about a killer clown isn’t original, but Damien Leone‘s films not only gave us a terrifying villain in Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton), but also a strong final girl (Lauren LaVera) who doesn’t need a man to help save her. It also has some of the most over-the-top death scenes you’ll ever witness, but the bloodletting is so creative that it’s like a practical effects art show. That’s exactly what the Final Destination franchise was like. It was filled with death, but instead of being depressing or disgusting, fans were in awe of the creativity. Going back to that template, horror has shown that it can still be smart while also being fun.
‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ Needs To Merge the Past and Present
Final Destination: Bloodlines comes out in May, and there are reasons to hope that this will be the best one yet. The films have always sought to be unique to begin with (we can’t forget that chilling ending to Final Destination 5), but if they take notes from today’s horror, the franchise can take another big step forward. The first trailer is nothing more than a drawn-out death scene, completely spoiling a character’s demise, but it works because it shows us that the franchise is still going to try to make you as uncomfortable as ever. However, like the slashers it’s modeled after, the films have had too many tropes in a lot of their characters, with the nice guy and girl who we know will make it to the final scene, the jock, the mean girl, and women fighting against each other. ’80s slashers were also filled with meaningless nudity meant only to sexualize its female characters, but it’s rare to see that in a horror movie now.
2020s horror has created more nuanced characters and digs below the surface level. For example, queer characters are no longer stereotypes but celebrated for who they are in everything from The Blackening to the Chucky TV series. In modern horror, characters feel like real people. Imagine a Final Destination film where nearly everyone is likable or at least three-dimensional and well written. This changes up those intense death scenes. Not only are they now scary because of the impending gore, but because we like these people so much that we don’t want them to die.
We may already be getting a tease of the new path forward in the title. Final Destination: Bloodlines is about visions by family members being used to prevent deaths over multiple generations. The fun we experienced in these movies, and which is now so popular again, can remain intact, while the film tries to do something new and unique as well. Final Destinations: Bloodline can be smarter, and focus more on characters and long-term trauma, all while making a new generation of horror fans laugh and scream with every blood-soaked demise.
