It’s back! The movie franchise that taught a generation of film fans not to step backwards off a kerb without looking has returned with Final Destination Bloodlines, the sixth in the series of horror blockbusters about young people who succumb to elaborate demises having cheated Death. Where can you stream all the movies? And what are the best death scenes in each movie of the Final Destination franchise? We had a vision of you asking us that, so we’ve already written a comprehensive guide to the Final Destination universe…
Final Destination
Playing out like an extended episode of The X-Files or The Twilight Zone, the original Final Destination overcame bad reviews to become a big box-office hit and the father of the franchise. It is a slasher movie without a bogeyman: a group of young friends die one by one but the invisible hand of Death itself is the killer, and the murder weapons are furniture, kitchen implements, cars, buses… the idea that the protagonists are doomed, and that things in life that make you say “Huh, that’s weird” might be about to kill you, gave cinema-goers the creeps in a unique and very lucrative way.
Top cause of death: sudden bus impact
Final Destination 2
A year on from the cursed flight that the characters from Final Destination didn’t board due to a warning premonition, only for their lives to end anyway in a variety of unusual ways, Final Destination 2 introduces people who should have been involved in a motoring pile-up. They team up with Clear (Ali Lartner), a survivor from the first film who uses her knowledge to try to save them, and does a calamitously poor job of it. It’s only the second in the series, but the deaths are already much more gruesome and elaborate than they were the first time around.
Top cause of death: decapitation by malfunctioning lift after struggle with man carrying basket full of prosthetic hooks
Final Destination 3
Released three years after the second instalment but set five years later, Final Destination 3 stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Wendy, a high school graduate who has a bad feeling about the rollercoaster she and her friends are about to ride. Having saved several people who were in the queue with her, photos of the reprieved victims provide clues, but Wendy repeatedly fails to stop the people in the pictures dying. It’s the first FD movie to end on a cliffhanger of sorts, as we’re left unsure of whether Wendy and her remaining pals have avoided being smashed to smithereens in an unbelievably spectacular subway-train crash.
Top cause of death: skull repeatedly punctured by nail gun as runaway forklift destroys hardware store
The Final Destination
Breaking the regular numbering system following a rash announcement that this would be the last film in the franchise, The Final Destination begins with a fiery crash at a speedway track, as predicted in a vision seen by Nick (Bobby Campo), who then has a further premonition that requires him to try to prevent a second wave of ludicrous accidents. Then, just when Nick and co think they’re out of the woods, they’re done in by the movie’s fiendish double ending.
Top cause of death: internal organs sucked out by country-club swimming pool drainage system after mechanism is jammed by coin knocked into pool by mishit golf ball
Final Destination 5
Viewers who want to watch the series according to the chronology of the universe depicted in the films should start here, since its events predate those seen in the original Final Destination. The benighted hero of Final Destination 5 is Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto), who correctly predicts a mass-casualty bridge collapse, and then encounters creepy coroner/mortician William Bludworth (Tony Todd), who sets him on a path that includes a lot more killing than the other FD movies. Could taking other people’s lives be the secret of avoiding horrendous pre-destined accidents? Spoiler: no.
Top cause of death: fall from height after electrical fault at laser eye surgery clinic causes blinded patient to stagger away from malfunctioning equipment before slipping on the detached nose of a teddy bear and crashing through seventh-floor window
Final Destination Bloodlines
A whole 14 years after the most recent Final Destination movie (if they’d kept their old pace up, this could have been Final Destination 12), the franchise is back in rebooted form, with Kaitlyn Santa Juana leading it as Stefani, a young woman whose grandmother (Gabrielle Rose) once saved many people from disaster, and then wished she hadn’t. Final Destination Bloodlines features an extremely convoluted death at a family barbecue, and several nods to the first couple of films, although it’s set to shake the formula up a bit.
Top cause of death: watch it and find out…
If you're looking for where to watch all of the Final Destination movies in order, you're in the right place! Check out where to watch them on streaming services in the United Kingdom with this guide.
