Turning Everyday Anxieties Into a Bloody and Beloved Horror Franchise: Chatting 'Final Destination' with the 'Bloodlines' Cast and Directors

Not every horror movie changes the way that its audience thinks, even if it conjures up haunting, engaging and entertaining bumps, jumps, spooks and scares. Since it first made its way to cinemas in 2000 after starting its life as an unsolicited and unproduced script for The X-Files, Final Destination and the franchise that it has spawned has indeed had that viewpoint-altering impact. For viewers, watching along with any of the saga's six films so far can get you seeing the deadly potential of every situation. That's the whole premise, after all: death's inevitability, plus how mortality stalks and creates fatal danger, including by taking everyday anxieties and fears to their worst and grisliest cause and effect-style possible outcomes.

HBO's Six Feet Under, which arrived on the small screen the year after the first Final Destination movie, also played a little in this terrain, beginning most of its episodes with someone shuffling off this mortal coil, sometimes via accidents and misfortunes. But where it was a thoughtful and moving prestige TV drama, the Final Destination movies embrace their place in the horror genre, as well as blood and gore. After the OG flick, Final Destination 2 followed in 2003, then Final Destination 3 in 2006, fourth effort The Final Destination in 2009 and Final Destination 5 in 2011. Now Final Destination Bloodlines has following after a 14-year gap — and with a new twist, sending the end that awaits us all slaying its way through families.

Is spying death lingering around every corner one of the side effects of directing a Final Destination movie, too? For filmmakers Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (who also co-helmed Freaks and Kim Possible), the answer is yes. "Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I think we've always been fans of how Final Destination really brings anxiety to life. And definitely when we're working with the writers and producers on all the things we could ruin for people in this movie, you really have to mind your own anxieties and your own fears to figure all that out," Stein tells Concrete Playground. "But we also had the fun of basically becoming death for this movie, because in Final Destination there's no killer with a knife coming after you. It's the filmmaking that comes for the characters. It's all the little close-up shots edited together that come for the character. So we got to be death in this movie, also."

"I was driving down the highway just a few weeks ago," Lipovsky shares, "and a garbage bin came flying out of the back of the truck and kind of bounced down the road. And I saw it coming a mile away, because I was like 'ohh, here we go. I've seen this movie'. And I was able to pull out of the way." Pipes in Stein immediately: "Final Destination could save your life."

In Final Destination Bloodlines, a huge scene-setting setpiece again establishes the story, this time harking back to 1968, to the opening of a sky-high restaurant in a new tower where young couple Iris (Brec Bassinger, Stargirl) and Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones, The Irrational) are excited to be in attendance. Premonitions have their part in the narrative, but this is a killer opening in more ways than one. From there, the film jumps to the present day, with college student Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana, The Friendship Game) and her loved ones learning that they're the next in death's grasp. Her younger brother Charlie (Teo Briones, Chucky) and estranged mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt, Orphan Black: Echoes), plus cousins Erik (Richard Harmon, The Flash), Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner, Julie and the Phantoms) and Julia (Anna Lore, Gotham Knights), then start discovering what it's like to live your days attempting to outsmart eternal rest.

Does spotting lethal peril IRL carry over to a Final Destination movie's cast, too? Bloodlines' lineup of actors vary in their answers when asked. "I feel like I've always been a little psychic. I'm not kidding. I have really great intuition. I'm so good at it. I mean, not as far as predicting that somebody's going to die. I have a really strong gut feeling and I feel like I can sense things around me," says Santa Juana, who, as Stefani, is the sleuth of the picture — the character who is definitely discerning everywhere that death might pop up. "Accident-wise?" Kihlstedt, her on-screen mum, poses in return. "Yeah. That's why I'm so afraid of power chords, because I know that those things are pesky little buggers, and they will, if you get some water on them, they'll explode."

Kihlstedt doesn't think that way. Nor does Briones: "I just sort of stumble around life, no care in the world". And Harmon believes that "life's too short to be worried". Lore, though, advises that "I think that watching it, being in it, being around a Final Destination film, yeah, makes you very makes you a little paranoid". Notes Joyner: "it's a little spooky".

They're all now part of not only Final Destination's comeback, but also of a wave of 90s and 00s horror becoming new again. Scream returned in 2022, dropped another sequel in 2023 and has Scream 7 on the way in 2026. The fourth I Know What You Did Last Summer film, also just called I Know What You Did Last Summer, hits cinemas in July 2025. News of more Urban Legend with Until Dawn's Gary Dauberman penning the script is mere weeks old as Final Destination Bloodlines releases. Bloodlines' stars and filmmakers also worked alongside a Final Destination original, with genre and franchise great Tony Todd (Candyman), who passed away in November 2024, making his final appearance in the saga.

We spoke with Lipovsky, Stein, Santa Juana, Briones, Kihlstedt, Harmon, Joyner and Lore about what it means to step into a beloved franchise like this one, too, alongside Todd's involvement, shifting the way that audiences think, the family connection in Bloodlines, intergenerational trauma, great deaths in the saga, the fun of dying on-screen and other topics.

On What Makes a Great Final Destination Death Setup

Zach: "I think the key thing is what Adam was talking about, which is ruining something. Meaning it's something very relatable that we all experience, we all can run into in the rest of our lives, and figuring out a way to just dement that in a way that is incredibly scary and graphic and anxiety-inducing. And then figuring out all the different ways that you can make that ultimate death surprising.

And so creating all sorts of misdirects around it with other relatable, realistic things that could theoretically happen — so that it's a sequence that is relatable, that is surprising, and ultimately incredibly graphic and gory."

On Knowing You've Had a Part in Making People Think Differently About Everyday Objects and Situations

Adam: "We hope people still go get their necessary MRIs. Let's just say that."

Zach: "Even safer than they would have before."

Adam: "But I think that's what's made Final Destination so iconic, that things just stick with you. Logging trucks — 20 years later, nobody can take it.

We just hope that we can live up to the logging truck — and maybe when you have a frosty glass full of ice or you hear the song 'Shout', you think of our movie 20 years from now."

Anna: "Very proud. Yeah, very proud. I mean, the goal of these movies is to ruin things for people."

Richard: "Yes."

Anna: "And the more everyday the thing, the better."

Owen: "That's the number-one ambition."

Anna: "The number one."

Owen: "Not to entertain."

Anna: "Even before making a movie of any kind or filming it or …"

Owen: "How can we traumatise people?"

Anna: "How can we traumatise?"

Richard: "And I hope we did our jobs."

On Whether the Cast Tap Into a Seize-the-Day Perspective While Making a Movie Where Death Can Be Anywhere

Kaitlyn: "I think for this one it's a little bit different, because it's about a family. And when I think about what I would do to protect my family, I don't really think risk for myself is involved.

I love my family and Stefani also loves her family, even though they are a little bit distant off the top. So I can only imagine that she would pretty much do anything and risk her safety to make sure that the others are safe, too, because that's what I would do."

Rya: "I mean, the truth is if we could all carry that a little more into our day-to-day lives, it would be really great."

Owen: "I guess that helps, right? That's a great tip. Maybe I should have used that. It could have helped.

But, I don't know, it was such a weird flip-flop where you go through some traumatic moment with a family member, and then the next scene you're supposed to take the audience through a light-hearted scene and allow everyone to relax before you get into the next big scary murder plot.

So, for me, it was really just taking it scene by scene, and trusting the writers and the directors of knowing how to transition out of different moments to lead the audience through a fun time."

Richard: "Yeah. Hey, that's well-put."

On Adding a Focus on Families as Death's Target to the Franchise for the First Time

Zach: "That was the best part of hearing that they were making a new Final Destination movie, as we heard that it was about a family tree — because it does so many different things at once.

Right away, it allows for the structure of Final Destination to be a little bit different, which freshens the franchise. Because now you have a whole group of people that are related but are different ages — and that creates a lot higher stakes because they really, really love each other. And we have this beautiful element of this family that starts with a rift and they're kind of apart from each other, having to come together as death comes for them one by one.

And it really enriches each of the characters, because they can all have family secrets and grudges and alliances and history. And that allows for a Final Destination movie that I think people will be surprised has a lot more heart and depth to it on the character side — and all that comes from that bloodlines idea."

Adam: "I heard the cast talking about it earlier today, and what they settled on as their tagline is: 'bigger heart, bigger stakes'."

Zach: "Nice."

On Playing Bloodlines' Sleuth, and Trying to Solve the Puzzle of What's Happening — and How to Save Stefani's Loved Ones

Kaitlyn: "I have really strong family morals, so just  thinking about what I would do to protect them. I would do all of these things to protect the people that I love.

Another thing is, throughout the film with my acting coach, I worked on the three different people that Stefani is in this movie. And in the first little bit, she's the detective. Like you said, she's trying to figure out what's going on. In the middle sequence, she's what I would deem as a protector. And in the end sequence, she's a survivor.

You shoot everything out of sequence, and just grounding myself and remembering 'who am I right now?' and 'what would I do in this scenario?' was what helped me stay true to my character arc."

On Digging Into Intergenerational Trauma When Death Starts Stalking Families

Rya: "I was really intrigued by and am very interested in the idea of family constellations and carried trauma — I feel like most of us carry some kind of trauma that maybe does not belong to us, that's been carried down for generations, that's not ours to own.

And I think that's Darlene. That sums her up. She is carrying trauma from her mother, and suddenly realises that her daughter is now carrying this. She thought she left in the hopes that she was going to save her daughter from the same trauma. Exactly what she did is exactly what she didn't want to do. And I love that idea."

On What It Meant to Be Able to Bring Tony Todd Back to the Franchise for the Final Time

Adam: "He's an absolute legend. We were really grateful to be able to work with him, and it was so important to have him in this movie.

We weren't sure if he would be able to do the movie, because we knew he was sick. And he kept telling us 'do not write me out of this movie, I have to be in this movie'. It was very important to him to be in the movie, and to do a couple of things.

One, to give Bludworth a bit more of a backstory, a bit more of a human character to this character who, in the other movies, has been a bit mysterious and undefined. And it's led to a lot of fan theories about 'is he an angel? Is he death itself?'. And Tony was very excited to be able to bring a bit more of a backstory on a human level to the character, so he would have that explanation to why he is the way he is.

And, to give him not just a proper beginning but a proper goodbye, because we were pretty sure this would be his last Final Destination movie — just because they take years to make and we knew he was sick. We didn't realise it would be his last movie overall, which is, of course, very tragic.

And he was very excited, though, to say goodbye to the fans of Final Destination — to the point that on set, we asked him if he would be willing to put the script aside and speak directly to the fans in that final goodbye moment. 'Is there anything he wants to say? Is there anything he wants to leave the fans with?'. And the final lines he says in the movie were just spoken off-script, from the heart, of what he wanted to leave the fans with as a final message, and I think that's why it's so emotionally powerful."

On What You Draw Upon to Convey the Fear That Clearly Has to Sink in for Bloodlines' Characters

Richard: "Well, the acting went out of the window when they lit the fire underneath me. I think the acting just ... "

Owen: "You went method right there."

Richard: "You no longer act. You're just like 'I don't want to burn to death'. So yeah, I feel like that Final Destination does such a good job of that, even with like the fake blood and everything, where the acting just goes out of the window and you just do it."

On the Fun of Playing Death Scenes

Teo: "This might just be me, but I've died a few times at this point on-screen — I love filming those scenes. They're the most fun things to film. It's awesome."

Rya: "I was going to say the same thing. They're really fun."

Teo: "They're really fun."

Rya: "They're hard work. It depends on how you die. it depends on the situation."

Kaitlyn: "It's so epic. There's something so epic about doing it."

Rya: "Particularly in this, because they're so heightened and so dramatic."

Kaitlyn: "I know, it's beautiful."

Rya: "It's bloody, gory."

Kaitlyn: "It's honestly beautiful. It's so romantic. There's a romance to it."

Richard: "It's some of the most fun I've ever had in my career, for sure."

Owen: "It's the honour of the whole experience."

On Adding a New Standout Opening Sequence to the Franchise

Zach: "I think knowing that you're doing a Final Destination movie, the first thing you think is 'oh boy, that means that we're going to have to make an iconic opening', because these movies are known for their openings. And to even be given the torch to add one more to that pantheon is quite a weight to bear.

And so we spent years, we were working on that opening setpiece to try and make it worthy of being in a Final Destination movie. We tried to give it a huge amount of scope. We tried to give it a huge amount of heart. We tried to prey on all sorts of relatable fears.

Adam has a fear of heights, and so we really tried to bring a fear of heights into it and play with that in creative new ways.  We didn't want to just do the standard push-pull vertigo shot. We wanted to try experimental other ideas to really create a sense of vertigo when you're that high up — and give people something that's also really beautiful and touching at the same time that it's horrifying.

And we were really inspired by like movies like Titanic that balance all of those things — of being epic and beautiful and personal, but also just horrifying and stick with you forever so that you always think about them. And we're really glad to see that people are responding to that setpiece, because we spent years trying to make it worthy of that title."

On Why the Final Destination Films Have Enjoyed Such a Following Over a Quarter of a Century — and Being Tasked with Carrying on That Legacy

Zach: "I think that everyone has some amount of anxiety and has that little voice in their head saying 'you know what, this feels a little off — aaah, it's probably fine'. And in Final Destination, you see that 'no, it's not fine and it's actually horrible'.

And so I think there's something that's kind of delightful about that.

I also think that Final Destination is really unique as far as being an experience where you can have a lot of fun with how people are dying, I think that's quite unique. A lot of films that are gory end up being really dark in a non-fun way — and I think Final Destination strikes this perfect balance where you can kind of cheer and root for death, because death is so clever, but also root for the characters to escape and hope that they're okay. And it gives you all the different emotions that you can have in a movie theatre.

And it just sticks with you — from the moment you leave that theatre, all the different things that are in a Final Destination movie, you'll never be able to look at the same way again. And every little weird accident or something that happens in your real life, even if it's not in a Final Destination movie, you'll think that it could be in a Final Destination movie, and that's just a testament to these films' staying power."

Anna: "I think we all felt the pressure of it."

Owen: "The thing that helped me was, there was plenty of pressure in terms of making sure that we made millions of fans happy, but we had an amazing team that really understood what the fans wanted and the fabric of the franchise, and what was important in each of them.

But it did help that the real stars of the movie are the deaths, right? So as long as you can execute on those, I don't think you have to dig deep and bring out some riveting performance — just try to have fun with the audience."

Richard: "Make it enjoyable. Make it entertaining."

On the Significance and Fun of Joining the Franchise for the Cast

Rya: "I think it's really finally hitting us. I guess I'll speak for myself, but I think we've been talking about this a little bit — I think it's finally hitting us how much this movie and this franchise means to its fans. So we're really aware of what an honour it is and how lucky we are."

Kaitlyn: "Absolutely."

Teo: "Something that was always on my mind while we were filming is making a movie that, because I'm a huge fan of this franchise — I just wanted to make sure that we were making a film that the fans would love, and the fans would love to watch over and over and over again. Because that's what these movies are for me.

They're movies that you watch — I watched these a couple times a year, honestly. And I was just hoping that we'd be able to recreate that. And I think we really did."

Kaitlyn: "I think so, too."

Teo: "And I think the fans are going to really love it. And the fans are already loving it."

Richard: "I was 11 when the second one came out, and I saw the second one at a friend's sleepover that we were having — and we got it and were were like 'we shouldn't be watching this'. And I just fell in love with it.

Then I went back and watched one, and then I watched all of them when they came out after that. I've been a massive fan of the franchise since then — and this was, I literally cried on the phone when they told me that I booked this role, because I get to bring my dreams to reality by being a part of horror royalty.

I'm not saying I'm horror royalty. I'm just saying Final Destination is horror royalty."

Owen: "We are. We're saying it."

Richard: "We're all horror royalty."

Anna: "My first memory of Final Destination, I didn't see it, but I remember I think being in sixth grade or something and everyone talking about the rollercoaster. And they were like 'oh yeah, there's a rollercoaster, there's an accident with a rollercoaster'. And I was like 'what, that sounds really scary'.

But I didn't watch the movies until actually after I auditioned for this, because, I was like 'I'm going to watch them all the way through before I go shoot it'.

 So I just started with one — and my boyfriend was a huge fan. He changed my name in his phone to 'Anna Final Destination' when I auditioned for it. I'm still to this day in his phone: 'Anna Final Destination'.

And so while we're watching them, I was just like 'these movies are awesome'."

Richard: "Fun."

Anna: "Like 'these are so great'."

Owen: "I think for me, I was at the age where it was just already such a big part of our pop culture, so I feel like it's just always been this thing for me.

I was never like 'I woke up one day and I saw the film and there was like an explosion for me' — it's just always been huge."

Richard: "It's been lingering over the top of you your entire life."

Owen: "It's been lingering, sprinkling trauma."

Anna: "Omnipresent."

Owen: "And feeding my anxiety for years."

On Everyone's Favourite Death Setups — in Bloodlines and in the Rest of Franchise

Adam: "If we had to pick one individual death, the MRI sequence, usually it gets the biggest reaction from audiences — except for one death in the opening where a little boy gets killed.

That really, I still remember the first screening we had for audiences while we were editing. When the audience cheered when that boy was killed, I realised 'okay, we're on to something here. This is a real audience movie'.

And that was — it's just so much fun, every time."

Rya: "The piano's a good one."

Teo: "The piano's good. MRI machine is my favourite."

Kailtyn: "I like the piano one, because I love music."

Rya: "And I've got to say I like the Reese's peanut butter cups."

Kailtyn: "Yeah, I like those too."

Teo: "Those are good."

Owen: "If Richard were to die. If Richard were to play a character named Erik, and that character were to die."

Anna: "If he died."

Owen: "I think that would be my favourite."

Richard: "I'm emotional."

Anna: "I really like all of them. It's hard to think what I don't like. But first thing comes to my mind is in the fourth one, this guy gets squished through a chain-link fence. That one was really gross.

Because when you see him up against the chain-link fence, just standing there, you're like 'they're not going to squish him through the chain-link fence, right?'."

Owen: "I thought a really smart one was the gymnastics one."

Richard: "It's brutal."

Owen: "Because I feel like if you're not involved in gymnastics and you see people do that, I feel like you naturally think that that's just going to kind of happen."

Richard: "It's inevitable."

Anna: "And that's a great swerve, too, the gymnastics one, because you're like 'what's going to happen' — and then it's so simple."

Richard: "And then it's just the chalk up — and then it's so good."

Anna: "Yeah, exactly."

Richard: "I like Timmy in the second one getting squished by a pane of glass. I like that one."

Final Destination Bloodlines opened in cinemas Down Under on Thursday, May 15, 2025.