FINAL DESTINATION: Bloodlines
NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Athena
The movie begins in 1969. Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) is taking Iris (Brec Bassinger) out on a date to Skyview, a new high-rise restaurant. Iris is nervous about the heights and notices a kid stealing a penny from a wishing fountain. On the elevator ride up, the kid continues to make Iris nervous by intentionally stomping on its glass bottom to scare her.
At Skyview, a bartender opens a wine bottle, sending its cap into a chandelier, where one of its shards drops and forms a crack on the reinforced glass floor. Iris continues to get nervous and heads to the bathroom, where she throws up – she is a few months pregnant. Also in the bathroom is the son of one of the singers, whose mother tells him to wait for her. The singer then spots Iris and congratulates her. Iris has not yet told Paul and is nervous about his reaction, but the singer encourages her to find her happiness.
Paul then takes Iris up to the observation deck and proposes to her. When Iris tells him about the pregnancy, he is overjoyed and she accepts. Just as this happens, the troublesome kid from earlier is throwing pennies off the deck. One of the pennies manages to fall inside the ventilation system of Skyview, where a fan launches it into releasing gas into the restaurant.
Iris and Paul celebrate their proposal by dancing with several other restaurant goers on the glass dance floor. Suddenly, the floor shatters, sending a lot of guests falling off the tower and killing Paul. An open flame then breaks out in the restaurant and is ignited by the gas, causing an explosion and setting multiple guests on fire. Iris then attempts to escape but is thwarted several times – the overloaded elevator plummets due to the weight and splits a man in half, the stairs collapse as people run down them, and the supports of the tower collapse, sending guests to be pressed against the glass windows. The penny from earlier then lands on a piano, sending it crashing into a woman and the windows, killing most of the other remaining guests. The penny-throwing child then gets crushed by the falling piano after seemingly escaping the restaurant.
Iris then sees the singer’s son still alive and makes her way across the collapsing restaurant to save him. The floor then breaks even more, sending Iris and the boy hanging off a piece of concrete. Iris’s ring then gets stuck on the support, and the weight ends up tearing the skin off her ring finger, which sends her and the boy plummeting to the bottom. The boy dies last, while Iris gets impaled through the mouth by a big glass shard…. and then it cuts to the present day with Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) screaming after witnessing the premonition.
Stefani has been seeing the Skyview premonition as a persistent nightmare that’s causing her grades to plummet. She deduces that Iris is her estranged grandmother, and decides to take a leave and go home and get some answers at the encouragement of her roommate.
Back home, Stefani is reunited with her father, Marty (Tinpo Lee), and brother, Charlie (Teo Briones). When Stefani asks Marty about Iris, he is distant – he blames Iris for being the reason her mother, Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt), left their family. Charlie is also distant from Stefani, embittered by her never reaching out after leaving for college. Stefani then drives Charlie to visit their cousins Julia Campbell (Anna Lore), Erik Campbell (Richard Harmon), and Bobby Campbell (Owen Patrick Joyner). It is clear that thanks to Stefani’s absence, Charlie has grown closer to their cousins instead of her.
Stefani then tries to get more answers from her uncle Howard (Alex Zahara) and aunt Brenda (April Telek). Howard is outraged – when he and Stefani’s mother, Darlene, were growing up, the paranoia over surviving the premonition and knowing Death was coming caused Iris enormous amounts of trauma that she passed over to her children after Paul died. Brenda then secretly guides Stefani to a box of letters that Iris sent to their family warning them about Death.
Stefani uses the letters to track Iris down (now played by Gabrielle Rose). Iris has locked herself into a secure compound for over 20 years and is now dying of cancer. Iris shows Stefani a notebook – inside are all the details she’s gathered about Death over the years, including accidents such as the Route 23 pileup (Final Destination 2) and the Flight 180 crash (Final Destination). Iris then reveals that after the premonition, she saved everyone, and now death is coming for their family after working through the list over all these years.
When Iris tries to convince Stefani to stay with her in the locked compound, Stefani attempts to run away. Despite her fear, Iris runs out to give Stefani her notes and accepts her fate – Death then causes an impacted fire extinguisher to launch a weathervane straight into her head, killing her.
At Iris’s funeral, Stefani’s mother Darlene arrives, now living in an RV and going from trailer park to trailer park. Stefani is furious at her for abandoning them when they were little. Charlie then confronts her for doing the same thing when she left for college.
The Campbells then returned home to host their memorial barbecue, and Darlene joined them. Howard tries to convince her to stay at their house, but she declines. Howard then gathers everyone for a toast to enjoy the time they have with each other while it lasts. A series of mishaps then happen during the barbecue – a faulty gas tank almost burns Erik, a rake is directly underneath a trampoline Bobby is jumping on, and a broken shard of glass ends up in someone’s drink. Darlene saw the rake and moved it, but an unsupervised Hice Pale Ale beer bottle fell and caused a hose to inflate.
While this is happening, back at her house, Stefani starts looking at Iris’s notebook and begins feeling Death’s presence. A gust of wind then sends a family picture falling to the ground with a singular shard of glass falling in front of her. Stefani realizes they’re in trouble and races to the barbecue. She arrives, but it’s too late – the trampoline rips with Bobby on it, and the glass falls with the shard falling right side up. Howard then steps on the shard, impaling his foot, and just as this happens, the hose sends the rake falling onto their lawnmower, activating it and sending it right onto Howard’s face, killing him.
After Howard’s funeral, Stefani gathers the family around to discuss Iris’s notes – over the years, Death has come for every single person who cheated death and survived the Skyview premonition. Now he’s coming for Iris’s blood relatives in order (Howard, Erik, Bobby, Julia, Darlene, Stefani, and Charlie) because they were never supposed to exist. The grieving Campbells are all furious at Stefani and leave.
Later that night, while closing up at a tattoo parlor, Erik nearly gets killed after a series of events cause a fan to get wrapped up in chains that get caught on his nose ring and he ends up falling into a fire caused by isopropyl alcohol. When Stefani and Charlie go find him, he’s alive and well – the leather jacket he was wearing protected him from the fire.
Stefani then tries to warn him about Death, and he mocks her, even after a near miss with an ambulance almost running him over. Julia then tells Stefani to leave them alone… and then a series of events cause nearby kids to kick a soccer ball into her head, causing her to fall into a garbage bin. A truck then picks her up and throws her into the compactor. While Stefani tries to save her (with Charlie and Erik running after the truck), it’s too late – the compactor ends up crushing Julia’s head.
The family then starts believing Stefani. After Stefani expresses confusion with Death’s order, Brenda reveals that it skipped Erik because Erik isn’t Howard’s biological son. Stefani, Charlie, Darlene, and Bobby then decide to go look for a “JB” who works at a hospital. Erik decides to join them to make sure Bobby is safe. During the ride, Stefani and Darlene begin to find common ground and fix their relationship.
At the hospital, “JB” ends up being “William John Bludworth” (Tony Todd), who was the son of the singer Iris saved during the Skyview premonition. Over the years, he and Iris have been friends who worked together on her research and have been tracking Death over the years. He explains the rules of Death’s List to the family and how to escape it – either kill someone to take the rest of their life (as seen in Final Destination 5) or die and be revived like Kimberly Corman (Final Destination 2). He then says that with Iris dead and him also having cancer, he knows his time is coming. Bludworth retires from his job, then wishes the family good luck and tells them to enjoy whatever is left of their life.
While Stefani, Charlie, and Darlene were discussing their next move, Erik and Bobby decided to take things into their own hands and wander off to the hospital. After briefly discussing and shutting down the idea of killing a baby, they decide on a plan – Erik would trigger Bobby’s deadly peanut allergy and then have him be revived at the hospital. When trying to get peanut butter cups from a vending machine, the coil malfunctions. Erik then cracks the glass, trying to get the cups out.
Both brothers then enter an MRI room and unknowingly turn the machine on. After Bobby eats the peanut butter cup, the machine’s magnet activates and rips all piercings off of Erik’s body, and then a wheelchair forces him into the machine and crushes him. Bobby then crawls to Erik’s body to get his EpiPen and stabs himself in time – only for a nurse to open the door, causing the coil from the vending machine to fly straight into his skull as a horrified Stefani, Charlie, and Darlene arrive. A coin similar to the one that would have caused the Skyview disaster is then picked up by an older lady at the hospital.
Now, down to only three, Darlene decided that their next move was to send her to lock herself into Iris’s compound and live out the rest of her days there so that Stefani and Charlie could survive. Just as they break through the gate using Darlene’s RV, a malfunctioning light causes an explosion at the compound. Stefani then gets trapped in her seat by a broken seatbelt while Charlie is pinned by debris. Darlene frees Charlie, only for a lamppost to fall onto her and crush her. Stefani then seemingly drowns, but Charlie revives her. The siblings embrace as they think they’ve defeated Death.
A few days later, Stefani is preparing to go back to college. She decides to send Charlie off to his prom date. During this, the old lady from the hospital accidentally drops the penny while trying to buy cookies, sending it flying in the middle of train tracks. Stefani and Charlie hear that it doesn’t mean she died and was brought back to life because her heart never stopped if she was just revived. Stefani begins seeing signs reminding her of the Skyview premonition. A train then derails and starts going for Stefani and Charlie. The siblings run and evade the train…. only for logs from the top to fall down and crush the both of them.
The credits then roll with newspaper clippings of the accidents that claimed the survivors of the Skyview premonition (some of which are earlier kills in the previous movies), ultimately ending with Stefani and Charlie’s obituary. An in memoriam credit is then dedicated to Tony Todd.
