It has been 14 long years since we last visited the Final Destination series. We haven’t seen a film in this series since 2011’s Final Destination 5.
Finally, though, Death returns in Final Destination: Bloodlines. However, how did we get here? There has been a lot of death and blood since the first film debuted in 2000. And when a franchise this legendary returns, there’s only one way to celebrate it: by ranking all of the Final Destination films by their death scenes!
For this list, we’re going to judge each film by the collective average scores of their death scenes, evaluating each death scene on a scale of 1-5 (one being worst, five being the best). Those scales are determined by the creativity of the death scenes, the tension, and the brutality. Without further ado, let’s begin:
5. The Final Destination (aka Final Destination 4)
Arguably the worst installment in the franchise is 2009’s The Final Destination. The film itself was criticized heavily for its poor special effects, forced 3D, and terrible performances. However, the biggest offender for the film would have to be its mostly unimaginative death scenes. In a franchise that’s mainly known for its clever and suspenseful deaths, that’s just wrong. While it does have a few zingers, including the notorious pool pressure scene, and a shocking rock-in-a-lawnmower scene, the rest of the kils are just flat. There’s a pretty tepid race track scene that kicks everything off, with really poor CG. There’s a cartoony scene where a racist jerk gets dragged down the road by his own tow truck, then is set ablaze by a combination of gasoline and sparks, and a really poorly executed scene with a man being blasted into a chain fence. The whole thing ends with a truck crash that destroys the film’s lame protagonists that is played out in an overly stylized x-ray credits sequence. In other words the film doesn’t even have the decency to show us the final death scene in full color.
Death Score Average: 💀💀 out of 💀💀💀💀💀
4. Final Destination
The first Final Destination film is a solid horror movie, and the kills are not bad at all. It simply has the disadvantage of being the first movie in a franchise that didn’t even know it was going to be one. This means the scope and ambition of the kills had not been fully realized. Despite that, they are still quite shocking and very fun to see play out. Everything starts with the legendary, flaming destruction of Flight 180. However, after that, a lot of the kills end up pretty subtle. The bathroom hanging was shocking, alongside the very spontaneous bus scene that has since been emulated in films like Mean Girls and even The Final Destination. Seann William Scott’s Billy gets a very swift and brutal decapitation. However, the best, most creative death goes to Ms. Lewton’s Rube Goldbergian kill, which starts with a computer blowing up and slicing her throat, a knife falling into her chest, a chair falling and hammering said knife further in, and a giant explosion destroying her house. Compared to that, the rest of the deaths we see are relatively tame. But again, this was a series in its infancy, with a lot more creative and insane kills ahead of it.
Death Score Average: 💀💀.5 out of 💀💀💀💀💀
3. Final Destination 3
Final Destination 3 starts with a fairly entertaining roller coaster sequence, but sadly it’s hardly the best intro in a series known for kicking things off with incredible death scenes. It hurts it to have followed up the log scene from Final Destination 2 (more on this later). However, it is the origin of three of the greatest death scenes in the entire franchise. Who could forget the tanning bed disaster? Or a weight lifting session gone horribly wrong? What about the film’s McKinley sign disaster? There are a lot of great deaths in this movie, so it was hard (though somewhat appropriate) to put it at #3. This is mostly because the last two contain some all-time sequences from this franchise.
Death Score Average: 💀💀💀 out of 💀💀💀💀💀
2. Final Destination 5
The Final Destination set this franchise back quite a bit. So it was to everyone’s surprise that Final Destination 5 turned out to be a surprisingly strong entry into the franchise. The movie’s cyclical nature, revealing itself to be a stealth prequel was incredibly clever. However, even more clever than that, are the insane deaths in this movie, completely redeeming most of the lame ones we saw in the prior installment. While the bridge disaster from the opening sequence isn’t as good as some of the series’ other intros, all is forgiven by the time you see some all-timers. We’ll start with the lasik surgery scene, in which a character inadvertently turns up the laser intensity on her lasik machine while she’s strapped down. The high powered beam cuts right through her eyes, and mutilates her hand. Just when you think that will be how she goes, she trips over a plush toy’s detached eyeball, and falls out a three story window onto a car, with one of her retinas completely detaching. It’s a shocking sight to behold, especially if eye stuff makes you squeamish (like me).
However, what puts Final Destination 5 near the top of the list is that it contains perhaps one of the greatest death scenes in the entire franchise: the gymnastics scene. A loose screw falls on a balance beam, as the movie subverts our expectations over and over about how the sharp tack is going to come into play, with the character narrowly tip-toeing around the Chekhov’s gun over and over. It’s not until she’s off the beam, and a peer gets on it, that the screw comes into play, causing the unnamed gymnast to step on it, fall off, knock over a plate of powder into a fan that blows into the victim’s face during a mid-air twist, causing her to land hard as a human pretzel, snapping her in half and killing her instantly. It’s one of the biggest, most tense, and most shocking death scenes this franchise has ever unleashed, made all the better by the way it plays with our expectations.
Death Score Average: 💀💀💀.5 out of 💀💀💀💀💀
1. Final Destination 2
While we will eventually find out where Bloodlines ranks on this list, the current MVP of deaths within this franchise belongs squarely to Final Destination 2. Not only is the iconic log truck scene still revered to this day, to the point where it was a linchpin for the Bloodlines marketing campaign, it’s individual deaths are among the most brutal this franchise has had to offer.
Following, yes, the greatest opening in a Final Destination movie (enough to traumatize anyone driving behind a truck of logs to this day), the unlucky survivors of the Route 23 disaster each gets theirs in the worst way imaginable. There’s the fire escape impaling scene, in which a plate of spaghetti and an unstable steel ladder skewer someone right through their eye. There’s the incredibly gory and shocking barbed wire scene, in which a character is trisected, and there’s the iconic plate glass scene that smashes a 15-year-old kid flatter than Wile E. Coyote. Even the tamer deaths are incredible, such as the elevator decapitation scene. The point being that Final Destination 2 was where this franchise truly started to define itself. Without this one and its iconic set of twisted death sequences, future installments would cease to exist completely.
Death Score Average: 💀💀💀💀 out of 💀💀💀💀💀
Where will Final Destination: Bloodlines land on this list? With an incredible 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, the latest installment promises the wildest and bloodiest deaths are still yet to come!
We’ll find out soon enough when Final Destination: Bloodlineshits theaters this weekend!