With the recent release of Final Destination Bloodlines, the franchise has been revived after 13, practically 14 years. The beloved series has caused trauma for many regarding log trucks, airplanes, roller coasters and more. Starring returning actor Tony Todd, the series has a whole new roster of actors to fill up our brand new protagonists.
!SPOILERS AHEAD!
How People Die: The Hints
Final Destination Bloodlines follows the trend of giving hints during the movie to show how people might meet their fate. About 45 minutes into the movie we find ourselves at a barbecue after dear grandma Iris has passed away. Because of this, the cousins, and even Marty (Stefani’s dad), end up meeting up with his ex wife, Darlene (Stefani’s mom). This is a huge moment for the family as Darlene left the family when Stefani was just around 10 years old, not seeing her until now. We end up getting some flashes of what everyone is doing during the barbecue, including playing games, making drinks, and swinging on a porch swing. Of course, if we look a bit deeper into this, we can ‘see into the future’ to an extent.
The scene begins with Julia using a blender that is grinding up something red. After that, we cut to Bobby placing glasses down at the bar before promptly dropping one, shattering into many pieces. While Bobby is attempting to clean everything up, one of these glass shards ends up in the ice container at the bar. This foreshadows something happening during the barbecue, but what else could this scene show?
Let’s start with the blender. Later on, after the barbecue and family meeting called on by Stefani, Julia dies by being crushed in a garbage truck compressor. The blender could be symbolic of this, as blenders take a bunch of items and blend, or ‘crush’ them together. Added onto that, it could be a grouped symbol of Bobby cleaning up the glass shards, representing garbage. Subtle hints, but let’s keep going.
Next, Darlene comes into the backyard carrying a plate of cookies. Charlie runs up being excited to meet his mom with the opportunity to make memories that he can truly remember and asks to have a cookie. Once he has one, he realizes there is peanut butter in it. Bobby looks up in fear while everyone else realizes what just happened. Erik stands up asking if Darlene was trying to kill his brother. What is this foreshadowing?
Later in the movie we eventually get to Erik and Bobby’s death. I think that by showing us how much Erik cared for Bobby was a big hint on the fact that they would die together, along with because of each other. Of course, another big hint is the peanuts in the cookies… However, I don’t believe that was the biggest hint for Bobby’s death. The biggest hint of Bobby’s death in my eyes was the spring trampoline that he was jumping on and later fell through.
After everyone’s drinks are poured, and there is a small family talk done by Harold, we are cut to Erik barbecuing at the grill. Now, I personally do not think this relates to his death in any way. However, I do believe that it was a huge hint to the tattoo parlor incident. The fire explodes in Erik’s face, similar to how fast the tattoo shop went up in flames. I also believe that Erik’s death is not foreshadowed (at least in this scene), considering he was never really supposed to die.
For Charlie and Stefani, I’m not sure if there is much of a warning during this part of the movie. Besides Charlie playing Jenga and Stefani seeing the log truck in Iris’ book, there isn’t much else to go off of. The way the Jenga blocks fall (if you really want to be skeptical of everything) could be seen as a hint because when they do fall the top middle block falls and the two on the side stay up right. Because Charlie was one of the people playing with the Jenga blocks, this could possibly be a hint to the two logs at the end of the movie.
Harold’s biggest hint towards his death, besides one of the trailers for the movie, is the flash in Iris’ book that shows the lawn mower. He also is mowing the lawn when Stefani first arrives to ask about Iris, another big hint. For Darlene I can not think of anything, throughout the entire movie that may hint towards her death. We knew she was meant to die in the explosion at the cabin, but because she didn’t my guess is that death got inpatient.
Easter Eggs
The first easter egg in the movie involves Iris and Paul’s car when they are driving to The Skyview. If you look at their license plate, about 58 seconds into the movie, it reads “FL8-18E”. This reference refers to the very first final destination movie about the airplane of flight 180.
The next reference the movie makes is when Darlene is talking about what hospital JB lives in, which she mentions is Clear Rivers. Clear Rivers is a character from the first Final Destination and even serves a little bit of time in the second movie. This reference serves as a subtle reminder of one of death’s first victims.
Finally, the logs that end up sending Charlie and Stefani off with a nostalgic farewell is a nod to the second Final Destination movie.
This latest installment in the Final Destination franchise left us with an amazing feature of Tony Todd, finally giving his character a proper backstory. The deaths, theories and suspicions followed around this movie give the vibes of figuring out an unsolved crime case. It’s definitely worth a watch.
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