Warning: SPOILERS lie ahead for Final Destination Bloodlines!

Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky brought one of the most gruesome franchises back to life with Final Destination Bloodlines, in which they snuck a surprisingly thematic Easter egg. The latest installment in the horror series brought all six movies full circle as it followed college student Stefani Reyes who, plagued by nightmares of the destructive demise of a high-rise restaurant tower over 50 years earlier, learns that her maternal grandmother successfully stopped said event from happening after having a premonition. This, in turn, led to Death taking out the survivors and their descendants of the Skyview Tower incident, including Stefani and her family.

Led by Kaitlyn Santa Juana as Stefani and the final appearance of Tony Todd as William Bludworth prior to the actor’s pᴀssing, Final Destination Bloodlines has garnered rave reviews from critics and audiences alike, netting a franchise-high 92% approval rating from the former on Rotten Tomatoes. With Stein and Lipovsky at the helm, the film offered plenty of Easter eggs and references to the franchise’s prior installments, including the iconic log truck imagery and confirmations of two canonical survivors, among others.

In honor of the movie’s home entertainment release, ScreenRant interviewed Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky to discuss Final Destination Bloodlines. The directing duo revealed the subtle Easter egg they included in all the kill scenes in the sequel, and how it ties to the movie’s overall theme, as well as their alternate plans for Stefani’s fate, working with Tony Todd to establish Bludworth’s origin story and why they cut A.J. Cook’s scripted return as Kimberly Corman.

Final Destination Bloodlines’ Kills All Have A Subtle Circle Motif

The Easter Egg Plays Into The Movie’s Central Theme

Throughout the franchise, the Final Destination movies have featured their own unique imagery alluding to Death and an incoming kill, whether it’s a sudden gust of wind or a shadow moving across the scene. For Bloodlines, Lipovsky revealed that he and Stein left a subtle Easter egg in which they designed the kills with the concept of “Circles Kill“, which he explains being that “Death is pretty much represented as a circle everywhere that it comes for people“.

The co-director went on to point out some of the Final Destination Bloodlines kills that showcase this, beginning with the Skyview Tower incident, in which “the building is a circle” and “the penny is a circle” and “the dance floor is a circle“. He further points out “the MRI machine” that kills Richard Harmon’s Erik and “the trampoline and cup” that are part of killing Alex Zahara’s Howard.

“All the way through the film, we kind of center punched this circle, and it also represents the narrative of the movie,” Lipovsky explained. “It kind of begins at these train tracks and comes all the way back to where it begins at the end, which represented fate, in a way.“

Some Of The Sequel’s Deaths Are Meant To Remind Fans “It’s Okay To Laugh”

“It Just Unleashes The Fun Meter”

With the movie being rooted in a multi-generational family’s attempts to survive Death’s design, Final Destination Bloodlines certainly doesn’t shy away from an emotional core to its gruesome kills. Even still, Lipovsky and Stein don’t shy away from the absurd fun to be had from their Rube Goldberg-like kills, particularly the demise of the young boy who, in flipping a penny off of the top of the tower, jumpstarts Death’s plans to collapse the tower and kill everyone inside, but has a piano crush him just as he thinks he’s successfully escaped the event.

Following up on Lipovsky’s joke that there’s “a special place in Heaven” for those who cheered at the young character’s death, Stein agrees that they purposely made it a “moment you wait for“, feeling his death “unleashes the fun meter” and tells the audience both in theaters and at home “it’s okay to laugh” and “to cheer for Death“. The co-director also recalls spending “all opening weekend spying on audiences” to see their reactions, calling that one of the “most fun” experiences of having made the film and being excited for how that grows upon its home release.

Now that it’s at home, on home video, or whatever, I think it’s going to be so much fun for people to show their friends the movie, and watch their friends react, because the people’s reactions are just the best part.

Stefani’s Premonitions Purposely Don’t Have An Answer In The Film

The Protagonist Also Nearly Escaped Death’s Grasp

Rather than simply sticking to the franchise’s well-worn formula, one of Final Destination Bloodlines‘ biggest twists is that Stefani has been plagued by nightmares of her grandmother’s premonition from the Skyview Tower incident, rather than having a new premonition of her family’s deaths. When asked the reasoning behind her having this premonition of the past, Lipovsky not only admitted to it being a “really tricky thing” when looking at the whole franchise, but also acknowledged that “there’s a lot of debate about” why various characters have these visions in the first place.

“Is there some other force other than death that’s creating the premonitions, or is Death giving them the premonitions just so that he can have some fun,” Lipovsky pondered. “There’s a lot of different theories on that. And why it’s slightly different in this case is also really interesting. I think we love that the audience can come to their own conclusions on that. We have some theories of our own, but in sort of the same way that Quentin Tarantino never explains what’s in the briefcase, I think there’s a ‘bring your own explanation’ to that that fits for all the audience.“

One area where the film does return to the franchise’s formula, however, is in Final Destination Bloodlines‘ ending, in which both Stefani and her younger brother Charlie meet their ends when a train derailment destroys their neighborhood and logs crush the siblings. However, as the directors revealed, Stefani and Charlie were originally the third and fourth canonical survivors of Death’s plan, as they “explored every different possibility” on how the movie should end.

As Stein explained, in an early draft of the sequel, the film ended “with Stefani making it inside the cabin” and deciding “she’s going to live the rest of her life in the cabin to protect Charlie“, following in the footsteps of her grandmother, Iris. However, while they recognized that it “emotionally made sense” for the character to make this decision, they felt it left “this depressing feeling” and a “sad, melancholy note” for the movie’s climax, with the pair instead wanting “people to leave with a spring in their step and a smile on their face“.

“It just didn’t feel right for Final Destination,” Stein expressed. “So, we went through lots of different versions with the key thing being unpredictability. How do you make people think they know what’s going to happen and then twist it, while also leaving them with a smile on their face when they leave the theater? So it’s a lot of tricky things to balance there. But yeah, we definitely explored lots of possibilities.“

The Directors Worked Closely With Todd To Determine Bludworth’s Backstory

“He Had This Mischievous Sense Of Humor About The Whole Thing.”

One of the biggest points of curiosity in the lead up to the movie’s release was the confirmation that Final Destination Bloodlines would reveal the backstory of Tony Todd’s William Bludworth. As shown in the film, Bludworth was one of the survivors of the Skyview Tower incident, having been a child of the singer of the band playing there, and staying in touch with Iris in the years that followed as they shared theories on why Death was coming after the other survivors and their descendants.

The prior movies not only left it a mystery as to who Bludworth really was in the grand scheme of the franchise, but even seemingly set up allusions to him being Death personified, which is a concept Todd considered when talking with the creative team about his character’s backstory. The co-director went on to share that the overall idea of revealing Bludworth’s backstory came “really early in the process” when developing the story with writers Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor, as well as producer Jon Watts, as they felt “there was really an opportunity to explain” his history by starting in the past.

From there, the directors spent “a couple of years” working with Todd on how best to flesh out Bludworth as a character, with the late actor having “loved stoking all the fan theories“ and having “a mischievous sense of humor about the whole thing“. But even while he toyed with playing into those theories, he was still “really excited to give Bludworth more of a human backstory” and show “how he was a real person” who “might have known about Death in a grounded way“.

“In fact, when he came to set, he was so excited to meet Natasha, who played his mom in the movie, and to meet Jayden, who played the young version of him,” Stein recalled. “He was just so tickled with that, and just making him not just a magical mentor figure, but a real human being who has lived a long life adjacent to Death, I think gave him a lot to play with and a lot of gravitas to the portrayal in this film.“

The directing duo also reiterated what they shared with us during our interview prior to the movie’s release, in which much of Bludworth’s final dialogue was Todd speaking to the audience unscripted as he invited them to live their lives to the fullest and wished both the cast and viewers “good luck” with such. Stein went on to emotionally recall that, even though “he was physically weak” during the production, he was “emotionally just so present and joyful and welcoming” while on set, with the star being “such an amazing guy” and serving as “an inspiration for us” going into their future films.

A.J. Cook’s Kimberly Cameo Was Cut For Good Reason

“It Could Definitely Work In The Future.”

Another detail the duo shared with us prior to the movie’s release was that Final Destination Bloodlines was originally meant to include a cameo from A.J. Cook’s Kimberly Corman, confirming her as being one of the sole two canonical survivors of Death’s plan, alongside Michael Landes’ Thomas Burke. Now, Lipovsky has shared new insight into this scrapped cameo, with the first draft bringing her back during Bludworth’s scene as he tells the Reyes-Campbell family about her survival, and subsequently opening a door and reintroducing her to the franchise.

While acknowledging that her return “could definitely work in the future“, Lipovsky laughed as he revealed that the cameo was “something that we essentially killed” as it raised too many logical and emotional questions about the character. “It was sort of like, ‘Has she just been hiding in that room waiting this whole time?’,” Lipovsky shared. “And then, it also kind of took away from the Bludworth of it all. We just kind of felt it much better to make this movie about Bludworth, because he’s the one we’re learning about in the past, and all that type of stuff.“

The Creative Team Had A Mantra For Designing The Movie’s Kills

This Has Led To Many New Fears

With five movies already before them, Lipovsky and Stein acknowledge one of the biggest challenges of Final Destination Bloodlines was designing the kills themselves, coming up with inventive new ways for Death to reclaim its victims that audiences would “never see the same way again after watching this movie“. In the time since the movie’s release, the duo have received plenty of messages from fans who have been affected by the movie’s kills, with one having “sent us a video of someone on a plane” with the camera zooming “into the floor, two seats forward, where a penny was on the ground“.

Stein went on to acknowledge that everything from “garbage trucks” to “engagement rings” have subsequently become newfound fears for audiences, which ties into a mantra that “one of the executives at New Line” told the duo when they were developing the film. “He kept saying, ‘What can we ruin for people?’,” Stein recalled. “Because Final Destination is famous for ruining logs, ruining laser eye surgery, tanning beds, you name it.“

Check out our previous Final Destination Bloodlines interviews with

• Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Rya Kihlstedt & Anna Lore (Pre-Release)
• Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Rya Kihlstedt, Anna Lore, and Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (Pre-Release Spoilers)

Source: ScreenRant Plus