It Took 25 Years for This Iconic Horror Franchise to Make a Near-Perfect Movie – Now It’s a Streaming Hit on Netflix

Courtesy of New Line Cinema Even Death needs a break every now and then – at least it seemed that way when a supernatural horror franchise featuring an ever-present and unrelenting spectre of the Grim Reaper hanging over many of its characters came to an end in 2011. Yet, in 2025 fans of the movies that made everyone frightened to board a plane, drive behind a lorry carrying logs, or ride a rollercoaster were given an unexpected new film that turned out to be the most successful and best of the entire franchise. We are of course talking about Final Destination, the franchise that began all the way back 2000 with Devon Sawa saving himself and several others from a plane destined to blow up on takeoff, only for them all to be systematically picked off by a dark force. Flash$FLSH forward to 2025 and Final Destination: Bloodlines brought the saga back to the big screen with a hugely successful return that has now found its way back into the chart of the most popular movies streaming on Netflix right now. Final Destination: Bloodlines was directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, with Scream writer Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor penning the screenplay from a story idea by MCU$MCU’s Spider-Man$SPDR trilogy director, Jon Watts (who also produced). With that kind of talent behind the scenes, it is perhaps not surprising that things came together pretty well for the film despite many initially questioning whether there was any life left in the story of death. The plot of the film centers on the granddaughter of a woman who cheated Death when she and others survived a tower collapse in the 1960s, who discovers that all these years later the bloodlines of all those who survived are being wiped out. The premise itself adds a little bit of a twist to the story, and with some well crafted death scenes as expected, the film managed to please almost everyone and become a huge financial success to boot. Final Destination: Bloodlines Brought the Franchise Back to Life When Final Destination 5 was released in 2011, it was a marked improvement on its predecessor, but still suffered from a feeling that it pushed its goriness and the craziness of its death scenes to new levels in order to paper over the cracks. Perhaps that was partly why it was, at the time, the highest rated entry of the franchise and moderate financial success with a $155 million box office. 14 years later, Final Destination: Bloodlines arrived to deal a fatal blow to the rest of the saga, delivering a massive 92% Tomatometer score and a worldwide gross of $317.9 million. You can see how that Rotten Tomatoes score compares to the rest of the movies below. Franchise Rank Film Title Release Year Rotten Tomatoes Score 1 Final Destination: Bloodlines 2025 92% 2 Final Destination 5 2011 64% 3 Final Destination 2 2003 52% 4 Final Destination 2000 50% 5 Final Destination 3 2006 44% 6 The Final Destination (4) 2009 28% Based on the success of Bloodlines, it did not take long for Final Destination 7 to be given the