The Final Destination franchise has been laying dormant for more than a decade, but in 2025, death returns on its relentless hunt in Final Destination: Bloodlines. So, there’s no better excuse to rank the five entries so far in the franchise.
From its debut in 2000 with Final Destination to its obsession with 3D, the franchise has had quite a roller coaster ride (both figuratively and literally). Ranging from one of the most culturally relevant films of the decade to no better than the equivalent of a cheap SyFy channel film, this is a franchise that swings so widely in quality it’s hard to believe some of the films are connected. However, they all are driven by the simple desire to kill people in ever more complex and gruesome ways as the force of death chases after a collection of young people who should have died in some sort of accident. This has led to some of the most memorable horror kills ever put on screen and some of the bloodiest sequences. too.
What, then, is the final destination of each film on this list? Read on to find out.
5. The Final Destination
It is unclear why The Final Destination turned out so badly given David R. Ellis returned to direct (spoiler: he directed the best film on this list as well), but The Final Destination is so far at the bottom of this list that even death would ignore it if it happened to escape its clutches. Directed like it was a made-for-TV-sequel, the film came out at the height of the 3D craze and yet feels like the flattest film of them all. Its blood and kills are relentlessly uninteresting, its cast entirely forgettable, and its cliche use of 3D is even worse now that it’s resigned to mostly 2D televisions. Even the opening sequence – a bloody race track car accident that spills into the stands – feels uninspired, especially thanks to some woefully bad special effects.
4. Final Destination 3
The rules of the Final Destination films are a bit nebulous, as the franchise is usually more concerned with killing teenagers in creative ways and not holding to any logic of a relentless death force. However, Final Destination 3 is definitely the least connected to whatever rules there are as the movie takes the loose rules of the first two films and throws them out the window in favor of a series of photos that show our protagonists hints at each person’s next death.
It makes for a film that just doesn’t quite work as well as the ones ranked higher and definitely has one of the weaker opening death sequences. For those that don’t care about horror movie logic making sense (how dare you!), the movie features two of the franchise’s best kills (the tanning booth burning and the car engine through the skull), so it does have that going for it. Its opening sequence may be one of the weaker of the franchise, but it makes up for it as the film goes on.
3. Final Destination
The first films in franchises are often their best, as sequels begin to add on too much or lose what made the first one great, but, in the case of Final Destination, it’s very clear that the first movie was really just the groundwork for what was to come. Taking itself a bit too seriously and featuring a collection of good but not great kills, the movie isn’t the creative, campy gorefest that the franchise turned into. As such, it’s hard to rank it higher on the list despite being the film that started it all. Standing on its own, it might be the best-plotted and most cohesive film, but within the context of the franchise, its deaths seem overly simple and can’t deliver the kind of over-the-top ridiculousness that the franchise became known for.
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2. Final Destination 5
If you’re one for twist endings then there’s a legit argument that Final Destination 5 is the best of the films, with an ending so good there’s very little chance you’ll see it coming. After the weirdness of Final Destination 3 and the woeful The Final Destination, the fifth film finally brings the franchise back to its roots with excessively creative kills and a level of quality missing from the previous two films. It’s still in 3D, but not desperate to be 3D, which is the only way to actually make a good 3D movie. The opening bridge sequence may feel a bit more gorey action movie than horror, but by this point, that’s actually what the films had become. Despite some cut-and-paste characters, the plethora of twisty, unpredictable deaths that follow all lead to the absolutely brilliant conclusion with nary a missed beat.
1. Final Destination 2
If you drive by a logging truck and tense up with fear, then you know the reason why Final Destination 2 is at the top of the list. The film opens with a death sequence so good that it has become imbued into the very psyche of pop culture. It then just carries on from there with classic kill after classic kill (elevator decapitation, flying barbed wire, crushing window pane).
It may have been Final Destination that kicked off the franchise, but it was Final Destination 2 that codified the rules (kind of) and turned this into a tongue-in-cheek, gorefest of a franchise. Packed with surprisingly enjoyable characters who don’t all act entirely like idiots the movie balances the bonkers deaths with a surprisingly good story. It’s unfortunate that the next two films that came after it couldn’t recapture the magic, but with 5 getting the franchise back on track, hopefully, we get another great one when Final Destination: Bloodlines lands.
And that’s every Final Destination movie, ranked from worst to best.
Published: Jan 15, 2025 08:04 am