By MICHAEL GINGOLD
FINAL DESTINATION BLOODLINES, opening tomorrow from New Line/Warner Bros., brings the Death-dealing franchise back in a big way–and that includes the disaster sequence that opens the film. More than just a spectacularly violent setpiece, BLOODLINES’ prologue tells a complete beginning-middle-end story involving young couple Iris (Brec Bassinger) and Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones), who go on what turns out to be a very tragic date at the towering Skyview Restaurant. It may be the best of the precipitating multi-fatality events that have traditionally opened the DESTINATION films–and have had an impact even on those who haven’t viewed them, as Bassinger relates.
“I was scared of the FINAL DESTINATION movies, and I hadn’t even seen them before getting cast in this,” she admits, “but the fears from them have still saturated into my life. I will never drive behind a log truck, and I didn’t even know where that fear came from. Then I watched [FINAL DESTINATION 2] when I got cast in BLOODLINES, and I was like, ‘Ah, this movie has outlived itself and literally scared me without me having even seen it.’”
Once she had viewed the films, the actress (previously seen in 47 METERS DOWN: UNCAGED and THE MAN IN THE WHITE VAN, among others) was excited to be part of the Skyview sequence: “I feel like the opening premonition is always one of the most memorable parts of these movies. I was also intimidated reading the script, because I was like, ‘How are we going to do this? This is so big!’”
Indeed it is, and its creators took a great deal of time figuring out the particulars. Adam Stein, who directed BLOODLINES with Zach Lipovsky, explains, “There was a script when we first got involved that was quite different, so we started with a roundtable story summit with the writers, the producers, Jon Watts–who came up with the original story–and just threw ideas back and forth. That was the first step, and we did that for two years, with them and the rest of the crew–special effects people, stuntpeople–always trying to make things a little bit better, a little more surprising, a little more realistic. The thing about FINAL DESTINATION is, it has the danger of being a bit predictable. You know Death is coming for these characters, so how do you keep twisting it, how do you keep pulling the rug out from under the audience so they don’t know what’s going to happen next?”
“It’s a huge responsibility as filmmakers,” Lipovsky says, “to come onto FINAL DESTINATION, which is known for its incredible, iconic opening setpieces, and we really wanted to do something that honored the franchise and yet also stood apart. And Adam’s afraid of heights, so…”
“I have a real fear of heights,” Stein confirms, “so it was really fun to figure out the visuals. What could we do to make people feel that fear like I do when they watch this movie on the big screen? We didn’t want to just do the typical push-pull dolly-zoom from VERTIGO, which has been used so much. We came up with other ways to stretch and twist the frame and make you feel unbalanced as you’re watching that first sequence.”
The duo reveal that the screenplay, by Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor, originally started with a very different disaster, involving a 1950s riverboat. “The problem with that,” Lipovsky notes, “is that one of our favorite films of all time is TITANIC. And it would be hard to out-TITANIC TITANIC with a big opening setpiece on a boat. Plus a riverboat, we felt, wasn’t as relatable. One of the key things about FD is that the terror comes from things we run into in our everyday lives; that’s what makes it scary. So we wanted to place it in a restaurant, which is something that everyone experiences, and to some degree those tower restaurants. Most big cities have something like that, where there’s a view over the city, and you go there for a special romantic date.”
The look of the Skyview seems especially influenced by Seattle’s Space Needle, and the directors confirm that that was an inspiration, along with Toronto’s CN Tower. Lipovsky, who clearly does not share his co-director’s fear of heights, adds, “I’ve jumped off the Sky Tower in New Zealand, the highest building in the Southern Hemisphere, which is also very similar.” Stein continues, “A lot of them were built in the late ’60s, and they all have that kind of retro-futuristic design, which we quite like. We were looking for something specific to that decade, that would have a period feel but would still be terrifying and relatable today. We looked at old reference photos from the ’60s, and the upper deck at the Space Needle and other places had no security, no protection, low railings.”
The directors also paid a lot of attention to the little foreshadowing moments that are another intrinsic part of the FINAL DESTINATION experience. “We wanted them to have setups and payoffs,” Lipovsky says. “Like when the maître d’ says to them, when they’re first coming in, ‘You’re tearing me apart,’ and then later he gets torn apart. Or little things like cracking the crème brûlée cup, which is circular and kind of feels like glass, as a homage to the dance floor that winds up cracking. We loved how previous movies in the franchise were at their best when they had these omens that gave the audience the chance to participate in the terror, and made them feel like they knew what was going to happen, and then misdirected them.”
The fictitious Skyview Restaurant, Bassinger reveals, was made up of several different real-life pieces. “We had an actual location,” she says, “which I think was a museum in Vancouver where we shot the exteriors, and then we had about five different restaurant sets, depending on what part of the disaster it was. We had a tilted set where the glass broke; when it shatters in the film, that’s all practical. They had breakaway glass, and all the stunt actors went through that. I had to be locked into wires to film on that set, and people were actually being set on fire. It was very important to Zach and Adam to do as much practically as we could.”
That included putting the heat on Bassinger herself for one bit. “It was so scary to me, and in the movie, it lasts about half a second; if you blink, you’ll miss it. Mind you, we probably shot that little moment for a few hours, because there was so much prep that had to be done, because there were so many safety concerns. It’s a part where I duck behind a bar, and one of the stunt actors got fire blown at him. I was like, ‘OK, but what if I don’t duck at the right time?’ And they said, [pause] ‘You should duck at the right time.’ I was like, ‘Copy, got it!’”
The actress appreciates not only the preparation that went into staging the destruction, but the attention that Stein and Lipovsky (“our fearless leaders”) gave to Iris’ character as well. “We had a couple of days of rehearsals where we didn’t work on the action stuff, to be honest,” she reveals. “They wanted to work on the earlier scenes of Iris and Max’s relationship, and that conversation with the woman in the restaurant, and the specific situation that Iris is dealing with in her life. All of those things help build the anxiety within Iris, so when the disaster starts, the audience is already so anxious.”
Early screening audiences have already been responding strongly to FINAL DESTINATION BLOODLINES’ first act, which delights Bassinger. Though she had not yet seen the entire film at the time of this interview, she did catch her portion at a screening in New York. “We filmed it over three months in so many little tiny pieces, and I had a hard time envisioning what it would look like all put together. So to finally see it as the film that it is was so exciting. The whole audience gave it a round of applause when that scene ended, and as an actor, that’s the best feeling. I didn’t think that would ever happen to me, so that was surreal, and I’m very proud of it.”
