'Final Destination' is back! How to watch all 5 movies in order ahead of Bloodlines (including that surprise prequel) (2025)

Final Destination (2000)

Devon Sawa is a horror mainstay these days due to his role(s) on Chucky and the upcoming Heart Eyes, but he established his genre bonafides with the one-two punch of 1999's Idle Hands and, of course, 2000's Final Destination. Sawa's grisly vision of a mid-air plane explosion remains the franchise's most resonant premonition — who hasn't boarded a flight while trying to stifle similar fears?

Initially written as an X-Files spec script, the film that started it all helped (for better or worse) steer horror from masked killers toward more archetypal monsters that better reflected the cynicism of the era. Hostel, for example, turned the killer into a faceless stranger, while the Saw movies posited the victim as complicit in their own death. Final Destination was among the bleakest genre developments, locking its hapless teens into intractable fates, their foe the unknowable specter of death itself. Poor Sawa — he never stood a chance.

Where to watch Final Destination: Max

Final Destination 2 (2003)

What Final Destination did for airplanes, Final Destination 2 does for logs. We can only imagine the country's logging truck drivers are grateful for this movie — who would ever tailgate one after watching this?

The franchise's sophomore outing sees Kimberly (A.J. Cook) link up with Ali Larter's Clear Rivers (what a name!), who, a year after the first film's fatal flight, is still reckoning with Death. Though Entertainment Weekly didn't love it at the time, we've come around on it in the years since, calling it "relentless" and "exhilarating" in our ranking of the Final Destination films.

Where to watch Final Destination 2: Max

Final Destination 3 (2006)

By (mostly) unyoking itself from the first two films, Final Destination 3 is all about the kills. Sure, Mary Elizabeth Winstead's Wendy gets to save the day with some hooey about prophetic photographs, but her journey is mostly there to pad out the set pieces, which involve a roller coaster, a weight machine, and, most brilliantly, a pair of tanning beds.

As EW's critic noted in his review, nasty stuff happens to nasty people. "InFinal Destination 3, all the victims are spoiled pills who razz one another with toxic distaste," he wrote. "When they get offed, they’re being punished not for their sexuality (as in a slasher film) but simply for the crime of being the annoying scuzz they are — and the audience, grooving on the bad vibes, goes wild." There are worse ways to watch a movie.

Where to watch Final Destination 3: Max

The Final Destination (2009)

The Final Destination is the first (and only) Final Destination movie shot in 3-D, but it looks just as bad through those glasses as it does without them. The feature starts with a CGI-riddled mass slaughter at a stock car race before scoring a few neat kills — the car wash is clever — but its predecessor's crudeness is taken to soul-numbing lengths here.

"It’s no exaggeration to say that the actors have less personality than the pipes, nail guns, grinding gears, decaying beams, and slowly spreading oil spills that are fused, with a kind of empty-dread technical precision, into Rube Goldberg torture devices," said EW's critic in his review.

Where to watch The Final Destination: Max

Final Destination 5 (2011)

Final Destination 5 begins with Sam Lawton (Nicholas D'Agosto) saving his co-worker's lives (and ruining their work retreat) after having a premonition about a bridge collapse. It's a fun sequence, but nobody talks about the beginning of Final Destination 5, they talk about the end. Why? We won't spoil it here, but it's easily the franchise's best twist, not to mention a massive payoff for longtime fans of the series. Screenwriter Eric Heisserer would go on to score an Oscar nomination for Denis Villeneuve's Arrival, and based on this plotting, that's no surprise.

One of the stronger entries, Final Destination 5 deploys several queasy set pieces involving gymnastics bars, a belt sander, and an acupuncture session, all of which zig when you're expecting a zag. And then there's the eye gag. "After watchingFinal Destination 5, I’m fairly certain I’m never going to get Lasik surgery," EW's writer posited in her review.

Where to watch Final Destination 5: Max

Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)

Per its synopsis, the upcoming Final Destination: Bloodlines is about a college student who "heads home to track down the one person who might be able to break the cycle and save her family from the grisly demise that inevitably awaits them all."

Of course, you wouldn't know any of that from the trailer, which, by focusing on a particularly gruesome death, shows a keen understanding of why people watch these movies. It ain't for the story.

Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky's film stars Brec Bassinger, Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, and franchise veteran Tony Todd, who filmed his contributions before dying at 69 in November.

How to watch Final Destination: Bloodlines: In theaters on May 16, 2025