Final Destination: Bloodlines hits theaters May 16, but marketing for the movie is already feeding into fans’ anxieties.
The Final Destination franchise is marking its 25th anniversary with a sixth installment that seeks to ask its famous question: Can you ever cheat death once it sets its sights on you? Instead of Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger hunting down victims, Final Destination racks up its body count by killing people in mundane scenarios that turn deadly thanks to Rube Goldberg-like theatrics. Bloodlines specifically centers on a family that attempts to cheat death — but good luck with that.
For people who are anxious about stepping onto an escalator or getting locked in a tanning bed, Final Destination is here to play on all of your intrusive thoughts. And now, so is the marketing. On social media, fans pointed out the very on-brand billboard for Final Destinations: Bloodlines, which is designed to look like workers are rolling out the image … only for one of them to have met their bloody end due to a tragic accident. (And yes, those are dummies on the billboard.)
“Nothing like a Final Destination billboard to remind you you’re one loose screw away from doom,” one fan wrote on X in response. “Let’s goooo.”
But that’s not the only way that Bloodlines is setting the proper tone for its new movie, which, per the trailer, already features plenty of anxiety-producing death scenes. It’s also calling back to Final Destination 2’s most iconic scene in which a log truck becomes a catalyst for multiple characters’ brutal deaths. Now fans have spotted real-life log trucks bearing the Final Destination: Bloodlines billboard.
“Not them playing around with our trauma,” one person wrote in the comments section of a TikTok that showed the truck driving down a highway. (Yahoo Entertainment has contacted Warner Bros. marketing team to confirm that the truck is real.)
And while Bloodlines is doing all it can to blur the line between reality and fantasy in its marketing, it’s worth noting that the directors of the latest film, Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, actually pulled out all the stops before they were even hired: Using clever editing and VFX, the duo faked their own death scenes during their interview with producers and execs at production company New Line in order to snag the job.
