Adam Stein
50 connections found
Filmography
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Connections, in both directions
Saw (2004)
Directed by James Wan
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Themes Visuals Characters
It’s why splatter-horror films like Saw and Escape Room have spawned multiple movies.
…su éxito vino justo antes de que «El Juego del Miedo» pateara el tablero y el interés pase de lo sangriento a lo grotesco…
Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein know that they are playing to a different breed of sick puppy than those who enjoy, for example, the Saw movies…
The deaths aren’t repulsive in a Saw way, but amusingly repellent.
The series has never followed characters from film to film like the Saw or Scream franchises…
…like Jigsaw from the Saw movies, but with less taunting and better effects.
The comedic treatment of macabre themes was superior to that of comparable horror films, such as The Monkey.
Just like 2025’s similarly themed The Monkey, the breakneck pace of Bloodlines really amps up in the dramatic finale.
Bloodlines isn’t even 2025’s first horror movie about the disembodied specter of death creating cartoonishly brutal tableaux of murder: Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey both excelled in and elevated that space.
Like this year’s “The Monkey,” this franchise is about accepting death is a part of life and we’re foolish to think otherwise.
Like The Monkey, Bloodlines focuses on giving its audience a good time rather than focusing on themes and delivering a message.
…unlike Osgood Perkins’ tonally disastrous The Monkey (2025)…
Final Destination (2000)
Directed by James Wong
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Themes
Final Destination Bloodlines is the sixth film in the always deviously fun horror franchise.
It’s been 25 years since the first Final Destination and almost 15 years since Final Destination 5…
It’s never a good idea to get emotionally invested in any of the characters in a “Final Destination” movie, since pretty much all of them are marked for death.
Final Destination: Bloodlines is a stellar return for the franchise that will appeal to long-term fans of the original film, raising the stakes in all the right ways.
Resurrecting a franchise after an extended slumber is always a risky move, even more so with a series as beloved by horror fans as Final Destination.
Final Destination clearly believes in going out with a bang, or two or three.
Halloween (2018)
Directed by David Gordon Green
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Themes Characters Plot
In a post-Halloween (2018) age, it’s remarkable that, aside from a mention of “sick”, nobody ever explicitly states mental illness or trauma.
…no perpetual reminder of family trauma (looking at you, David Gordon Green’s Halloween reboot trilogy)…
Older Iris should have been given the Jamie Lee Curtis a la “Halloween H20: 20 Years Later” (1998) treatment, not Danny McBride and David Gordon Green’s trash “Halloween” reboot treatment.
Here, the same narrative scaffolding that brought Laurie Strode and Jamie Lee Curtis back to “Halloween” (2018) meets the more retro side of The Conjuring Universe…
Decades later, Stefani confronts her reclusive grandmother (à la David Gordon Green’s Laurie Strode), who’s somehow avoided Death’s touch—but the reaper’s back.
Final Destination 3 (2006)
Directed by James Wong
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Visuals Themes Characters Plot
It doesn’t sprint from death scene to death scene the way FD3 did, and it’s better for it.
The writers inject a knowing sense of dark humour amidst the carnage that’s in keeping with some of the other sequels, particularly the third one with its sitcom-esque characters and somewhat hilarious tanning bed demises…
Let’s just say he’d definitely be BFFs with Ian McKinley from Final Destination 3 if they ever had the chance to meet.
From log trucks to tanning beds, rollercoasters, and even the humble shower cubicle, Final Destination has consistently unlocked a new set of phobias…
Like all of the Final Destination films, Bloodlines opens with a complex, Rube-Goldbergian catastrophic slaughterhouse of death.
This is also the series at its best — or at least tying with Final Destination 3. Santa Juana isn’t on level with the third film’s lead, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, in terms of charm, but she’s great at communicating concern and terror.
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Themes
In the past, you could play chess with the Grim Reaper (The Seventh Seal)…
No “Final Destination” movie is ever going to be a deep cinematic masterpiece about death; if that’s what you’re after, search out “The Seventh Seal.”
…a less verbosely existential version of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957)…
The very first movie debuted the moderately clever X-Files-esque notion that if somehow you evade certain doom — such as by getting off an airplane because you have a premonition that it will explode on takeoff, a disaster you then witness from the safety of the terminal — you are only living on borrowed time thence, because you were supposed to die and Joe Black has to keep his books balanced, or something. (In fact, the first movie was indeed spun out of a script originally intended for The X-Files.)
…mezclada con el encanto de sobrenatural inexplicable a lo «Expedientes Secretos X»…
Originally conceived as an episode of Chris Carter’s 1990s’ sci-fi television series The X-Files…
“Final Destination” (2000) delivers Jeffrey Reddick’s original “X-Files” spec script idea in its purest form…
Remember the 2000 original was directed by James Wong and written by Wong and Glen Morgan, both pioneering writers on “The X-Files.”
Drop (2025)
Directed by Christopher Landon
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Themes Visuals Plot
By focusing on a dinner date at a death-defying height, the film feels spiritually akin to last month’s thriller Drop.
…only someone like Christopher Landon, who directed “Heart Eyes” (2025) and “Drop” (2025), which is set in a space like the opening act, could probably stick the landing…
The Skyview has all the texture and bustle of Drop’s built-for-screen restaurant with an even more breathtaking view.
…that opening atop the Sky View is actually pretty stunning, an improvement on the similar one in the recent “Drop,”…
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)
Directed by Jim Gillespie
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
…seemingly enjoying this new wave of revisited franchise enjoyment (Halloween, Scream, the forthcoming I Know What You Did Last Summer) that allows him to indulge in numerous wicked ways for the crowds wanting a break from elevated, sophisticated horror.
The Final Destination (2009)
Directed by David R. Ellis
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Themes
The Final Destination films have always been about fate and destiny and the ways in which people endeavor to control their own outcomes by outmaneuvering Death’s design.
In contrast to later movies, like The Final Destination, which veered into comedy but always fell flat to the point of making you cringe, this one is actually funny and sure of its tone.
Except for The Final Destination, the fourth movie in the franchise, every movie in this series has plenty of fun and entertaining moments of people getting killed in ridiculous ways.
(My apologies to the rest of the series, except for The Final Destination, which can rot in hell alongside all of its characters).
Unlike the 3D gimmick of The Final Destination, the franchise has learned its lesson to lean towards realism.
Aside from the awful fourth film, The Final Destination (2009), the series has been surprisingly consistent as escapism for fans of the macabre.
Final Destination 2 (2003)
Directed by David R. Ellis
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Plot
…the opening disaster is an instant franchise highlight: a jaw-dropping, nerve-shredding sequence that rivals the iconic highway pile-up from Final Destination 2 (this reviewer’s all-time favorite).
One of the most anxiety-riddled moments comes when a character attempts to follow the path of Kimberly Corman (A.J. Cook) in "Final Destination 2" by intentionally dying in the hopes of being resurrected to "cheat" Death by deliberately going into anaphylaxis.
Taking a page from Final Destination 2, the latest film connects the past and present with Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) experiencing nightmares of an accident from 1968 at a high-rise tower that involved her grandmother Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger).
There are nods to previous films with logs, buses, and fans but they feel like part of a shared cinematic language, not lazy call-backs.
A couple of close calls evoke iconic sequences, including one gruesome closing nod to the series’s highpoint, Final Destination 2.
…terrifying disasters, like the log truck of Final Destination 2…
Final Destination 5 (2011)
Directed by Steven Quale
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Themes
It’s been 25 years since the first Final Destination and almost 15 years since Final Destination 5…
If you somehow managed to avoid the five films released between 2000 and 2011, there’s a simple formula: An innocent victim has a premonition of a mass-casualty event then warns others of the impending tragedy.
Having dabbled with people’s fears of airplanes, freeways, roller coasters, motor speedways and bridge crossings across the previous five films…
If 2011’s Final Destination 5 brought us full circle to the first film…
It’s been 14 years since Final Destination 5.
It has been 14 years since the last Final Destination movie hit theaters.
…películas comoThe Babadook (2014), Hereditary (2018) o Longlegs (2023) integran este tipo de cine…
From Hereditary to The Babadook, we’ve seen women dismissed, gaslit, and sidelined until the walls start bleeding. In Hereditary (2018), Annie tries to connect the dots of her family spiritual route while everyone else shrugs and simply eats dinner.
Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)
Directed by John Luessenhop
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Themes Characters
Indies like V/H/S/Beyond (7th entry) to backtracks like The First Omen (6th entry, remake included) are healing the stigma of a Jason Goes to Hell or Texas Chainsaw 3D.
…as for Erik (Richard Harmon), Julia (Anna Lore), and Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) — the coolest cousins to grace a major horror sequel since Alexandra Daddario hit “Texas Chainsaw 3D”…
…one-upped both screen versions of Stephen King’s Firestarter in just how to do a sci-fi horror about a young girl with escalating psychic powers…
A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
Directed by Michael Powell
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Themes
…or argue yourself off the inventory list (A Matter of Life and Death)…
The sixth installment’s opening sequence qualifies as a brilliant horror short — think “The Twilight Zone” with slapstick and CGI.
…a series of events involving a soccer ball and a garbage truck, which the disembodied ‘Death’ character likely found inspiration from Pee Wee’s Playhouse’s breakfast preparing contraption…
Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)
Directed by Wes Craven
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Themes
In doing so, it joins the ranks of self-aware horror sequels like Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and Bride of Chucky.
Independence Day (1996)
Directed by Roland Emmerich
influenced Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
Visuals
Also, the Skywalk tower tragedy is a calculatedly shot sequence, but somehow the overall fit for it appeals more to the lines of disaster films like “Independence Day” (1996) or “2012” (2009).