The Final Destination horror film franchise is one of the bloodiest to ever hit our screens. 

Each of the five films in the American series, released between 2000 and 2011, sees a group of characters narrowly avoid death, after one has a kind of premonition about what will happen and subsequently saves them. 

But Death, a kind of absent villain in the series, is not so easily evaded – and it begins to pick off the cast one by one, in increasingly gruesome and creative ways, to redress the thwarting of its plan. 

It was created by Jeffrey Reddick, based on a script he submitted for an episode of nineties American sci-fi series The X-Files – which ended up being optioned as its own film instead. 

And after nearly 15 years since the latest instalment, the series is back, with the release of Final Destination Bloodlines on May 14. 

In celebration of the franchise’s return, we have compiled a list of its most stomach-churning deaths – which Bloodlines most certainly does not fail to add to. 

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After nearly 15 years since the latest instalment, the series is back, with the release of Final Destination Bloodlines (pictured) on May 14

The new entry in the series (pictured) has as its central brush with death the narrowly avoided collapse of a new high-rise restaurant tower in the sixties during its opening night 

Brothers Erik (Richard Harmon, right) and Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner, left) devise a cunning plan to try to halt the picking off of their entire bloodline

 

Macabre MRI machine (Final Destination Bloodlines, 2025) 

The new entry in the series has as its central brush with death the narrowly avoided collapse of a new high-rise restaurant tower in the sixties during its opening night. 

Death comes for everyone who would have died in it one by one and in order of their would-be ends – as well as their children, who otherwise would not have been born. 

Brothers Erik (Richard Harmon) and Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) devise a cunning plan to try to halt the picking off of their entire bloodline. 

They go to a hospital to where they plan to have Bobby eat peanut ʙuттer cups, which he is allergic to, to send him into anaphylaxis before immediately getting medical help – thus ending their family’s cycle of death. 

But this bizarre, far-fetched plan, hatched in a random room with an MRI machine in it that they quickly rushed into as a quiet space for their scheming, is soon thwarted. 

Erik’s phone is accidentally dragged into the machine, making its magnetisation capabilities go haywire, and its pull so strong, the room begins to shake. 

Being the product of an affair his mother had and having cheated Death’s vengeful killings twice before this point, Erik thinks he is safe – he believes it is the direct, full family bloodline under attack. 

And with not even his brother Bobby’s bulky metal wheelchair drawn in by the machine’s magnetic pull, he thinks it cannot pose much of a risk. 

They go to a hospital to where they plan to have Bobby eat peanut ʙuттer cups, which he is allergic to, to send him into anaphylaxis before immediately getting medical help – thus ending their family’s cycle of death. Pictured: The MRI scene from Final Destination Bloodlines

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He could not be more wrong. Erik is covered in piercings due to his job at a tattoo parlour – and the metal fixtures are violently torn out of his ears, face, nose, nipples and even genitalia one by one, drawn to the machine’s magnetic field. 

Bobby’s chair is then finally pulled in, catching Erik up in it as it goes and smashing his shredded body against the machine. 

And while Bobby survives his allergic reaction, using his EPI-PEN, the magnets make the spring in a nearby vending machine – where they bought the peanut ʙuттer cups – come loose. 

The metal impales his head and draws him in to be crushed against the machine too, in a gruesome end for the two brothers.  

Tanning bed blaze (Final Destination 3, 2006) 

Who knew a trip to the tanning salon could get so gory? 

Confusingly similarly named best friends Ashley (Chelan Simmons) and Ashlyn (Crystal Lowe) met their fate while bronzing up, in a joint death, like Bobby and Erik.

The near-fatal experience Death is seeking revenge for in this film is a rollercoaster ride which high schooler Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) had a premonition was going to crash – helping her save many of her classmates, much to Death’s chagrin.

Heading for the pamper session with a mᴀssive fizzy drink each in hand, Ashley puts her cup on the table above the machine powering the beds. 

Who knew a trip to the tanning salon could get so gory? Pictured: The tanning bed scene from Final Destination 3

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The condensation drips onto the mechanism below, causing the beds to malfunction and rapidly heat up. 

As the girls try to escape, a vibrating phone causes a coat rack to fall and hit a shelf, which comes down on the beds, lodging them shut – and trapping them inside. 

The girls roast alive, forced to watch their own deaths in the mirrored surfaces of the metal beds around them – before the devices catch fire and burn them to death. 

It is followed by a particular grisly cut, which swaps the pair of beds for a sH๏τ of two coffins side by side. 

Tanning beds were the talk of the noughties – but if the obvious health risks were not enough to deter people, this scene might finally put them off for life. 

Botched laser eye surgery (Final Destination 5, 2011) 

With Death on the hunt for those who survived a collapsing bridge in the series’ fifth instalment, Olivia’s (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) appointment for laser eye surgery soon turns freaky. 

In this prequel to the first film in the series, Final Destination, we see yet another run-in with malfunctioning equipment. 

When the surgeon leaves the room briefly, the laser stops working properly, burning both Olivia’s exposed eye and her hand, which she tries to protect herself with. 

With Death on the hunt for those who survived a collapsing bridge in the series’ fifth instalment, Olivia’s (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood) appointment for laser eye surgery (pictured) soon turns freaky

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Astonishingly, she survives this and gets out from under the laser’s powerful beam, stumbling around the room blindly, in the strongest sense of the word. 

But she soon slips on her beloved teddy bear, which sees her tumble from the window on to a parked vehicle four stories below.

It is there that her scorched eye pops out of its socket – and gets run over by a pᴀssing car. Quite literally an eye-poppingly brutal end. 

Fire escape farce (Final Destination 2, 2003) 

The series’ second instalment has a group of drivers avoid a pile-up on the motorway, thanks to college student Kimberly’s (AJ Cook) lucky premonition. 

But no one is getting away scot-free from bloodthirsty Death – and one of the escapees, Evan (David Paetkau), meets an especially grisly end. 

Not even safe during a quiet night-in at home, Evan accidentally gets his hand stuck in his garbage disposal unit, a blender-type device under American sinks used to shred up food waste for easy pᴀssage through the plumbing. 

A grease fire then starts on his hob, setting light to some kitchen roll and cardboard boxes – and with his hand stuck and his flat on fire, his fate appears sealed.

But like Olivia managing to escape seemingly certain death by laser beam, Evan is somehow able to flee via his fire escape. 

The ladder from the fire escape comes crashing down, with the metal impaling him in the eye. Pictured: The fire escape scene in Final Destination 2

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Soon reaching the street, he and the viewer think he has made it safely – but in Final Destination, that is never the end. 

The ladder from the fire escape quickly comes crashing down, with the metal impaling him in the eye.  

Barbecue run-in (Final Destination 2, 2003) 

Brian (Noel Fisher) is not even initially on Death’s hit list in Final Destination 2. 

Present by chance when the central car crash happens, he is simply a bystander who helps out the main cast caught up in it. 

But he accidentally gets put in Death’s firing line when he nearly gets hit by a news van, descending on the crash site to report on it – and is rescued in the nick of time by an actual would-be crash victim. 

Everyone thinks they are home and dry, with the only crash survivors – the film’s premonition prophet Kimberly and policeman Thomas Burke (Michael Landes) – heading to Brian’s for a barbecue. 

They have a prescient conversation about near-death experiences, before Brian leaves the table to check how the food is getting on. 

But the barbecue then explodes – and his seared arm flies through the air, from where Brian was standing, to land square on his mother’s plate. Not quite the meal she envisioned. 

Everyone thinks they are home and dry, with the only crash survivors – the film’s premonition prophet Kimberly and policeman Thomas Burke (Michael Landes) – heading to Brian’s for a barbecue (pictured) 

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Flipping out at gymnastics practice (Final Destination 5, 2011) 

Gymnast Candice (Ellen Wroe) closely avoided an end to her acrobatic career after she survived the bridge collapse that marks this film’s near-fatal event. 

Glad to be back in the gym, she takes to the beam to keep honing her craft. 

But what she does not spot is a small upturned screw, resting in the middle of the equipment.

It makes for a hair-raising watch as she dances around the screw, mere inches away from it each time. 

But she soon makes a safe dismount and we think we are out of the woods – something it it always wrong to think when watching Final Destination. 

Soon, another gymnast, taking their turn on the beam after Candice, does fall prey to the upturned screw, which stabs her in the foot. 

She falls from the equipment, knocking over a bowl of hand powder, which a fan blows into Candice’s face as she swings on the bars. 

Suddenly blinded, she falls into a terrible contorted position, her legs folded over her head and her spine broken. A nasty, nasty end. 

Gymnast Candice (Ellen Wroe), pictured, closely avoided an end to her acrobatic career after she survived the bridge collapse that marks this film’s near-fatal event

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Off with their head – but make it a train (Final Destination, 2000)

The first film in the series, which started all the madness, sees teenager Alex (Devon Sawa) prevent his classmates dying in a plane crash, after he has a timely premonition. 

But as Death begins to pick them off one by one, in the order they would have died, Alex soon works out what is happening and shares his realisation with his fellow survivors.

Carter (Kerr Smith) cannot deal with the bizarre news, especially when he discovers he is next. 

So, he decides to defy death and try to die on his own terms, by parking his car on some train tracks. 

Alex and classmates Billy (Seann William Scott) and Clear (Ali Larter) escape the car – and Carter soon changes his mind too, trying to flee.  

But, in classic Final Destination style, his car will not start, he cannot undo his seatbelt and the doors will not unlock, all while the train hurtles towards him. 

In an impressive and improbable feat, Alex manages to save Carter just in time, dragging him from the vehicle as the train smashes into the car. 

But with Death unable to get Carter on this occasion, it simply turns to Billy instead – who is decapitated by a bit of shrapnel flung into the air by the high-speed train.  

With Death unable to get Carter on this occasion, it instead turns to Billy (pictured) – who is decapitated by a bit of shrapnel flung into the air by the high-speed train

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Down the pool plughole (The Final Destination, 2009)

The fourth instalment of the series sees Death come for everyone who survives a disaster accident at a car racing event – giving way to one of the series’ silliest deaths. 

One of the survivors, Hunt (Nick Zano), is having a relaxed day at the pool when he hears his lucky coin, which he feels has so far helped him avoid Death, fall into the water. 

He dives in to get it but when he hits the bottom, he finds his swimming trunks – and his backside – getting caught in the pool’s vent. 

He soon starts to drown, caught underwater, before things get much, much grislier. 

The pressure of the vent gets so high, his insides are slowly sucked out of his rear end and into the pump – grossly exploding out of it from the other side above ground. 

One of the survivors, Hunt (Nick Zano), is having a relaxed day at the pool when he hears his lucky coin, which he feels has so far helped him avoid Death, fall into the water. Pictured: The pool scene from The Final Destination

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Plane in pieces (Final Destination, 2000) 

Arguably the scariest part of one of the series’ very first killings is not how improbable it is – but how real of a risk it seems. 

The film starts with pᴀssengers boarding a flight from New York City’s John F Kennedy International Airport to Paris. 

But after a handful of classmates and their teacher are removed from the plane, when Alex starts kicking off following his premonition about it crashing, the explosion unfolds in exactly the way he foresaw. 

Just after takeoff, an engine catches fire and pieces of the plane – along with its pᴀssengers – start to fall from thousands of feet, before a final mᴀssive explosion. 

Long-time fans of the series have found this one of its most fearful moments because it has a real-life equivalent. 

A real flight from New York to Paris in 1996, just four years before the film’s release, went tragically wrong when the plane exploded mid-air. 

The franchise also makes a frightening return to its very first disaster in Final Destination 5. 

After the characters survive that film’s bridge collapse and all of Death’s subsequent attempts to get them, they think it is over. 

Arguably the scariest part of one of the series’ very first killings (pictured) is not how improbable it is – but how real of a risk it seems

Long-time fans of the series have found this (pictured) one of its most fearful moments because it has a real-life equivalent

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They board a flight from New York to Paris – and it is at this point we realise the fifth film is not a sequel to its predecessors but a prequel to the very first movie in the franchise. 

Fans of the franchise then soon realise exactly what is going to happen and are helpless to stop it – as the characters meet their end mid-air.  

Nail gun nastiness (Final Destination 3, 2006) 

Handle with care: a warning not heeded by the beleaguered teens who after escaping a rollercoaster crash, meet their end in a DIY shop. 

After a forklift – you guessed it – malfunctions and starts running on its own, it crushes some heavy washer fluid containers and hits a pegboard, which bashes into some ladders, which causes some fence posts to topple over. 

As the heavy hardware crashes into each other, like a lethal game of dominoes, Wendy pushes Ian (Kris Lemche) out of harm’s way – leaving Death to turn its attention to another target, Erin (Alexz Johnson). 

Slipping on the spilled washer fluid, she accidentally hits a nail gun – which sees her face sH๏τ through with sharp metal screws, in a deeply macabre end.   

Handle with care: a warning not heeded by the beleaguered teens who after escaping a rollercoaster crash, meet their end in a DIY shop (pictured)