FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES is a bloody horror thriller about a family that tries to stop Death from killing everyone in it in bizarre ways. Stefani is a college student having nightmares about a premonition her grandmother, Iris, had 50 years ago about the gruesome deaths of many people at a glass enclosed, revolving skytop restaurant. Iris saved the people, However, through the years, death eventually came for all the people who didn’t die, leaving only Iris and an elderly black man whom Iris saved. Stefani visits Iris, but Iris dies in a gruesome freak accident in front of her. Stefani warns her family, but they refuse to believe her. However, when two of them also die gruesome deaths, the remainder band together to find ways to stop Death.

Despite its pro-family sentiments, FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES has extremely gruesome violence and contains lots of strong foul language. Also, the story personifies Death, and he seems more powerful than God. In addition, Death shows no mercy whatsoever in FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES. So, the movie has a strong, abhorrent pagan worldview that’s very superstitious.

(PaPaPa, AbAb, FRFR, OO, B, LLL, VVV, A, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Very strong, slightly mixed, pagan, superstitious, unbiblical, and false worldview/theology/philosophy that personifies Death or the Angel of Death, making him more powerful than God, characters repeatedly say that if people mess with Death they will make him more angry, and he’ll fight back even harder to kill you in gruesome and horrifying and bloody ways, there is no mercy in this depiction of Death, plus two women have occult premonitions of terrible fatal accidents but try to stop them from happening, family decides to stick together and thwart Death’s intentions to kill them all, but they fail (also, they never appeal to God or Jesus in the movie for any help);

Foul Language:

At least 34 mostly strong obscenities (including at least 16 “f” words), one profanity mentioning the name of Christ, one GD profanity, and nine light profanities;

Violence:

Lots of extreme and gory scary violence plus lots of strong scary violence such as multiple people are smashed by heavy objects, multiple people are impaled in the head by some objects (such as a flying wooden object), woman gets lots of blood on her face in one scene while standing next to one victim whose face is crunched by such a flying object, a new restaurant in a spinning building high in the air resting on a large spire has a see-through glass dance floor, and the floor gets a small crack that ultimately expands as people jump up and down to the song “Shout,” the glass dance floor eventually cracks totally, and people fall to their death below, people catch on fire horribly during restaurant death sequence, a woman is impaled when she falls from a high pinnacle onto a spike, a man’s head is accidentally chopped up by a falling lawnmower that accidently started, young woman is crushed by a garbage truck when she accidentally falls into the trash pit, a chain wraps around a ceiling fan in a tattoo parlor and gets accidentally attached to a tattooed man’s nose ring, the chain starts to pull him higher and higher (he eventually gets loose, but the place is in fire), young man is crunched by an MRI machine’s powerful magnets because he wears metal objects and has had his nose and ears and breasts and sex organ pierced, a young man’s head is impaled by a flying metal coil, young woman is trapped underwater and almost drowns, but her younger teenage brother revives her with CPR, a building is destroyed by fire, a house on fire explodes, a train derails and runs rampant through a suburban neighborhood;

Sex:

No Sex;

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

Brief alcohol use at a family BBQ;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Young man has tattoos, the same young man doesn’t believe his cousin’s story of Death coming after him so he mocks and taunts Death to kill hm.

FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES is a bloody horror thriller about a family that tries to stop Death from killing everyone in bizarre ways when a grandmother, then a granddaughter 50 years later, have premonitions about the gruesome deaths. FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES has extremely gruesome violence, contains lots of strong foul language and personifies Death that he becomes more powerful than God and has no mercy whatsoever.

Stefani is a female college student who has nightmares about a premonition her grandmother, Iris, had 50 years ago about a restaurant grand opening ending in the accidental deaths of many people, including herself and her fiancé. Iris had the premonition before entering the restaurant and saved many lives. Stefani’s nightmares have led to many sleepless nights and endangered her academic scholarship. So, she goes home to find her grandmother, who became paranoid about Death trying kill her and all the people she saved and became a family pariah.

Stefani finds Iris hiding in an isolated cabin surrounded by all sorts of objects that tried to kill her whenever she stepped outside the cabin. Stefani hears her grandmother’s fears about Death trying to come for her and her family, including her children and grandchildren. The story is too crazy for Stefani. She tries to leave, but the grandmother follows her outside, trying to give Stefani a book she’s compiled about how to survive Death’s attacks. A freak accident kills Iris right in front of Stefani, spraying her face with blood.

Her grandmother’s gruesome death convinces Stefani that her grandmother was right. She tries to warn her uncle, his three children and her brother, but they think Stefani’s gone off her rocker, just like Iris. However, when the uncle and his daughter die gruesome deaths, Stefani, her two surviving cousins, her brother, and her estranged mother band together to find ways to stop Death from killing them all.

Despite its pro-family sentiments, FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES has extremely gruesome violence and contains lots of strong foul language. Also, however, the story personifies Death, who becomes more powerful than God. In addition, Death shows no mercy whatsoever in FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES. So, the movie has a strong, abhorrent pagan worldview that’s very superstitious.

In reality of course, the Bible doesn’t teach that there’s a specific Angel of Death or some supernatural being called Death created by God. Some angels may take part in the destruction or death of people upon God’s orders, as in 2 Kings 19:35, but it is God who decides when to punish people with death or when to let people die, and how. Also, God can give people an authority, or enable, people and human rulers to kill other people. A person may ask, what about the references to Death and Hades in 1 Corinthians 15:55 and Revelation 6:8? In 1 Corinthians 15:55, the Greek word for death there is not personified, so, when translated into English, it is lower case, not upper case. Revelation 6:8 is the only biblical verse that seems to personify death, and that occurs only once, just before the Day of Judgment, where many people will be sent to Hades, also known as Hell or the grave, for eternal punishment. However, those who trust in Jesus Christ will escape such punishment and receive eternal life in Heaven.

Devil’s Double Next Level Movie Synopsis: A film reviewer gets trapped inside a movie by its vengeful director and must survive its deadly plot, controlled by a magical diary, to escape.

Devil’s Double Next Level Movie Review: If you’ve ever wondered what it would feel like to be trapped inside a YouTube comments section that somehow gained sentience and a film budget, DD Next Level offers a vivid, if not entirely welcome, simulation. Our guide through this experience is Kissa 47 (Santhanam), a film reviewer who wields ‘bro’ with the frequency of a machine gun, leaving the audience more shell-shocked by his vocabulary than by any on-screen jump scare. He and his entourage find themselves at an early screening for a film by the ominously named director Hitchcock Irudhayaraj (Selvaraghavan). The cinema itself looks like it was designed by someone with a personal vendetta against film critics, and before you can say “plot device,” Kissa and co. are unceremoniously zapped into the movie.

Now, the golden rule of logic-optional cinema is that if you’re going to play fast and loose with the plot, you’d better compensate with a relentless barrage of laughs. DD Next Level seems to have misplaced this memo somewhere between the script revisions. For a film headlined by Santhanam, a comedian usually capable of eliciting chuckles with ease, the actual laugh-out-loud moments are surprisingly sparse. Sadly, the movie relies too much on toilet humor and other easy jokes, which are just unfunny. The narrative, such as it is, bounces between settings – a cruise ship here, a mystical resort island there (think a cut-price White Lotus) – but the comedic spark remains stubbornly unlit.

The film leans heavily into the meta pool, with characters constantly winking at the camera about the filmmaking process, the nature of movie reviews, and the very fabric of their cinematic prison. A dash of self-awareness can be a delightful spice, but DD Next Level practically empties the whole jar into the pot. There are only so many times characters can exclaim, “Gosh, we’re in a movie!” before it transitions from clever to “yes, we gathered.” The excessive self-awareness kills the magic.

Santhanam himself, usually a whirlwind of comedic energy, feels somewhat constrained by dialogue that seldom lands a knockout punch, often defaulting to an endless stream of bros. One of the film’s more pleasant surprises is Mottai Rajendran’s Veenpechu Babu. His bewildered interactions, especially with Gautham Menon’s deadpan investigative officer (who communicates primarily in English to Rajendran’s blissfully ignorant nods), manage to mine some genuine humor. GVM, too, is in on the meta-joke, playing a version of his real-life persona, though like much of the self-referential humor, its success rate is variable. Meanwhile, the female characters are largely tasked with the thankless job of looking perpetually distressed, fulfilling the “scared ladies in a scary movie” trope with little room for nuance. It feels a bit like a Sundar C film sans the glamour and the usual masala.

On a technical level, the film isn’t without merit; the set designs are reasonably imaginative, and the VFX are competent. But these polished visuals serve as mere window dressing for a comedic structure that feels decidedly shaky. When the most memorable parts of your comedy are the awkward silences where the jokes were supposed to be, it’s a clear sign that the script might have needed a few more levels of refinement.

Written By: Abhinav Subramanian

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Director: George Miller
Writers: George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, Nick Lathouris
Stars: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult

Synopsis: In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a woman rebels against a tyrannical ruler in search for her homeland with the aid of a group of female prisoners, a psychotic worshipper and a drifter named Max.

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“As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. It was hard to know who was more crazy: me, or everyone else.” No better words describe the world of the Wasteland, a place plagued by war and famine and the complete collapse of society. In this world, the rules are clear: there are none. Survivors will do what they must to make it another day, even as fanatics and those establishing power across the Wasteland oppress more and more desperate people just wanting a morsel of what’s left. After an initial look into this destabilization in 1979’s Mad Max and a display of the monstrous nature of humanity, director George Miller expanded the Wasteland across its sequels The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome. Each movie showcased the best and worst of people, and the sickly approaches they would take to see the next day.

In Mad Max: Fury Road, this insidiousness is explored through the warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), who controls the supply of water in the Wasteland and gives very little to the thirsty, starved people below his Citadel. He has established himself as a divine being with a cultish following that hangs on his every word. His brethren, the War Boys, are malnourished and brainwashed men and women who live on ‘blood bags’ (people with enough blood still to ‘donate’ so the War Boys can keep going) and drive in Immortan’s name by worshipping him and honoring their ‘god,’ the V8 engine. When going after enemies and factions that may threaten them, they are willing to give their lives in the Immortan’s name, hoping to be ‘witnessed’ and ride to Valhalla to join the heroes of all time.

Like every movie in the series, this rule is eventually challenged by someone who decides they have had enough. In Fury Road, that’s Furiosa (Charlize Theron), a War Rig driver hauling cargo who decides to drive off-road, with the Immortan realizing quickly that Furiosa is also driving with his harem of wives (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Zoe Kravitz, Courtney Eaton, Riley Keough), and gives chase to her with his War Boys, like Nux (Nicholas Hoult), who hope to catch her and find favor in the Immortan’s eyes. And much like his involvement in the previous installments, Max (Tom Hardy) is in the middle of the action, as a blood bag to Nux at first and then driving along with Furiosa looking for a paradise within the ruins of the Wasteland.

All of this leads into one of the best action movies of the 21st century and, by extension, one of the finest ever made, with an ample amount of solid characterization, terrific dialogue that’s endlessly quotable, and phenomenal direction from Miller. Once Furiosa drives the War Rig out of the Citadel limits and towards Gas Town, the movie refuses to relent, even for a second. Powered by Tom Holkenborg’s thunderous score that is even personified in the movie in parts by the thrashing of the Doof Warrior’s flamethrowing guitar, Fury Road moves from one incredible setpiece to the next, from a chase where they battle the Buzzards, a rival faction, to one of the most visually spectacular sandstorms ever put to film, two brilliant canyon runs, and a tense nighttime sequence as the War Rig moves through a swamp. With the combination of John Seale’s incredible cinematography and fantastic visual effects, Fury Road soars as an action spectacle.

Yet throughout it all, the movie never forgets its characters, who are given ample development as the world around them goes to an even lower depth of hell. Everyone is broken, and trying to find some form of redemption and absolution for the things they have witnessed or the mistakes they have made, and wanting to be better people despite the world telling them they can’t. From Max’s tortured psyche due to his past failures to save everyone to Furiosa’s shattered past and lost family waiting to be found, to the wives of the Immortan Joe who find themselves at the precipice of a life with no shackles and futures that aren’t relegated to being child bearers for the warlord, and even Nux, a War Boy realizing his pursuit for Valhalla is more than pleasing a man who cares little for everyone else; the storytelling creates an emotional journey for them that by the time the credits roll, leaves audiences with a new set of favorites in the franchise.

10 years later, it’s no surprise that Mad Max: Fury Road has achieved the status it has in the pantheon of action cinema. A relentless two hours crescendos in a magnificent final chase in the other direction, with some of the finest stunt work and vehicular carnage of the century, giving every character a chance to shine and be a prominent part of the rampage, even incorporating that guitarist on a rig just powering everything with a crew of drummers behind him, and with a fascinating character piece that followed with 2024’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, it creates a picture perfect arc for the character as well. In the end, it rides eternal, shiny and chrome.

Grade: A+

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