The Top Five Kills In The ‘FINAL DESTINATION’ Movies

Final Destination Movies have a very clear format. Friends gather at a public event, and it results in a tragedy of mass death amidst geysers of blood and piles of bodies. The tragedy is seen ahead of time in a clairvoyant vision by our protagonist, and a select few people are pulled from the jaws of death. With the balance of the afterlife thrown off, death comes back for revenge, killing all of the survivors in the order that they were supposed to be extinguished earlier. The protagonist then tries to predict and avoid a grisly fate, resetting their timeline by surviving.

It’s formulaic, and at times, cheesy and convenient. But the Final Destination movies (check out our franchise ranking editorial here) have made for easy watches and guilty pleasures in the horror community. With the sixth entry, Final Destination Bloodlines on the way, let’s look back at the first five Final Destination movies and break down some of the most fun kills in the franchise.

Here we go!

The fourth entry in the series is universally considered the worst, riddled by horrible CGI and lackluster characters. But even the weakest output has its shining moments. In this film, an overprotective mother is getting a haircut when things go haywire. The chair moves, the ceiling fan is loose, and the crimper burns hairspray. The lady manages to survive all of these potential perils, only to be taken out by a rock through the eye from a lawnmower.

The entire time that the accomplished gymnast is on the balance beam, we’re led to believe that a stray nail or the water near the power plug will lead to her demise. In a clever twist, the next gymnast is the one who steps on the nail, falling and sending powder into the air. That powder causes the original gymnast’s hands to slip off of the uneven parallel bars, sending our victim to land in a heap and crumple into a broken mesh of body parts.

In the most fun movie of the series, two haughty ladies from high school decide that they’re going to break all the tanning salon’s rules, so they get the booths to themselves and bring drinks into the room. With stray suntan lotion keeping the owner stuck outside, there’s nobody to help them when their beds get sealed shut and the moisture from their drinks causes their beds to overheat. What results is a claustrophobic frying session that pops under the neon lights.

The series wouldn’t exist without the one that started it all. Devon Sawa (Heart Eyes 2025) sees himself and his friends in a catastrophic flight where an overheated engine sends some passengers plummeting to earth and others burning alive. This vision is the epicenter of the series that we see and hear about again and again.

The first film may have started the mass catastrophe trend, but the sequel perfected it. When you say Final Destination, people immediately recall the truck with the giant logs. Exploding vehicles, logs through windows, rogue motorcycles, and much more come together to create the most iconic fatality in Final Destination history.

One can only hope that Final Destination Bloodlines combines a bigger practical SFX budget with updated technology to add some more special moments to lists like this. It also has to be said that we need to see a fitting end for William Bludworth, played by the late legend Tony Todd (Candyman 1992). The soothsayer for death itself is the backbone of the series, and his character needs its proper moment in the afterlife.