Editor Sabrina Pitre on Crafting Tension, Humour, and Heart in Final Destination: Bloodlines
Brec Bassinger in Final Destination: Bloodlines.
After more than a decade without new films, the iconic horror franchise Final Destination finally returned to the big screens earlier this year with Final Destination: Bloodlines. The film follows a college student named Stefani Reyes (played by Kaitlyn Santa Juana), who heads home to find answers for why she has been having a terrifyingly deadly recurring nightmare. Once she arrives at home, she soon realizes that this nightmare is more than just a nightmare and has to save her family from the impending doom and gruesome fate her family is cursed to.
Featuring some of the franchise's most inventive and grisly death scenes, a highly memorable and hilarious performance from Richard Harmon (who plays Erik Campbell), outrageously exciting thrills, and a surprising amount of emotional depth, Final Destination: Bloodlines could be the best film from the franchise.
Ahead of Halloween, REVERIE chatted with editor Sabrina Pitre about her work on Final Destination: Bloodlines.
Spoilers ahead… proceed with caution.
Final Destination: Bloodlines theatrical poster.
“Final Destination was definitely a franchise that I grew up with, so it was something very much part of my own horror canon and the prospect of being able to work on the latest one was super exciting,” smiles Pitre. “But also it was terrifying, of course, because there are all these expectations and a built-in fanbase that is expecting so much. All you can do is try hard and do your best, and I think that’s genuinely what we did.”
Although the Final Destination franchise can be extremely over-the-top and silly, it occasionally features beautiful moments of sincerity and emotional depth. An example of a scene in Final Destination: Bloodlines that has immense emotional depth features Tony Todd, who reprises his role as William Bludworth. This was Todd's final film role as he was battling terminal stomach cancer and passed away on November 6, 2024. In one of the franchise's best scenes, Todd improvises his final lines and delivers a genuinely heartfelt message to fans that is incredibly moving. “His presence alone on set just changed the vibe entirely,” comments Pitre. “We all knew he was sick, and he was very much physically changed from how we remembered him, so I think we were all very sensitive to that, but Tony was such a pro. He never let anything slip. He was just in it. You could tell he was speaking from the heart. It came through even from the dailies. I got goosebumps just watching him. It was really about giving him his time on screen, not rushing it, and letting him say what he needed to say at the pace he needed to say it.”
A huge part of the Final Destination franchise is the exhilarating thrills, nail-biting suspense, and uneasy tension. If you build these elements up with enough momentum, it puts the audience on the edge of their seats. If it lacks these elements, viewers will become bored and lose interest. “You want to make sure you’re building it up the right way, so your audience is along for the ride and you’re not gonna lose them at any point,” says Pitre. An example of this is when the family is having a barbecue, which Pitre shares was one of the most challenging scenes to edit. “You wanted to strike the right balance between everything because there were so many things happening at the same time, trying to figure out when to go back to somebody or when to show something else in order to keep building things properly. There was a Jenga set, a trampoline, the glass shard, and a lot of moving elements you needed to make sure to keep track of and didn’t lose anything. Also, you had to make sure the misdirect was working too.”
Similarly, Pitre shares that the MRI sequence proved tricky to edit because two beloved characters died. “While we build everything up to Erik’s death, we still have Bobby, who is having an allergic reaction and not being able to breathe and you sort of have to pivot the audience like ‘Okay, Erik died. We are so upset, but Bobby is still in harm's way.’ Finding that balance between not letting the tension completely die but also not completely railroading over Erik’s death.”
One way tension is achieved in Final Destination: Bloodlines is by lingering longer on certain items. “When we first meet Uncle Howard, he stops the lawnmower and comes into the house, but we linger for a little bit on that lawnmower, and even though it doesn’t necessarily pay off in that moment, you sort of struck a little bell in people’s mind like ‘Ok, there is something significant about this lawnmower,” she shares. “It’s finding moments like that to emphasize something that either is going to pay off or is a complete misdirect. You can play with the audience that way.”
Tension is also created by making viewers anxiously wait for certain death scenes to occur. “The whole piano falling onto the lady and breaking through all the glass and sending everything out, we were taking our time with the penny dropping, it spinning, and then it coming to a full rest, it was very Looney Tunes in a way,” explains Pitre. “People know something terrible is going to happen, and they’re waiting and waiting and waiting. Sometimes it's fun playing with how long you make them wait.”
Something Final Destination: Bloodlines does extremely well is finding new ways to surprise viewers with shocking death scenes. “The kills are things that live in your mind, almost an urban legend fear like it's never actually happened to anybody, but it is a big concern – like stepping on a shard of glass and getting your faced mowed downed by a lawnmower,” laughs Pitre. “It’s just your imagination going wild, and you can foresee the worst possible outcome of something.” Subverting people’s expectations by faking them out with certain death scenes also plays into this element of surprise. “When Erik fell into the fire at the tattoo parlour, there was this moment where people were like, ‘That was so lame. It was building, and building, and building, and then we didn’t really get to see him die.’ Then, you have a few minutes of that patience before we reveal that he wasn’t dead at all. Then we fake them out again as he walks out in the street, and the delivery truck just misses him. It’s using kills from the earlier movies where characters actually died in those moments and not doing that.”
Final Destination: Bloodlines is undoubtedly the funniest film of the franchise, giving us some instantly memorable one-liners and hilarious moments. Pitre explains that it was important for the comedy to flow naturally with the film and not overshadow the tension or ruin any suspense. “From the script level, there was some of that comedy written in, but then when you get the actors on set, especially someone like Richard, who just has amazing comedy chops naturally built in, that he gave us so many great opportunities where we really lean in choice places to bring that,” explains Pitre. “We were surprised at how well audiences accepted the comedy. There is always a concern that maybe it can get cheesy or go a little too far, and you’re not on edge, and it ruins the tension essentially. I think we found a nice happy medium that I think worked for the film.”
Pitre had an absolute blast editing the film, but editing the electrifying “Shout” dance sequence, when the Sky View collapses, stands out, calling it an “editor's dream.” “There was a lot of footage, it was very intense, a lot to work with, and a lot to play with, which is great, it just takes a lot of time,” explains Pitre. “Thankfully, there is the song, and Garfield [Wilson] was the singer; he did an amazing job. It was easy to find the rhythm of that one because the song sets the pace right. It was great finding these little moments to push the audience offbeat a little with an odd edit that throws them off a little, and then they start to get a weird feeling and keep building from that. Second unit shot such great footage for us to pepper in as well; those close-up, little intense shots were fun to mess around with.”
Furthermore, Pitre was excited that directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein used a suggestion she made for one of the deaths during this sequence. “Originally, Evie, the singer, was just gonna get burned up, but I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could see through the reflection of her child’s eye her destruction, like wouldn’t that be super traumatizing and awful?’ The directors are like ‘Oh yeah, maybe’ and then they ended up going with it.”
Favourite Final Destination Films:
Before we ended the interview, Pitre shared her favourite movie and death scene from the Final Destination franchise with me.
Favourite Movie: Final Destination
“I always have a soft spot for the first. It is what started it all. Also, I was a big Devon Sawa fan at that age, too.”
Favourite Death Scene: Tanning Bed Death Scene in Final Destination 3
“That is definitely one of the reasons I never went in a tanning bed, because what if you get stuck in there. Not only was it a great death scene, but it was how it was shot, with the cut to their coffin. It goes in this bird's eye view of the tanning beds, and then it cuts to their coffins. That was brilliant. I thought that was perfectly set up and executed.”