Killer filmmaking: Meet the Vancouver-based duo who made the new Final Destination 'a classier affair'

Final Destination: Bloodlines directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein had to fight for their crème brûlée.

We're talking about a single shot during the opening sequence of their new reboot, featuring the delectable French dessert. It's the 60s. A young woman named Iris is enjoying a fancy night out at a space-needle restaurant with a glass-bottom floor. Anyone familiar with the Final Destination franchise knows that things won't end well for the patrons at the restaurant, some of whom will fall through cracks in the surface of that glass-bottom floor. Savvy Final Destination fans also know to spot a bad omen when they see one, like a close-up on the cracks in the sensuous surface of that crème brûlée.

But, according to Stein, the shot met with some resistance: "Is it really necessary? Who cares about crème brulee? Does anyone even know what that is?"

"There was a feeling sometimes like, 'are you guys caring too much about the details?' Are you spending too much time on this?' In the edit, 'maybe cut this down, it's not necessary.' But when we showed it to an audience, the audience picked up on that kind of thing. They're loving those little omens."

Caring too much about the details, and looking for every moment that they could serve their audience a visual treat, is exactly what makes Lipovsky and Stein a cut above most genre filmmakers who might settle for more functional. The Vancouver-based duo who made a name for themselves with indie sci-fi spectacle Freaks, bring an old-school affection for storytelling craft and visual elegance to the Final Destination franchise. They've made the sixth installment in a series where death stalks the people who escape its clutches — saved by a premonition — a classier cinematic affair than you'd expect. "Classy Final Destination is what the world needs," Lipovsky chuckles.

The filmmakers are speaking to CBC Arts on a Zoom call from a Vancouver hotel, taking a break from shooting Freaks: Underground, the sequel to their 2018 breakout hit about a young girl kept in a bubble at home with her distraught, potentially unstable father. Lipovsky and Stein turned the first film, made on a tiny budget, into an impressive sci-fi spectacle with sheer storytelling ingenuity, which is not just useful but a key ingredient to the best Final Destination movies.

This is the ridiculously fun franchise where the grim reaper sets up elaborate fatal accidents for the people who think they've cheated death. Just when these characters think they're safe, they succumb in gruesome and hilarious ways to things like acupuncture, balance beams and ceiling fans. It's a premise that Stein calls a director's dream because the filmmaking essentially becomes a character in the movie, a petty and mischievous one.

"There's no person in a mask with a knife coming after the characters," Stein explains. "The villain that comes for the character, death, is all created by the filmmaking. Each shot is designed to bring death to life through these inanimate objects. It's a real fun challenge to create that as filmmakers."

The directors describe that challenge as a years-long process that begins with brainstorming ideas with writers on the ways they will ruin things for people. "What are everyday objects," Lipovsky asks rhetorically, "relatable things that we all experience, [which] once they're in the film and you see them go horribly wrong, you'll never be able to look at that thing again. Logging trucks or laser eye surgery, those are all things that the franchise have ruined for people."

In Bloodlines, those things include lawn care and MRI machines. Though the directors point out that not everything goes according to plan over the course of scripting, storyboarding and then stepping into a space and figuring out the actual plausible physics of their grisly setups. Yes, as preposterous as Final Destination can be, plausibility does matter.

One of their elaborate plans involved a fire extinguisher that rolls. But on set, the directors were reminded by crew that fire extinguishers come with handles. "They're like, 'they don't roll you idiots,'" Lipovsky recalls.

"It's this constant iteration that takes many years to get right," Lipovsky continues. "Even in the editing, you're always changing it a little bit. Misdirect the audience this way. Make them think this is going to happen so that it becomes this really great experience where to some degree they're rooting for death, because of how clever death really is through all these little tricks. Death is working so hard to unravel these incredible Rube Goldbergs that that people kind of respect death for how hard he tries."

"There's a part of it that's inherently predictable," Stein adds. "You know all these characters are going to die, probably in this order. How do you as a filmmaker take that knowledge or that expectation, and then twist it in a way that the audience doesn't predict? That was really the fun and the challenge of making this movie."

Another unexpected note is the melancholic moment with a Final Destination regular, Tony Todd. The late Candyman actor, who passed away in November, appears in most Final Destination movies as William Bludworth, a mischievously cryptic mortician advising characters on how to keep death at bay.

"We approached the movie really around Tony Todd in a lot of ways," says Lipovsky. "We knew while we were making the movie that he was very ill. We knew it was very likely his last role ever, but certainly his last Final Destination movie. With him, we developed this idea of a way not only could his character sort of say goodbye to the franchise but that him as an actor could say goodbye to the audience."

"We basically told him to throw away the script for a second and just speak from the heart to the audience about what this has all been about; not only in the franchise, but life in general, as someone who is wrestling with his own mortality. What's the message you want to leave to the audience. He just spoke from the heart and that's what's in the movie."

Todd's final message runs counter to the tips his character once gave to avoid death. This time he speaks to the audience and suggests embracing death, along with all the life you have left, which as fitting a final note for a Final Destination as ever.

Final Destination: Bloodlines is in theatres May 16.