With Final Destination: Bloodlines slicing its way into cinemas, we’re once again reminded why this franchise has endured for 25 years: it taps into the paranoia of daily life with a wickedly morbid grin. The films’ deaths are absurd, yes, but that absurdity comes wrapped in a chilling plausibility. Whether it’s a trip to the dentist or a high-speed highway drive, Final Destination transforms the familiar and the mundane… into carefully orchestrated chaos.

We’ve combed through the franchise’s body count (not counting the latest film) to highlight the most gnarly, creatively gruesome, and deeply unsettling deaths – the ones that linger in your mind long after the credits roll.

Just a heads up (or… off?): We’ve included clips from the films, so prepare to relive some of the franchise’s most brutal, bloody, and unflinching deaths. If you’re squeamish about gore, blood, or flying body parts, well…

10. The Gym Head Squish (Final Destination 3)

Meet Lewis: jacked, cocky, and convinced his muscles make him invincible. When a pair of decorative swords come swinging down and narrowly miss him, he laughs it off—mistaking a close call for a win. “F-ck Death!” he shouts. “I just win. That’s all I know how to do!”

But Death doesn’t lose. Those blades didn’t miss—they sliced the exact cable needed to sabotage his weight machine. One final rep later, Lewis’ skull is pulverised like a watermelon. Turns out, ego isn’t great protection against physics.

9. The Nail Gun Incident (Final Destination 3)

Hardware stores are dangerous enough without Death treating every shelf like a weapons cache. In this scene, it’s Ian McKinley—sarcastic, smug, and convinced he’s cracked Death’s code—who seems like the obvious target. As planks crash down and wood rains from above, Ian narrowly escapes harm.

But Death was never aiming at him. It’s Erin—his girlfriend—who’s next in line. Wood flies her way, she slips on spilled fluid, and crashes backwards into a nail gun. What follows is brutal and fast: multiple nails fire off, slamming through her head and hand. Nailed it.

8. The Acupuncture Clinic Inferno (Final Destination 5)

Sorry, no clip here (YouTube’s “sensitive content” limitations).

Isaac walks into a wellness centre expecting a freebie massage and maybe a bit of… something else. What he gets is a cursed combo of needles, fire, and a falling Buddha. As incense burns a little too close to a flammable surface and the table starts to give way, Isaac is skewered by acupuncture needles before being crushed to death by a statue.

This one earns points for variety—needle horror, fire, blunt force trauma—and for how quickly the serene spa energy flips into a full-blown hellscape.

7. The Dentist’s Office Setup (Final Destination 2)

Tim’s trip to the dentist is the stuff of nightmares. First, a rogue pigeon causes chaos outside, leading the dentist to leave mid-procedure. Then a plastic fish falls into Tim’s open mouth, almost choking him as he lies there under the influence of nitrous oxide. He survives that near-death moment… only to be crushed outside by a pane of glass that falls with surgical precision. It’s classic Final Destination misdirection: lure you in with one potential death, only to strike from a completely different angle when your guard is down.

6. Elevator Decapitation (Final Destination 2)

Nora Carpenter’s demise is one of the most harrowing in the series—equal parts claustrophobic and cruel. It starts with her ponytail getting snagged in the armful of prosthetics carried by a creepily silent man in the lift. Before she can untangle herself, the elevator doors close—trapping her head inside the lift, with her body still outside.

The elevator begins to rise. Slowly. Jarringly. As if Death itself is behind the controls, savouring every second. With each stuttering jerk upward, it becomes clear what’s about to go down. “I don’t want to die!” she screams. Death, of course, is in no mood to grant mercy. After a few agonising shudders, the lift jerks one final time—severing her head. It’s a sequence that plays out like torture, turning an everyday setting into an engine of pure dread.

5. Death by Barbed-Wire Fence (Final Destination 2)

Sometimes Death doesn’t wait. Barely 60 seconds after Kat is brutally dispatched by a broken PVC pipe—launched through the back of her skull by an airbag that deploys at just the wrong time—Rory meets his end in one of the franchise’s most memorably grotesque visuals.

An explosion sends part of a barbwire fence, complete with posts and slice-ready wire, shooting through the air – and right through Rory’s body, turning him into a three-piece set. It’s the kind of death that’s so absurdly sudden and cartoonishly brutal, it almost feels like slapstick.

4. Death by LASIK (Final Destination 5)

Olivia heads in for a routine LASIK eye surgery. Harmless, right? Not in this universe. Strapped in place with her eyelid pried open, she’s forced to watch helplessly as a spilled cup of water causes the laser machine to glitch. The laser starts burning into her eye while she’s fully awake.

The scene is already brutal—and then she stumbles backward through a window, falling several storeys to her death. Just to twist the knife, her eyeball pops out and gets run over in the street. Morbidly hilarious.

3. The Escalator Grater (The Final Destination)

Escalators: deceptively simple transport… or teeth-gnashing death machines in disguise? In a chaotic mall scene, Lori slips and gets dragged underneath one of these mechanical monsters. Her body is chewed up by the gears – and not all that quickly either.

2. The Tanning Bed Bake-Off (Final Destination 3)

Ashley and Ashlyn just wanted to relax and get a glow-up. Instead, they got roasted—literally. After getting locked into malfunctioning tanning beds, they slowly burn alive in one of the franchise’s most drawn-out, claustrophobic death scenes.

It’s all sweat, screams, and melting goggles. The scene is hellish in its simplicity, taking something as frivolous as tanning and turning it into a waking nightmare. Gotta love that match cut at the end of the sequence: tanning beds to coffins.

1. The Log Truck Massacre (Final Destination 2)

C’mon, you knew this one was going to be up top or damn near close to it. It’s the sequence that cemented Final Destination as a horror staple. A logging truck. A loose chain. A tumbling log. And suddenly, chaos. The opening premonition in Final Destination 2 kicks off with a highway pile-up so brutal, so believable, it became a generational trauma. We watch as a state trooper’s torso is obliterated, a biker is crushed with his own ride, a trapped driver is burned alive inside his car—all unfolding in seconds with a terrifying sense of inevitability.

Unlike the franchise’s more outlandish set-ups, this sequence hits differently. It feels plausible. Horrifyingly so. There’s no need for supernatural manipulation or elaborate contraptions—just a highway, some bad luck, and a chain of events we’ve all nervously imagined while cruising behind a semi.

It’s not just one of the best Final Destination sequences—it’s one of the most effective horror openings full stop. And honestly? It might’ve saved lives. Because to this day, the second I see a logging truck, I’m switching lanes. Cinematic PTSD at its finest.

Honourable Mentions:

• Death by clothesline (Final Destination)

• Pool drain disembowelment (The Final Destination)

• Exploding BBQ (Final Destination 2) – sorry, kid.

• Rollercoaster madness (Final Destination 3)