'Final Destination Bloodlines' breaks fiery world record for oldest stuntperson set ablaze

Article content

Final Destination Bloodlines directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein aren’t popping the champagne just yet, but the Vancouver-based filmmaking duo is certain they’ve set a new world record.

At the start of the latest entry in the ongoing horror franchise, veteran stuntwoman Yvette Ferguson is set ablaze during the film’s fiery opening scene.

In a video call from Los Angeles, B.C.-born Lipovsky says the stunt team is talking to the Guinness Book of World Records to try and get the feat recognized as breaking the world record for oldest person on fire.

“The whole stunt community in Vancouver came out to see this. We did it twice. It was a full-body burn and Yvette was 71 when we did it. When we cast her, she was so excited … They’ve been checking with Guinness to get it verified,” he says while sitting alongside his co-director.

It turns out Ferguson came from a family of stunt people and being set on fire, but it was something she hadn’t done in her career. “She said, ‘Everyone in my family has been burned, but I’ve never been burned,'” Lipovsky says laughing.

“It’s a long process, but they’re in contact with them,” Stein adds.

Now playing in theatres, Final Destination Bloodlines arrives 14 years after the last entry in the horror series that has terrified moviegoers since the first movie was released in 2000.

The new film follows Stefani (played by Langley, B.C.’s Kaitlyn Santa Juana), a college student who inherits her grandmother Iris’ eerie knack for predicting when bad things are about to happen. It turns out grandma (who is played in the movie’s 1969-set opening scene by Stargirl’s Brec Bassinger) is able to forecast with Rube Goldberg-like precision the many ways death can — and will — come knocking.

“Death is coming for our family,” Iris warns her granddaughter. Franchise stalwart William Bludworth (played by the late horror movie icon Tony Todd, who died last November) warns Stefani that death won’t stop until all the members of her family are six-feet under. 

Despite being away from the big screen for over a decade, Stein thinks audiences have never tired of the Final Destination series because they effortlessly show how things we take for granted in our everyday lives can quickly lead to bloody mayhem.

“It brings your anxieties to life. It says, ‘What if your anxieties, those things that nag at you, were actually real and deadly?’ I think that’s why it has stuck with so many people over the years,” Stein says.

As filmmakers, he and Lipovsky — who met in 2007 on the set of the Fox reality show On the Lot and together also directed the 2018 sci-fi thriller Freaks and Disney’s 2019 action comedy Kim Possible — say that the Final Destination movies are unique among other horror films.

“They don’t have a visible antagonist,” Stein says. “There’s no guy in a mask with a knife that goes around killing people or a monster in the woods. The deaths that are onscreen are created by the filmmaking … It’s really the filmmaking that’s coming for the characters, and as directors that was such a delightful opportunity.”

Lipovsky says the pair are aiming to leave viewers traumatized by the time the last member of Stefani’s family meets their demise.

“When things that happen in real life that aren’t even part of Final Destination have weird circumstances around them, people say, ‘That’s a Final Destination situation.’ That’s a testament to the sticking power of these movies,” he says.

So a family barbecue turns into a bloodbath and an attempt by one family member to cheat death at a hospital ends up as a sequence that will disturb anyone with an MRI appointment coming up.

They even find ways to turn a head-clearing jog on a residential street into a deadly situation.

“When we were brainstorming ideas, we kept thinking about things we could ruin for people,” Lipovsky says. “After you see this movie, every time you see a lawn mower or cup full of ice … even a penny; you’ll never look at those things the same way again.”

Because the beginning scenes for Final Destination movies are always memorable (Stein cites Final Destination 2’s gory log truck sequence as a classic), the twosome wanted to craft something that would leave a lasting impression.

Set atop the fictional Skyview Tower, Iris gets her first hunch that something is awry. She can see a chain reaction that’s about to happen when the glass starts to crack under the weight of all the guests and the structure is about to go up in flames.

Lipovsky says the idea for the horrific episode came from a visit he made to Toronto’s CN Tower. “I took a friend of mine who had lived in Toronto their whole life and had never been up the CN Tower because he was afraid of heights. I used him as inspiration for all the different things that (could go wrong),” he says.

“It took awhile to figure out all the details,” Stein adds. “Basically, we wanted to tap into a visceral fear of heights. It was really cool to be able to bring that to the screen and make people feel like they were falling off this building, 400 feet in the air.”

Final Destination Bloodlines is now playing in theatres.

mdaniell@postmedia.com