Bloodlines Trailer Has Unlocked A New Fear In Horror Fans

“Final Destination” is one of the few horror franchises that has maintained longevity despite having no tangible commodity to follow. It’s a series about death coming for people in increasingly complex and horrific ways, giving credence to the doomer thinking that plagues us all from time to time by taking the most absurdly incomprehensible worst-case scenarios and making them a reality. There is no masked slasher nor singular survivor to keep audiences tuning in for each new installment, only the inevitable reality that death comes for us all and we will never truly know when it will be our turn to feed the worms.

Facing our mortality is one of the scariest things a person can do, but the “Final Destination” franchise thrives because it’s an exercise not just in Rube Goldberg-style anticipation, but because the movies aren’t afraid to use graphic violence as a vehicle for laugh-out-loud, cheering in your seats, fun. But every so often, the “Final Destination” franchise will pull off a scenario with such eerily specific plausibility that it fundamentally changes how viewers live their day-to-day lives. Millennials turned the expression “Final Destinationed” into a colloquial term, shorthand to describe an everyday experience going so badly that you wind up dead in a freak accident.

For some, the fear of being “Final Destinationed” has prevented people from using tanning beds, seeking Lasik eye surgery, flying in a plane, going on carnival rides, and most famously, driving behind logging trucks on the highway. Personally, I will never seek out acupuncture therapy because “Final Destination 5” gave me the irrational fear of rolling off the bed and landing on all of the needles, forging a new circle in my own hypothetical Hell. It’s been over a decade since we’ve gotten a new addition, but if the response to the trailer for “Final Destination: Bloodlines” is any indication, the franchise’s power hasn’t died down. If you take a quick look at social media, you’ll find countless people flipping up or outright removing their septum piercings, terrified that they too could meet a similar fate as the tattoo artist in the trailer.

I currently have 12 different body piercings, including two in my left nostril, but I would have 13 piercings if one of my upper lobe piercings hadn’t been ripped out by one of my cousins when he was a toddler. The pain itself wasn’t as bad as you’d think, but the way your brain processes “Oh my god, a metal ring was just ripped THROUGH my flesh” is where the true horror sets in. Unfortunately, the pulled piercing didn’t heal properly, and I now have what looks like a chunk missing out of my ear. I cover it well with a well-placed hoop, but on the occasion that I show someone what the years-healed tear looks like, there is always an involuntary bodily flinch the moment another person sees the evidence of a ripped-out piercing.

Fortunately, it was just my ear, but I’ve certainly had a few close calls with my one-inch stretched lobes and dual nostril piercings. So when I watched the “Final Destination: Bloodlines” trailer for myself, I immediately felt my body tense up the same way it does when I watch the paper-cut scene from “Jackass: The Movie.” Having a piercing ripped out is certainly nowhere near as painful as someone being folded in half after falling mid-gymnastics trick or having their entire gastrointestinal tract ripped out through their bootyhole by a pool drain, but those death sequences exist purely in hypothetical for me. I can’t have phantom pains for something I’ve never been close to experiencing but watching a tattoo artist get their septum piercing stuck on a metal hook that sets off a chain reaction leading to their death? That’s just a little too close for comfort.

And I’m not alone. As one commenter on the Warner Bros. YouTube page correctly stated, “To traumatize a whole generation with a log truck is evil but traumatizing a whole new generation with septum piercings is diabolical.”

Because the data-mining algorithm robots that live in my phone have also somehow figured out how to read my mind, the second I opened social media the day I saw the trailer, I was flooded with videos of other alternative people either flipping up their septum piercings or taking them out completely. While there’s no official, data-driven answer to just how many people have septum piercings, there has been a massive increase in recent years.

Mainstream celebrities like Cynthia Erivo, Florence Pugh, FKA Twigs, Zoë Kravitz, Zendaya, Lady Gaga, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Jessica Williams have all helped normalize and destigmatize the body modification, and the ability to flip the piercing up makes it a versatile piercing that can be hidden while working day jobs that might not be as accepting to the look. This combination has made it incredibly popular for people to get their septum pierced, so there were a lot of people immediately freaked out by the trailer.

It’s also stirred up some moral panic conspiracy theories about the “Final Destination” series being anti-body modification propaganda, which is absolute nonsense considering the franchise has had multiple alternative characters before. This sort of ignorance is Ian McKinley and Erin Ulmer from “Final Destination 3” erasure! Not to mention, Death left Ashlyn Halperin’s tongue piercing alone when he was microwaving her to ash in that tanning bed! Regardless, “Final Destination: Bloodlines” directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein have proven themselves worthy sickos to carry the torch for a franchise beloved by so many, and I can’t wait to see what other maddening deaths await.

“Final Destination Bloodlines” hits theaters on May 16, 2025.