How To Watch The Final Destination Movies In Order

When “Final Destination” hit theaters in 2000, the horror genre was in an interesting place. The slasher boom of the 1980s had given way to the winking, self-aware teen horror films that followed in the wake of “Scream.” Even the notably evil Chucky, of the “Child’s Play” franchise, had become a camp icon by the time the decade drew to a close. The first “Final Destination” was focused on teenagers, but it was a notable outlier in the genre at the time because of just how gleefully mean the movie was. Suddenly we had a new franchise that delighted in coming up with devilish, cruel ways to slaughter its characters, constantly outdoing itself with its elaborate kills.

The franchise has lasted more than two decades, which means that for anyone diving in for the first time, there are a number of movies to wrap your mind around. They also follow a famously-ridiculous numbering system, making it difficult to tell at first glance which movies should be watched when. As a result, we recommend watching the “Final Destination” films in the order in which they were released. The best order to watch the films in, then, is:

• “Final Destination” (2000)
• “Final Destination 2” (2003)
• “Final Destination 3” (2006)
• “The Final Destination” (2009)
• “Final Destination 5” (2011)
• “Final Destination Bloodlines” (2025)

Below, we’ll dive into each film, explaining why this order makes the most sense for people new to the franchise.

There are people who will tell you to watch the “Final Destination” franchise in chronological order. That’s a complicated suggestion — which we’ll get into at the end — but it’s one that misses part of the fun of the series. These are movies where it’s fun to learn how to watch them as you actually watch, to not only understand how they work but to see the filmmakers having fun with how they work. As these teenagers and young adults cheat Death — a sorta-personified Death who is seeking revenge for escaping its clutches — you’ll find yourself watching not just for the entertainment of the kills, but the pleasure of how the filmmakers set up the kills.

In other words, you’ll want to see how the series evolved as it was released. Eventually — quite quickly, in fact — the filmmakers begin playing around with the form, subverting expectations of where Death would ultimately strike. Each of these inventive kills depends on your understanding of the ones that have come before, so seeing them out of release order would dull their impact.

Especially later on, there are lots of in-jokes and references to previous films that you simply wouldn’t understand if you watch them in a different order. Sometimes this kind of thing can be pointless, but the “Final Destination” movies prove that fan-service cash-ins can be clever, so it’s worth experiencing that evolution as intended.

Considering he’s the actor that kickstarted a phenomenon, it’s a good sign that “Final Destination” star Devon Sawa is still a fan of the franchise. In the first film, he plays Alex, a kid who’s headed to Paris on a school trip when something strange happens on the plane. Before they take off, Alex has a terrible, graphic premonition: moments into the air, he realizes that the plane is going to explode, horrifically killing everyone on board. Then Alex opens his eyes and sees that his classmates are still boarding, giving him just moments to convince as many people as he can to get off the plane.

Only a few do, and sure enough, the plane goes up in flames while Alex is still trying to explain himself at the gate. The death of most of his classmates is a terrible tragedy, but Alex soon learns that he hasn’t escaped Death quite yet. Instead, every person who got off the plane gets picked off one by one, dying in the order they would have perished had they stayed aboard Flight 180.

Eventually, the opening disasters and resulting kills would get far more elaborate than they are in 2000’s “Final Destination.” That’s part of why it’s a good idea to watch this one first; it sets a solid baseline that the rest of the franchise builds on, but if you watch it after seeing the others, you may be disappointed by how relatively restrained and eerie its tone is.

If you know anything about the enduring impact of the “Final Destination” franchise, you’ve likely seen the memes about how millennials everywhere are still terrified to drive behind log trucks. That iconic image is from the opening disaster of 2003’s “Final Destination 2,” which involves the premonition of a horrific multi-car highway pileup.

The “Final Destination” franchise already shows that it’s interested in chain reactions and elaborate schemes involving hidden relationships that affect your dance with Death. In this case, Ali Larter reprises her role from the first film as the improbably-named Clear Rivers. It is she who tells the new group of survivors about escaping Death’s methodology, and she helps them seek out Tony Todd’s character Bludworth, a man who seems to know more about Death’s strange machinations than anyone else.

“Final Destination 2” also introduces the idea that Death may not work to correct the record in the same way each time. One of the survivors of the Route 23 crash is pregnant, and Bludworth suggests that the presence of “new life” might help them defeat Death. In other words, it’s important that watching this movie second teaches you that each successive installment may put a new wrinkle on the way the killing chain works, keeping you on your toes. In the “Final Destination” movies, Death is nothing if not creative.

In the opening moments of “Final Destination 3,” Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has a premonition at an amusement park: while she and her friends are on a roller coaster, Wendy experiences a vision of a horrific ride malfunction, watching cars fly off the track and seeing her companions plummet to their deaths. She wakes up before the coaster has departed the station, and some of them are able to disembark before everything plays out just as she saw it happen.

By 2006’s “Final Destination 3,” the filmmakers are clearly having some fun playing with world-building. As Wendy and her friend Kevin (Ryan Merriman) try to figure out how this kind of premonition is even possible, some research reveals that it’s happened before — to Alex before the Flight 180 disaster and to Kimberly (A.J. Cook) on Route 23.

“Final Destination 3” is also an interesting experience because it contains perhaps the single best performance in the franchise. Mary Elizabeth Winstead has transformed into a phenomenal performer, but she was great even in 2006. Before “Final Destination Bloodlines” nearly two decades later, this is perhaps the last time the “Final Destination” franchise had any sort of respectability, and it’s all thanks to what a great job she’s doing in this movie. Things are about to get extremely silly, so it makes sense to experience this one in release order as perhaps the last emotionally-grounded entry in the series.

The “Final Destination” franchise — while awesome — has some terrible Rotten Tomatoes scores. At only 28%, 2009’s “The Final Destination” is undoubtedly the worst of the bunch. That’s as good a reason as any to watch the movie fourth; tucked away in the middle of the series, it’ll be easy enough to forget all about it by the time you get to the end.

While it would have made sense for “Final Destination 3” to be the one that got the 3D treatment, it’s the terribly-named “The Final Destination” that was shot with the process in mind. That means lots of the kills have a glossy CGI sheen that has aged pretty terribly. That’s a shame for a series that seems like it’s full of evil Rube Goldberg machines, earning a lot of its effectiveness from the dangers that lurk around us in everyday life. The opening disaster is a crash at a speedway race, and the cars look positively weightless as they tumble through the air. The resulting fire isn’t much more believable.

Thankfully, “The Final Destination” isn’t a total loss. There are a few memorable kills here, including one that involves an escalator and another that takes place in a movie theater. While the characters watch a 3D film, an explosion rips through the mall, and it’s as though the film screen itself is what murders the characters. That’s a fun twist on the schlocky 3D horror that filled multiplexes in the late 2000s.

After naming the fourth installment “The Final Destination” – which might have been an attempt to suggest that it would be the last movie in the series — the producers went right back to the numbering system in 2011, when “Final Destination 5” came out. (For a few months, they announced that the title would be the beautifully dumb “5nal Destination,” but they wound up taking that back.)

Like “Final Destination 2,” the opening disaster here involves a road. This time, though, it’s not just a car crash but a bridge collapse, a genuinely upsetting sequence that sees cars and people tumbling into the cold, unforgiving water while concrete rains down around them. Our lead character is Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto), and when he’s able to save some friends from the bridge, they begin dying anyway. At this point, you know what’s coming — except that you very much don’t.

The third act of “Final Destination 5” contains one of the best twists in horror franchise history, and it’s best to watch when you’re meant to. It’s not going to make sense otherwise, as its impact is wholly dependent on what you know about the other films. You’re likely to notice a few things that seem strange about the film — Tony Todd’s cameo as Bludworth, for example, doesn’t seem to fit what you think you know about the character. By the time the credits roll, however, you’ll have a new appreciation for the whole series.

After “Final Destination 5” gave the series a perfect ending, the franchise went dormant for a while. In 2025, however, “Final Destination Bloodlines” topped our ranking of the entire franchise. It’s a pulpy delight, finally justifying the franchise’s cult fandom. This is a deeply funny movie, but it’s also a gruesome one that redefines the entire franchise through a new lens, which is difficult to do when you’re reviving a property that had essentially been dead for more than a decade.

The opening disaster in “Final Destination Bloodlines” takes place back in the 1960s, making it the earliest event to happen chronologically in the franchise. Most of the movie happens in the present day, however, meaning that this movie serves as a sort of frame story for the entire series. There are plenty of Easter eggs meant to reward longtime fans — you’ll see a certain plane mentioned, and there are plenty of log trucks to go around — but the in-jokes serve a purpose, too. This is a movie that doesn’t just suggest a new direction for the series to take in the future; it also makes you understand the loose connections between the previous films in a new way.

You should also watch “Final Destination Bloodlines” last because it contains the most emotional appearance of Tony Todd’s Bludworth. Already knowing he was dying of cancer, Todd improvised the character’s goodbye, and it’ll land best if you’ve followed his journey through the rest of the films.

After you’ve seen all of the movies in release order, you may need the entire “Final Destination” timeline explained. The chronological timeline suggests a different order that you might be able to watch the movies in, one that prioritizes the way the events happen in-universe rather than the way they were released in the real world.

In other words, it could be interesting to watch them already knowing that “Final Destination 5” is secretly a prequel. At the end of the movie, Sam finds himself on a flight headed to Paris, and he looks down at his ticket to see that — although the movie was released in 2011 — it takes place in 2000. In fact, Devon Sawa’s Alex is on that very plane, and Sam watches him rush his friends off in a panic.

Plus, the opening of “Final Destination Bloodlines” happens even before “Final Destination 5.” So if you really want to, you could watch “Bloodlines” up until the conclusion of the opening disaster. Then you’d watch the rest in the order below, before finishing “Bloodlines”:

• “Final Destination Bloodlines” (opening sequence only)
• “Final Destination 5”
• “Final Destination”
• “Final Destination 2”
• “Final Destination 3”
• “The Final Destination”
• “Final Destination Bloodlines” (the rest of the movie)

It’s a possibility, and it could be a fun experiment, but we wouldn’t necessarily suggest it — after all, this is a franchise that’s all about how things can get extra-deadly if events happen out of their predetermined order.