Tag: Entertainment

3 underrated Amazon Prime Video movies you should watch this weekend (April 10-12)

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This weekend’s watchlist covers three different genres of movies, so you can pick whatever you are in the mood for. We have a trio of hidden gems on Amazon Prime Video that deserve way more attention.

There is a gritty Michael Caine revenge thriller you should not miss, a micro-budget 1950s sci-fi mystery that thrives on atmosphere and dialogue. For horror fans, we have a psychological horror bout a hospice nurse whose faith tips into something far more dangerous that gets inside your skin.

We also have guides to the best new movies to stream, the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best free movies, and the best movies on Amazon Prime Video.

Saint Maud (2019)

Saint Maud is not a horror film in the traditional sense, and going in expecting one will work against you. What it actually is is a deeply unsettling psychological portrait of a young hospice nurse named Maud, a recent Catholic convert who becomes dangerously fixated on saving her terminally ill patient’s soul in ways that grow increasingly disturbing.

Morfydd Clark’s performance is the engine of the whole thing, holding a fragile, frightening line between piety and paranoia throughout. I really like how the film gets under your skin without ever fully explaining itself. You finish it feeling like you witnessed something you were not supposed to see, and that feeling does not leave quickly.

You can watch Saint Maud on Amazon Prime Video

Harry Brown (2009)

If you have a soft spot for slow-burn British crime dramas, Harry Brown is the movie you need to watch this weekend. Michael Caine plays the title character, a widowed, retired Royal Marines veteran living on a decaying South London housing estate overrun by gang violence. When his only friend is murdered, Harry stops looking the other way.

What makes this film work so well is how it refuses to glamorize what follows. Harry is not an action hero. He is an old man with emphysema who stumbles during a chase and collapses on a canal path.

I really like how the film earns every moment of tension because it keeps Harry vulnerable and the world around him genuinely threatening. Caine is absolutely extraordinary here, and there are sequences in this film that will make you forget you are watching a 77-year-old man.

You can watch Harry Brown on Amazon Prime Video

The Vast of Night (2019)

Have you accidentally tuned into a late-night radio broadcast and could not bring yourself to switch off. Well, The Vast of Night is exactly that kind of sci-fi movie.

Set over a single night in 1950s small-town New Mexico, the film follows Fay, a teenage switchboard operator, and Everett, a fast-talking local radio DJ, as they stumble onto a mysterious audio frequency that sends them down a strange and increasingly eerie rabbit hole.

There are no big set pieces or alien invasions. The tension is built almost entirely through dialogue, long unbroken camera takes, and an incredibly precise sound design that makes the night feel alive and watchable.

What I really love about this movie is how it makes stillness feel tense. A long phone call, a quiet street, a voice crackling through static, and somehow all of it keeps you completely locked in. For a movie made on a low budget, The Vast of Night makes an entertaining watch.

You can watch The Vast of Night on Amazon Prime Video

Hollywood’s biggest filmmaker just came out clean about using AI in movies

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Legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg voiced concerns about the growing role of artificial intelligence in creative industries during an appearance at SXSW in Austin. Speaking during an interview session at the 2026 event, Spielberg made it clear that while he supports technology in many fields, he strongly opposes AI replacing human creativity in filmmaking.

Spielberg Draws A Line On AI In Creative Work

During the discussion, Spielberg revealed that he has never used AI in any of his films, a statement that drew enthusiastic applause from the audience. The director emphasized that although artificial intelligence can be useful in certain disciplines, it should not replace the people responsible for storytelling and artistic expression.

“I am not for AI if it replaces a creative individual,” Spielberg said during the conversation.

Steven Spielberg.
Michael Loccisano / Getty Images

The filmmaker explained that in his own creative process, including television writing rooms, he still relies entirely on human collaboration. According to Spielberg, there is no “empty chair with a laptop in front of it” representing an AI contributor. For him, the development of stories and characters remains a fundamentally human activity.

Spielberg’s stance reflects broader concerns across Hollywood, where writers, directors, and actors have increasingly debated how AI might affect jobs and creative control in the entertainment industry.

A Director Known For Exploring Technology

Despite his skepticism toward AI replacing creative professionals, Spielberg is not opposed to technology itself. Throughout his career, many of his films have explored futuristic technologies and their potential consequences.

His filmography includes classics such as Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg has also examined the relationship between humans and advanced technology in projects like Minority Report, Ready Player One, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

These films often present technology as both a powerful tool and a potential threat, themes that echo Spielberg’s real-world perspective on artificial intelligence.

AI’s Growing Presence In The Entertainment Industry

Spielberg’s comments come at a time when AI tools are increasingly entering the filmmaking and television production landscape. Technology startups are developing AI-powered platforms designed to assist with script development, editing, and visual effects, often marketing them as tools that can reduce production costs.

John Williams and Steven Spielberg in the 1980s
Disney+

Major streaming platforms are also exploring how artificial intelligence might streamline content creation. Amazon has reportedly begun testing AI tools for film and television production. Meanwhile, Netflix recently acquired an AI-focused filmmaking company associated with Ben Affleck in a deal reportedly valued at around $600 million.

While these developments could reshape how films and shows are produced, they have also sparked ongoing debates about whether AI will assist creative professionals or eventually replace them.

The Future Of AI In Hollywood

Spielberg’s remarks highlight a central question facing the entertainment industry: how to integrate new technologies without undermining the human creativity that defines filmmaking.

For independent filmmakers working with limited resources, AI tools may offer opportunities to reduce production costs or speed up certain tasks. However, many established creators argue that storytelling should remain driven by human imagination rather than automated systems.

As AI continues to evolve and spread across the entertainment industry, discussions like the one at SXSW suggest that Hollywood’s biggest names are determined to ensure technology enhances creativity rather than replacing it.

Prime Video’s AI recap feature messed up so badly that Amazon removed it

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Amazon has quietly removed its recently launched feature, AI-generated video recaps, after it bungled key story details of the Fallout series on Prime Video. The feature was supposed to make catching up on the next season easier by analyzing plot points and turning them into a short video narrated by an AI voice. Instead, it got basic facts wrong, confusing both longtime fans and people just discovering the show.

Where the AI recaps went wrong

Fallout’s season one recap was where viewers first noticed something was off. The AI confidently claimed that one of The Ghoul’s flashbacks took place in 1950s, even though the scene is actually set in the year 2077. As GamesRadar pointed out, the narrator also misstated a major character moment by saying The Ghoul gave Lucy a choice to die or leave with him. The real situation is far more nuanced since Lucy could either join him or stay behind and face a possible attack from the Brotherhood of Steel.

Fallout on Prime added a season 1 recap but don’t bother watching it, it’s AI slop that gets several details wrong like the flashbacks being set in the 1950s and “Cooper offers Lucy a choice in the finale: die, or join him” phrased as if he’d be the one to kill her 😭 pic.twitter.com/zHLvN988w5

— lucks eterna ☘️ (@lucks_eterna) November 24, 2025

Earlier, Amazon deployed these AI-powered recaps across several series, including The Rig, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Upload, and Bosch. Now, the feature has disappeared from all of them, and Amazon has not yet commented on when or whether the feature will return. This news arrives as Amazon tests other viewing upgrades on Prime Video, such as an Alexa feature that allows you to skip directly to any scene you describe.

ai-video-recaps-on-amazon-prime-video
Amazon

The idea behind these recaps made sense in theory. They were supposed to save viewers time and offer a quick refresher before starting a new season. For now, Prime Video is left with a reminder of how messy generative AI can be when it tries to explain a world as detailed as Fallout. Amazon might bring the feature back after fixing it, yet this misstep highlights how far AI still is from delivering dependable story recaps. Until Amazon gets its recap system back on track, you can check out what is new on Prime Video this month or pick from its lineup of top-rated movies.

When the world spins out of control

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I’m still chipping away at my summer reading backlog over here, and this week finally made it to Alex Foster’s Circular Motion, which came out in May. And, wow, I wasn’t quite ready for the emotional journey this one took me on. It’s set in a near future — people ride OneWheels and going viral on social media is still a thing some strive for — where the megacompany CWC has created an extreme form of high-speed travel that allows people to zip across the world in no time flat. But, it soon becomes pretty clear that there’s a consequence for this. Earth is spinning faster and faster… and faster, and protestors blame CWC and the orbital circuit its travel system relies on.

The days grow shorter, the climate events become more extreme and everything is hurtling toward disaster. Circular Motion follows Tanner, a kid from smalltown Alaska who lands a job at CWC, Winnie, a girl who has truly been through it, and Columbia professor Victor Bickle, who shot to viral fame after predicting a public infrastructure catastrophe. They’re all connected, as we piece together through multiple POVs. This is a book that very blatantly has something to say about capitalism, climate change and everything in between, and a beautiful exploration of human connection in a crumbling world.

Never fear, reaction videos are still allowed under YouTube’s new ‘inauthentic content’ policy

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YouTube has clarified its rules about repetitious content and your favorite reaction video channel won’t be impacted. Earlier this month, the platform said it would be changing its rules for monetization in an effort to address AI-generated materials, but didn’t include many specifics, which led many to sound the alarm that reaction videos might get swept up in the new rules. The company has now provided a few tweaks and more clear delineations in its guidelines about channel monetization policies.

For starters, the rule is being renamed to the inauthentic content policy. “This type of content has always been ineligible for monetization under our existing policies, where creators are rewarded for original and authentic content,” a note appended to the states. “There is no change to our reused content policy which reviews content like commentary, clips, compilations and reaction videos.”

YouTube provided a few examples of material that it would deem to be mass-produced or overly repetitive, and thus ineligible to be monetized. Inauthentic content includes video “that exclusively features readings of other materials you did not originally create, like text from websites or news feeds” or “image slideshows or scrolling text with minimal or no narrative, commentary, or educational value.” The company also shared examples of reused content. YouTube said those beloved reaction channels, as well as videos that contain clips for analysis, review or commentary, are unaffected by the new rules. The no-nos for reused content rules might include “Content uploaded many times by other creators” or “Content downloaded or copied from another online source without any substantive modifications.”

What to read this weekend: Vampires and more vampires

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I was pretty late in getting to this one, as it’s been on my list for a good while now, but I really can’t think of a better time to have finally picked up this retelling of the original sapphic vampire story, Carmilla, than during Pride Month. And what a treat it is. Hungerstone is a gothic novel that follows Lenore, a woman who has been uprooted from London and moved to the British moorlands by her husband, Henry, to fulfill his career ambitions. Henry is… not the best, and Lenore could definitely do with some companionship. Then, in walks Carmilla. Cue the yearning and craving.

Carmilla is actually brought in after a carriage accident to recover and overstays her welcome, making everyone in the house uncomfortable with her strange behaviors (wandering at night, forgoing food at mealtimes, etc). From the moment she arrives, Lenore can’t stop thinking about her. Lenore is also having strange dreams, and girls in a nearby village soon begin catching a strange illness. This is all pretty familiar. There are some big differences between Hungerstone and the novella it’s based on, though. Hungerstone further explores industrialization and the expectations and treatment of women in this time period. It delivers feminine rage and some really satisfying moments.

Captain America: Brave New World and The Wild Robot just hit streaming

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Each week on Polygon, we round up the most notable new releases to streaming and VOD, highlighting the biggest and best new movies for you to watch at home.

This week, Captain America: Brave New World, the Marvel superhero movie starring Anthony Mackie and Harrison Ford, smashes its way onto Disney Plus after hitting video on demand in April. It’s a big week for animation, with the Oscar-nominated The Wild Robot and the Korean science fiction romance Lost in Starlight both releasing on Netflix, while DreamWorks’ adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s internationally bestselling Dog Man graphic novel series arrives on Peacock. New titles available to rent include the Chinese legal thriller The Prosecutor, and two tales of forbidden love: the Shakespearean musical Juliet & Romeo and The Grey director Joe Carnahan’s action flick Shadow Force.

Here’s everything new that’s available to watch this weekend!

Genre: Science fiction romance
Director: Han Ji-won
Cast: Kim Tae-ri, Hong Kyung/Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Justin H. Min

Set in 2050 Seoul, Netflix’s first Korean original animated film is a story of literally star-crossed lovers. An astronaut headed for Mars and a musician fall for each other and face the pain of separation. Trying to make a long-distance relationship work is especially difficult when you’re 139 million miles away from each other.

Genre: Crime drama
Director: Carlos Sedes
Cast: Carmen Machi, Ivana Baquero, Tristán Ulloa

Based on a true story, this Spanish film stars Ivana Baquero (Pan’s Labyrinth) as Maje, the young widow of a man stabbed seven times and left in a parking lot in a seeming crime of passion. The investigation leads to Maje’s lovers, as the police try to figure out who’s really behind the crime.

Genre: Family science fiction
Run time: 1h 42m
Director: Chris Sanders
Cast: Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor

Based on Peter Brown’s middle-grade book, DreamWorks’ Academy Award-nominated film follows Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), a helpful robot who accidentally washes up on an island that’s only inhabited by animals. While she initially terrifies all the creatures there, she winds up befriending a fox (Pedro Pascal) who helps her raise a runty gosling (Kit Connor) and prepare him for his first migration.

From director Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon), The Wild Robot is a tenderly crafted story that pushes computer animation in a beautiful new direction — and is exactly the sort of movie that the current animation landscape so desperately needs.

Captain America: Brave New World

Genre: Superhero action
Run time: 1h 58m
Director: Julius Onah
Cast: Anthony Mackie, Danny Ramirez, Harrison Ford

Set after the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Captain America: Brave New World sees Sam Wilson — having fully embraced his role as the new Captain America — being called on to resolve an international incident in the wake of a failed assassination attempt on newly elected President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford). With time running out and the walls closing in, will Sam be able to come out on top and rescue the world from the brink of devastation? Probably!

As a Captain America movie, Brave New World is batting strongly below average. Its plot is at least mildly reminiscent of 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but it’s both fair and unfair to compare the two. Unfair in that Winter Soldier is still among the best-regarded MCU movies, while BNW is running uphill from table-setting a potential new Captain America franchise, dealing with post-production rewrites and reshoots, and the general malaise of the MCU’s post-Avengers: Endgame audience. But fair in that, like Winter Soldier, BNW was also clearly designed as a grounded thriller (by the sliding scale of “grounded” in the MCU) featuring global political stakes and a superpowered conspiracy at its heart.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Genre: Political drama
Run time: 2h 48m
Director: Mohammad Rasoulof
Cast: Soheila Golestani, Missagh Zareh, Mahsa Rostami

Writer and director Mohammad Rasoulof had to flee Iran after he was sentenced to eight years in prison ahead of the premiere of The Seed of the Sacred Fig. The Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated film is a fictional story set against the backdrop of political protests, incorporating real footage of the 2022 and 2023 unrest that followed the death of 22-year-old Jina Mahsa Amini, who was fatally beaten by Iranian “morality police” under the accusation that she was wearing her hijab improperly.

Genre: Family comedy
Run time: 1h 29m
Director: Peter Hastings
Cast: Peter Hastings, Pete Davidson, Lil Rel Howery

Peter Hastings continues the Captain Underpants franchise with an adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s graphic novel series about a hero created when a police officer and his dog were stitched together into one individual after being wounded while failing to defuse a bomb. Pete Davidson plays Dog Man’s evil cat nemesis in the DreamWorks film, which uses CG animation styled to resemble craft materials.

Genre: Thriller
Run time: 1h 31m
Director: Mel Gibson
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Topher Grace, Michelle Dockery

No one is quite who they seem in Mel Gibson’s claustrophobic thriller, where a U.S. Marshal (Michelle Dockery) hires a pilot (Mark Wahlberg) to get an informant from Alaska to New York so he can testify against the crime family he worked for. As they travel across the wilderness, the group fights for control of the increasingly tense and violent flight.

New on Shudder and HIDIVE

Genre: Horror anime
Run time: 1h 31m
Director: Toyoo Ashida
Cast: Kaneto Shiozawa, Michie Tomizawa, Seizō Katō

AMC Networks re-released a digitally remastered version of Toyoo Ashida’s classic anime film to celebrate its 40th anniversary in theaters in April, and is now offering it across both its anime and horror streaming services. Set in a far future where vampires rule the world, the action-packed film follows a mysterious vampire hunter hired to protect a woman from a vampire lord who wants her to be his next bride.

Genre: Action comedy
Run time: 1h 42m
Director: James Madigan
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Katee Sackhoff, Charithra Chandran

Basically Bullet Train but in the air, Fight or Flight casts Black Hawk Down and Penny Dreadful star Josh Hartnett as a disgraced Secret Service agent given the chance to clear his name by catching an elusive hacker known as the Ghost, who’s boarded a flight from Bangkok to San Francisco. Unfortunately, the plane is packed with assassins looking to kill the Ghost and anyone who gets in their way.

Genre: Musical romance
Run time: 2h 2m
Director: Timothy Scott Bogart
Cast: Jamie Ward, Clara Rugaard, Rupert Everett

West Side Story already did the decisive musical version of Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet, but this adaptation plays closer to the original text while adding a soundtrack full of original pop tunes to the tale of two feuding houses of Verona. Filmed on location in Italy, Juliet & Romeo’s high-profile supporting cast includes Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter, The White Lotus) as Lord Montague and Rebel Wilson (Bridesmaids, Pitch Perfect) as Lady Capulet.

Genre: Legal thriller
Run time: 1h 57m
Director: Donnie Yen
Cast: Donnie Yen, Cheung Chi Lam Julian, Michael Hui

Ip Man’s Donnie Yen directs and stars in this Chinese legal thriller loosely based on a real 2016 drug trafficking case. Yen plays detective Fok Chi-ho, who loses faith in policing and decides the better way to ensure criminals face justice is as a public prosecutor. The Prosecutor might be mostly courtroom drama, but there’s still plenty of action, combining old-school martial arts techniques with modern film technology.

Genre: Action thriller
Run time: 1h 43m
Director: Joe Carnahan
Cast: Kerry Washington, Omar Sy, Mark Strong

Eight years ago, Kyrah Owens (Kerry Washington of Scandal and Little Fires Everywhere) and Isaac Sarr (Omar Sy of Lupin and Jurassic World) joined a multinational special forces group dubbed Shadow Force, but they’ve left that life behind to raise their son. Their old boss (played by Mark Strong of Shazam! and Sherlock Holmes) doesn’t accept their resignation, and is trying to hunt them down.

3 action movies to watch on Memorial Day

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Memorial Day is more than just an excuse to get out the grill. It’s also a day designed to honor those we’ve lost in combat, an important hallmark of the wars America has fought over its history.

In that context, we’ve pulled together three action movies that all focus on what it means to be a soldier in one way or another. Some of these movies are more serious than others, but each one should resonate on this particular long weekend.

We also have guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+.

Black Hawk Down (2001)

One of the best war movies of the past 25 years, Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down follows a platoon of U.S. forces attacked by local rebels in Somalia during the early 1990s. As the soldiers on the ground face relentless fire and are forced to fight to survive, we also come to appreciate the folly of U.S. forces assuming that they can bring peace to the world.

Black Hawk Down is filled with young actors who would eventually become stars, but what really makes the movie work is the fact that none of those actors are more important than the relentless pace of the story being told.

You can watch Black Hawk Down on Netflix.

Da 5 Bloods (2020)

A brilliant examination of the Vietnam War and its aftermath, Da 5 Bloods tells the story of a group of Black veterans of that war who reunite in the country decades later to find the treasure they buried there during the conflict.

As they argue about the state of modern America and discuss how they were abused by the country they call home, the men also find themselves forced to fight for their right to leave with the gold. Anchored by a remarkable central performance from Delroy Lindo, Da 5 Bloods is one of Spike Lee’s more impressive and exciting efforts of the past decade.

You can watch Da 5 Bloods on Netflix.

The Great Escape (1963)

The Great Escape is an action movie that strikes an impressive tonal balance between comedy and drama. Set in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, it follows a group of imprisoned soldiers who see it as their obligation to attempt to escape from the camp. As they slowly dig a tunnel to escape, a rogue amongst them keeps trying to break out in more reckless ways.

Although it might minimize some of the horror of living in a Nazi prison camp, The Great Escape is an effective, action-oriented depiction of how much soldiers can fight even after they’ve already been captured.

You can watch The Great Escape on Amazon Prime Video.






The Lord of the Rings soundtrack issued in vinyl boxset from Rhino

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Howard Shore won multiple Oscars, Grammys, and Golden Globe awards for his score for the Lord of the Rings series. Performed originally by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra with choral contributions from the London Voices and London Oratory School Schola, the score has become a favorite for film screenings with live accompaniment. Now you can get a vinyl version of the soundtrack to set the stage for your next Dungeons & Dragons game — or the epic task of cleaning your apartment.

Available exclusively on Rhino.com, the $149.98 box set includes six LPs on 180-gram black vinyl, two for each of Peter Jackson’s films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy. Along with the iconic instrumental music, the tracklist includes Enya’s “May It Be” and “Aníron (Theme For Aragorn And Arwen)” and Annie Lennox’s Academy Award-winning song “Into the West,” which closes out The Return of the King. The box features sepia-toned art, with a great image of Treebeard carrying Merry and Pippin, plus a booklet filled with stills from the film.

Only 2,000 copies of the set are available worldwide, so if this soundtrack is precious to you, be sure to order it quickly.

Final Destination: Bloodlines got a unique cut for IMAX release only

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It’s been nearly 15 years since Final Destination 5, the most recent installment in the horror-movie franchise where someone responds to a premonition about deadly disaster by saving the victims, who death then jealously pursues in the order they should have died, through a series of ridiculous contrivances. The series revives with Final Destination: Bloodlines, which puts a new twist on the gimmick: This time around, one survivor of the original disaster staved off death long enough to have kids and grandkids, so death chases them down too, in order of birth.

For a lot of filmmakers, that time gap would be a reason to start from scratch as much as possible, to revamp and update the franchise. Directors Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky (who also made the fascinating 2018 sci-fi puzzlebox movie Freaks, now on Netflix) certainly do some of that — including using their framing for an IMAX version of the movie they say will never be seen in any other format. But they also told Polygon that they went back to study the franchise’s previous films in obsessive detail, to capture everything that made these movies work.

“There are key shots in the previous movies that are iconic,” Lipovsky told Polygon via Zoom. “We just were so inspired by them. We even took it to the next level — we analyzed every single death set piece in all the previous movies, and built this incredibly complex spreadsheet with how many omens they had, what type of death it was, and what the other deaths were that came after it, to see what the pattern of death was, and which ones worked really well, and which ones didn’t. We really analyzed the key DNA pieces, the set pieces we could best learn from and bring into our movie.”

Stefanie (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), a dark-haired young woman, stands with her back to the camera, in front of an elaborate timeline on the wall built on newspaper clips covered with red ink lines and post-its, in Final Destination: Bloodlines

Photo: Eric Milner/Warner Bros. Entertainment

He says previous Final Destination movies showed death’s impending arrival on a scene in a variety of ways, “whether that’s through wind, or the way the camera moves, or the way water drips, or things like that,” which the directors picked up for Bloodlines. “But even the fun they had with the way they transition from one scene to the next, we were really inspired by that as well. One of our all-time favorite shots is when [2006’s Final Destination 3] cuts from the two tanning beds to the two coffins. It’s cinematic, but it also has an irony and a fun to it. That’s the tone you’re always trying to capture.”

The “arrival of death” tipoffs in a Final Destination movie also include creepy music cues, and ominous shots of the various mundane objects that are about to self-assemble into a murderous Rube Goldberg device leading to a messy death. But with Bloodlines, Stein says, the team added in IMAX camera cues.

“Because we got to work with the IMAX team, to film it for IMAX with their cameras and their specs, they really encouraged us to see if there was a way we could use the IMAX aspect ratio shift as a creative tool,” Stein says. “And that got us really excited to use it almost as a omen in itself. In the IMAX version of this movie, there is a specific shot where we have a creepy push-in for each death sequence that we designed to be the moment where we expand to the IMAX aspect ratio right as death arrives. It’s the harbinger of death.”

That effect won’t be visible at all for people in regular theaters, or watching the film later in home formats, Stein says. “It’s only in the IMAX version of the movie, which you can only see opening week in IMAX theaters. It’ll never be released on home video or on streaming. So for audiences that don’t know that’s what’s happening, they’ll just feel it as a bit of an increase in the intensity in those moments, as they get sucked into that bigger aspect ratio. And for the IMAX fans who have a keen eye, who are looking out for it, they’ll be able to see those particular shots where death arrives and leaves each scene.”

A line of characters in mourning black stand outside around a coffin in the foreground in Final Destinations: Bloodlines

Photo: Eric Milner/Warner Bros. Entertainment

Stein and Lipovsky’s enthusiasm for the franchise shows through when they talk about the details of their plot, with the central family facing death one by one. But they light up even more when talking about the filmmaking process. “Final Destination is the ultimate treat for a filmmaker to shoot, because there is no personified antagonist,” Lipovsky said. “There’s no monster, there’s no man with a knife, no nothing. It’s just shots of objects and the wind, and the way the camera rotates slightly and pushes in. Ultimately, it’s really the filmmaking that’s coming for these characters, and all the clever ways these objects are misdirecting them and moving around them — which is ultimately us.

“So basically, Adam and I got to be death, to build all these crazy machines and use all the tools of cinema we delight in to create tension. And that’s a really just a beautiful gift as a filmmaker to indulge yourself with, and to play with all the incredible technicians we collaborated with, to just give the sense that there’s an evil force there, even though you don’t see anything.”

Stein says that dynamic — getting to “play death” in every sequence — made the project fun for him and Lipovsky in a way that they hope carries over to the audience. “A lot of people assume horror movie sets are very bleak, but there’s a great sense of playfulness and fun in horror,” he said. “Because you’re letting loose with your dark sense of humor, and all the technicians are having so much fun with being covered in fake blood, and having fake bodies being torn apart by puppeteers. All those practical effects bring a lot of fun to the set, as everyone’s figuring out how to do all this stuff.

“And I think that comes across on screen, especially in a tone like Final Destination’s. We always said we wanted to create a movie where you have to watch it through your fingers ’cause it’s so intense, but you’re also laughing at the same time. And when you see this movie in a packed theater with an audience that is really coming into the audience experience in that way — everyone is horrified, and they have to look away. But they’re also laughing uproariously, which I think surprises some people when they really see this movie in a packed theater.”

Final Destination: Bloodlines opens in theaters on May 16.