Last Updated on August 26, 2025 by FANGORIA Staff
Veteran special makeup artist Todd Masters has a confession to make: “I had never seen an entire Final Destination” before making Bloodlines, its new installment. “I’ve certainly been aware of the series—not to mention that Death has very much followed me throughout my life and career [which has included Six Feet Under, Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, and many others] with countless ‘hits’ in my 45 years of being a professional killer…in makeup effects.”
Final Destination Bloodlines certainly killed it this past weekend, taking just over $100 million evenly divided between domestic and foreign box office. Audiences flocked to see what may be the most spectacular opening setpiece of mass carnage in the franchise’s history, followed by a series of horrible “accidents” claiming the descendants of one of its survivors. (Obligatory SPOILER ALERT that details of these deaths are revealed below.) It has revived the film series in a big way…but the production got off to an uncertain start. Masters and his team “were brought in early in prep,” he recalls, “but it took a while before we secured the needed cast to get us started, beyond designing and testing gags.
“We were only days away from day one of production when the [actors’] strike happened,” he continues. “The world of movies shut down, and Bloodlines went on a very long hiatus. Once things were resolved at the end of 2023, and we geared up to resume in early 2024, we still waited on cast. Also, nearly every substantial makeup effects gag was rushed and right up front on the new shoot schedule.
Nevertheless, the artist and his MastersFX crew rallied in collaboration with the visual FX, stunts, set design, costume and other teams to bring their best to Bloodlines. “Every department was topnotch and came in to make an amazing movie—even with the very fast second half of prep time,” Masters says. “Each gag was drafted up between the responsible stunt and effects departments, who all brought great inventiveness to them. My team designed and created everything from dummies and body replicas to subtle prosthetics, extensive tattoos and piercings for Erik to complex practical/digital shots.”
Speaking of Erik, the skin artist played by Richard Harmon has one of the most memorable demises in Bloodlines, to the point that a piece of it comprised the entirety of the movie’s teaser trailer. Working with frequent past collaborator Harmon was a highlight of the shoot for Masters. “We’ve done many, many shows with Richard,” Masters says, including The Haunting Hour, Margaux, The Good Doctor, and Lowlifes. “He is great to work with, it’s fun to see him break out in a major feature, and it was cool to create the tattooed and pierced Erik with him. He came into our studios several times, trying on this earlobe, that tattoo, until we found Erik. Now it’s difficult to imagine him without his tatts and nose-ring accoutrements. His character goes through the movie with nearly every tattoo and piercing being faked—and they all had to be applied every day.
“Richard was very patient as we worked out certain gags,” Masters continues. “The septum ring, which was one of the surprise challenges of the show, was tried several times for the sequence in the tattoo shop where he’s dangling from the nose ring. We really wanted his nose and parts of his face to distort—stretching as they would if he was truly hanging like this. Stunts had a smartly designed external rig, but it needed to combine with a half-face prosthetic, which I felt would be troublesome in a big IMAX close-up. So we attempted to design a rig that would go inside Richard’s nose. For weeks, several on our team were cramming small devices up their noses. Finally, our animatronics supervisor, Joshua Raymond, came up with the micro inner nose design, only the night before we shot it. Thankfully, Richard was game for playing with us, and it all worked great.”
If you’ve seen Bloodlines, you know (another SPOILER ALERT) that the tattoo-parlor sequence is a red herring, and that Erik survives his workplace conflagration—only to bite it in a hospital later on. “For the MRI scene,” Masters says, “we created a reverse folded torso of Richard’s body with breakaway tattooed skins and an elaborate rig to tear it apart. This was created and tested many times to get the ripping actions right. Several skins were created, tattooed and destroyed in the process. Quite complicated, but expertly handled by the MastersFX team, led by Christopher Clark, Joshua and Lori Sandnes.
“Julia [Anna Lore] being squished in the garbage truck was probably the most challenging effect,” he continues. “First, believe it or not, we shot many types of fruits and vegetables being squished, to study how to visually communicate her head and arm getting stuck, squeezed, and split apart, or if her eyes would come out. Then we made 3D models of Anna to line up with the art department, VFX and special effects teams, and to determine the practical/digital switch-out—how each element would be shot and how/when to make the crunch happen,”
“We used a crushable head combined with the actress’ horrific performance. Her arm that gets pulled off was also practical, and made of an extremely squishy and fleshlike silicone. We all jumped into this one, with Christopher Clark and Benson Musaev as key leaders on this project.”
Another memorable Bloodlines bisection is visited upon the maître d’ (Bernard Cuffling) in the ill-fated opening restaurant. “The elevator splits that guy in half,” Masters says. “This puppet effect was supervised by Dan Rebert and created in full scale to do very specific moves, as directed.”
Staging all this carnage for a movie that would be R-rated did cause Masters a bit of worry. “I was certainly concerned our best stuff would be cut, but most of it made it in—except the head of Alex Zahara as Uncle Howard,” he reveals. “Alex is another good friend; we used to put alien makeups on him all the time, for Stargate SG-1 and i. But I don’t recall ever killing him before, so it was our complete honor to mow him down [with a lawnmower] in a Final Destination movie.”
We made several highly detailed ‘mowable’ heads for his character, but there are only frames left in the film. It was horrifically gruesome, as we created each head and its insides with disgusting detail. I think it was just a bit too much for a mass popcorn-munching audience; most of what we see in the final movie is mower effects by the great Tony Lazarowich. Hopefully, we’ll see more of the heads on the extended Blu-ray and 4K.”
Masters has another confession to make: As of this interview late last week, he has not seen Bloodlines in its entirety either. But he’s been thrilled with the on-line fan response to the movie, and its extensive practical FX. “I’ve probably heard the most about Iris’ ring ringer ripping off [in the prologue]. That was also very tricky, as it was all practical and in a huge close-up in IMAX, but it worked great. For her final fall, we created an animatronic matching hand for her ring-finger skin to ‘sleeve’ off. This amazing cable puppet hand was created by Joshua, and he and Yukiyo Okajima created extremely detailed, silicone flesh for it. I have seen that part with an audience…great screams!”
Scroll on for an exclusive test video from Masters (and some pics of the aforementioned ring finger rippage!)
