by Zach Collier & Barrett Burgin
Photos By: Sela Shiloni // Sylist: Leila Bani // Styling Assistant: Rosemary Fisher Lang // Hair: Steven Mason // Makeup: Allan Avandaño // Makeup Assistant: Ruby Vo // Dress: Catherine Regehr // Necklace: Mademoiselle Jules // Shoes: Stylist's Own // Special Thanks to Mine & Yours
In a franchise built on the macabre ballet of inevitability, Kaitlyn Santa Juana’s perspective on her blockbuster hit Final Destination: Bloodlines offers a refreshingly humanistic—and surprisingly hopeful—angle.
Filmmaker Barrett Burgin (who recently shot the upcoming JP Saxe cover featurette for tmrw #52) and I caught up with Kaitlyn on a sunny afternoon. The conversation began playfully, with Barrett having seen the movie the night before and me being incredibly relieved Kaitlyn wasn’t actually killed by a train crash (I saw it the week prior).
In response, Kaitlyn shared how funny it was to watch the film with her 72-year-old grandmother, who was definitely not a horror fan but really, really proud of her granddaughter and willing to take one for the team. Reflecting on watching the film again as we spoke, Kaitlyn noted an eerie resonance between her family’s history and the themes of the movie.
“She’s the most anxious person I’ve ever met in my life,” Kaitlyn said of her grandma. “She doesn’t drive on highways. She doesn’t drive on bridges. She actually was featured in a TV show native to BC called Highway to Hell.” Her grandmother had survived a terrifying car accident on British Columbia’s notorious Coquihalla Highway—“Flipped off a cliff, upside down in a truck, stuck in a pool of water,” she recalled. “There’s a TV show of her being saved by the tow truck company. My grandmother is a Final Destination survivor."
No spoilers, but anyone familiar with Bloodlines should know why a grandma who cheats death plus the description of an upside down vehicle in a pool of water is an eerie connection for Kaitlyn. Other eerie parallels between her life and the film include her family owning a mortuary when she was a kid and her grandmother also surviving three heart attacks. But instead of grim dread, Kaitlyn sees these uncanny parallels with a light touch and a sense of awe.“It’s a running joke that she has like nine lives,” she said, smiling. “Isn’t that kind of interesting? She keeps getting into these situations and survives them.”
This blend of astonishment and amusement is emblematic of the way Kaitlyn approaches both horror and life. Where Final Destination has traditionally been about frantic efforts to cheat death, Bloodlines—and her performance as Stefani Reyes—introduces something more nuanced. It’s not about panic and avoidance. It’s about understanding what little control we have, and choosing to live anyway.
“I think what was interesting about coming into this one for audiences, and for even myself,” she explained, “Is that it’s not a group of people who have just met within the last ten minutes of a premonition sequence. It’s people who have known each other their whole lives.” The deeper family ties added emotional stakes that surpassed the traditional gore-spectacle audiences line up to see from one of these films. “Sometimes the family dynamics can feel worse than death,” she noted. “You almost forget what you’re watching.”
This emotional core is why I believe Bloodlines hits harder than its predecessors. It's my personal favorite of the franchise.“It’s changed my life,” she said. “It was the number one movie in the world when we premiered, and I could have never imagined being a part of something this huge. I feel so blessed every single day because it's changed my life for sure."
She said it was daunting once she got the offer. “You know, just because of how much time I spent watching these movies as a child, and really loving them and freaking out about them and geeking out about them. Then to be trusted to bring the next installment to life was definitely scary," she laughed. But she accepted the task and dove in. "The team surrounding it are some of the best people I've ever worked with in my life.”
When asked directly what a Final Destination film would look like if its characters accepted death instead of trying to outrun it, she turned to Tony Todd’s iconic character, William Bludworth, who received a beautiful, heartfelt sendoff in this film. “We find out in this movie that he’s not just this creepy guy who pops in and out throughout the franchise. He really is just there to do his job and live his life. He knows when his time is going to be up. He knows exactly when it's going to come for him, and he knows that it's inevitable, so now we see him go move on to accept his fate instead of fighting against it.”
In interviews for this film, people often ask Kaitlyn if she believes in fate.
“When it comes to something like this, you have to believe in it. Everybody has an expiration date, so if you just accept that – it could be today, it could be tomorrow – you end up with with a superpower. Bludworth is intimidating because he's at peace with his fate. I think it's something that's foreign to people, because you know, I still walk around being like, if my hairdryer is plugged in for too long, is it going to blow up my whole house?”
(I’m the same way – this franchise perpetually scarred me when it comes to garbage disposals.)
That perspective—calm, grounded, even serene—challenges the genre’s usual fatalistic anxiety. However, it doesn’t remove the anxiety. Instead, the film dials it up by tapping into other fears. “This might be a weird take, but I feel like Iris – once you get to know her – is like Bludworth, too,” she said. “You understand where her fear comes from, which is protective, more than selfish, based on the choices that she makes.”
Iris isn’t worried about death coming for her. She’s worried about protecting her family, which is a more altruistic take on the franchise formula while still being deeply unnerving. Kaitlyn is full of powerful insights like this.
Kaitlyn mentioned that every single time she watches the film, she sees something new. There are so many thoughtful layers. One of those layers involves production design—circles, specifically. “Rachel O'Toole, our production designer, said something about how circles kill,” Kaitlyn shared. “You go back and watch, and there are circular shapes all over the movie. It’s so cool. It’s not obvious at first, but it’s there.”
Those circles are more than visual motifs. They’re symbolic of the film’s thematic undercurrent: that death, like a circle, is a closed loop—unavoidable, but also complete in its own way. There’s a strange comfort in that.
She also noticed another interesting trend: “The link between Stefani’s name and the link between Iris's name,” she explained.
“Iris, you know, has to do with your eye. And Stefani Reyes? The word eyes is in her last name. Both of these characters are given the gift of seeing death before it comes."
“I didn't realize that until last night,” she laughed. It’s still a pet theory and one she has yet to confirm with the film’s producers, but it’s an amazing insight.
Outside of the film, life is not all gloom and doom for Kaitlyn. She finds incredible freedom, joy, and liberation in executing her craft well and in learning new things.
“Honestly, I'm kind of a workaholic,” she laughed. “When I get to be on a set, when I get to be around like-minded people, it’s great. I was coming in every single day when I wasn't called, just because I liked the energy. I liked getting to learn from other people and watch them work. I liked getting to sit with the producers in their tent, and learn about the business sides of things, and have conversations about what's coming up, and how we're going to make this practical effect look. So getting to be in that environment and just learn is probably where I feel most carefree.”
This joy extends into her personal life as well. “Not just on sets. I just really love to learn,” she said. “Whether it's in books, whether it's about the craft, whether it's about my dog. I got a dog randomly a couple of months after we shot. I've had her for a year now, and I went down a rabbit hole of learning how to like train dogs. Learning what to feed them, nutrition, things like that.”
Knowledge makes Kaitlyn feel alive. “I think I have a knack for always wanting to have more knowledge, and in a way it feels freeing for me,” she explained. “I don't know how to word this, or articulate this in a way that makes sense, but it feels like I'm growing as a person, and I'm contributing to society, and I'm helping myself become more of a well-rounded person, and that to me is what freedom feels like.”
With a laugh, she added: “Maybe I have a control issue, and I am afraid of the unknown in a sense, but I feel like the more I know, the freer I feel.”
Barrett asked if that passion is connected to her love of acting – of inhabiting another person and learning their world. “Yeah, absolutely,” she replied. “I'm a super nosy person, so I have always loved people-watching. The human psyche always has interested me. Acting feels kind of therapeutic for me as well, because I get to explore other people and different emotions that, generally, I as Kaitlyn would not be experiencing. I have never had to climb a garbage truck and try and save somebody from death before, but now I know what it might feel like,” she laughed. “So there's that. Me wanting to know what things are, and the curiosity behind all of it.”
Ultimately she believes there’s always more to learn.
“There's always more to know, and if you think that you're done learning about something, I think that's when you’ve kind of caged yourself, because who can ever say that they're truly a master of anything?”
This optimism has allowed Kaitlyn to push boundaries as an actress. “What I am most proud of is being able to be who I am as a half Filipina girl,” she said. “And walk into roles that, as a young girl, I didn’t see people who looked like me playing. Whatever I do next, I want to be able to show up in places where people wouldn’t traditionally see people like me. I think that’s been the most gratifying thing for me about the projects that I’ve been working on. Showing up in spaces wholly as who I am, and being something that other young girls can see and be like: wow – I can do that, too.”
At the heart of Kaitlyn Santa Juana's worldview is a rejection of the grim determinism often portrayed in films like Final Destination. Instead, she’s drawn to something lighter and more liberating: an acceptance of struggle but a hope for a better world. This sense of openness—not to control outcomes, but to remain curious—is central to both her craft and her outlook on life.
Final Destination: Bloodlines is in theaters now.