Tony Todd

In Final Destination Bloodlines (2025), the camera stays close to Tony Todd and there is hardly any music. As the mortician William John Bludworth, he plays the scene straight, without the sinister suggestion that might seem the obvious choice. We were more moved than we expected because Todd and the film resisted the temptation to wink. The quiet gives him room to be a person, in a film whose chief business is devising inventive deaths.

Platoon (1986), directed by Oliver Stone, was an early screen role. Playing Ben in Savini’s Night of the Living Dead (1990) established him in horror. Candyman (1992) then fixed his screen persona around a figure made for that deep voice and imposing presence. Todd prepared detailed backstories to find something sympathetic even in repellent characters. We value that effort: menace becomes less interesting once frightening people is the only thing an actor has been asked to do.

The horror typecasting after Candyman can make his career look narrower than it was. He also worked in television and voice roles, with multiple appearances in Star Trek. Michael Bay’s The Rock (1996) casts him as Captain Darrow, an action-film part among the supernatural ones. We like its loud, implausible good company, though the editing can make the action needlessly difficult to follow. It is worth considering if the horror films have kept you from looking further.

Bludworth, introduced in Final Destination (2000), could easily have kept Todd confined to ominous explanations. His return in Bloodlines is worth seeking out because the performance is allowed to change how we hear him. The close framing and near-absence of music leave the words and delivery to carry the scene, and he does not force the emotion. We still think the film struggles to match its opening twenty minutes; his contribution does not erase that unevenness. Give Bloodlines an evening if elaborate screen deaths are your sort of entertainment.