Bloodlines makes Final Destination fun again.

At first glance, it may present as a disaster movie – a fancy new destination restaurant (eerily reminiscent of the interior set of Drop), an ahead of schedule opening and a series of notable “characters” to provide the requisite range of emotions when the inevitable catastrophe strikes. But of course, then there are the seemingly innocuous one-of-a-kind coincidences that start to build through a series of increasingly baroque splatter-gags that reminds you Final Destination was always horror’s answer to a Looney Tunes cartoon with a PhD in OSHA violations. Final Destination: Bloodlines, though, doesn’t just reprise that well-worn formula – it doubles down on the idea, finding a darkly mischievous way to expand the scope of the potential horror while honouring the established rules.

It’s been 14 years since the last outing, and while the body count was always consistent, the cultural footprint had long since started to fade. Bloodlines doesn’t try to reinvent the premise (how could it?) but instead takes the smart route: reframing it. Death isn’t just catching up to survivors anymore – it’s chasing down the family tree like a demented, deadly version of Who Do You Think You Are? If previous entries flirted with predestination, this soft reboot goes full Exodus 20:5, as Death ensures the sins of the father (or grandmother) are visited upon the children.

Directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B Stein (Freaks and, er, Kim Possible) , Final Destination: Bloodlines wields its opening disaster sequence as a 60s set-piece, a cacophony of falling steel and concrete, skewered with period-specific fatalism and (un)fortunately positioned rebars that doesn’t just kick off the plot but casts a long, jagged shadow over everything that follows. It’s the kind of setup the franchise thrives on: two parts Rube Goldberg, one part Final Girl, all held together by queasy anticipation. Kaitlyn Santa Juana plays Stefani, a college student who finds herself plagued by visions of a disaster averted decades before her birth. Her grandmother Iris (Gabrielle Rose) is the link – a woman with secrets, survivor guilt, and a world-altering story Death never really signed off on.

By making Death intergenerational, the film brings fresh blood – literally and metaphorically – into the mythology. We’re no longer just watching characters try to dodge improbable freak accidents; now we’re watching them try to dismantle a curse, to out-think a force that’s working its way through a forest of family trees, pruning one branch at a time. There are one or two moments of narrative dissonance, not least of all the idea that you can hold death at bay by confining yourself a compound containing the most lethal-looking array of junk fortifications this side of a Mad Max film, but by the time it matters, you’re having too much fun to be that bothered by it.

The deaths are, as they must be, the stars of the show and while the trailers and marketing have given away more than they perhaps should, Final Destination: Bloodlines still has more than enough up its blood-soaked sleeves to keep gore hounds happy and fans of the tension of inevitable horror on the edge of their seats. They’re grimly inventive, not content with cheap shocks but engineered for maximum tension. The real trick – the one the franchise has finally mastered – is how Bloodlines makes you dread the inevitability while still pulling the rug out from under you, with a couple of neat twists that you likely won’t see coming.

While Kaitlyn Santa Juana anchors the story as the Final Girl in the making, she’s surrounded by a refreshingly likeable ensemble – a relative rarity in today’s teen horrors and vastly different from The Final Destination‘s grab bag of grinder fodder that you wanted to die as quickly as possible. There are fun and believable family dynamics with Teo Briones bringing a wounded sensitivity as Stefani’s younger brother Charlie, and Richard Harmon damn near stealing the whole picture as sardonic cousin Erik.

Tony Todd returns, of course, with that sepulchral calm that’s somehow both comforting and unsettling, like the angel of death moonlighting as a funeral director. In what now stands as his final on-screen role, there’s an elegiac stillness to his presence – a curtain call that feels eerily appropriate for a series so obsessed with the mechanics of mortality. His character never offered explanations, only inevitabilities, and this time, that silence feels heavier.

Final Destination: Bloodlines doesn’t reinvent and thankfully, it doesn’t try. It’s more of a reckoning – a look back down the corridor of previous films with a sharpened eye and a meaner glint. It understands that the formula works not because of its novelty but because of its inevitability. You can change the cast, you can shift the tone, but you can’t outrun the punchline. Death’s still the only certainty. What matters is how creatively it gets there.