Jeffrey Reddick once read a story about a woman who was on holiday when her mum called and told her not to take the scheduled flight back the next day because she ‘had a really bad feeling about it’. The woman changed flights and…yep, you’ve guessed it - the plane she was originally supposed to be on crashed. This inspired him to write a spec script, originally intended as an episode of The X-Files but a colleague at New Line Cinema persuaded him to adapt it into a feature length film screenplay. The rest is history. The film, Final Destination, a supernatural slasher movie about death itself coming for a group of teens who escape a plane crash, took over $100m at the box office. Four follow up films were released in the proceeding decade or so, all of them financial (if not always critical) successes. The last film in the series, Final Destination 5, managed to do both - garnering a 63% score on Rotten Tomatoes and taking a whopping $150m at the box office. But that was back in 2011. That’s almost 15 years! So why have we not had more additions to this much-loved franchise? Well, who cares to be honest. We’ve got a brand new one now, with Final Destination Bloodlines hoping to revive one of the genres most successful properties.

A wonderful opening sequence set in 1968 sees a young woman called Iris (Brec Bassinger) and her boyfriend attending the opening ceremony of the Skyview Restaurant Tower, a rather snazzy eatery/bar that sits atop a tower several hundred metres high. The evening goes well until…well, you know the drill. A whole series of unfortunate events. We flash forward to the present day where college student Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is suffering from terrible insomnia, largely due to the fact that she’s having constant dreams about the tragedy, that she assumes her brain has just conjured up out of nowhere. But wait, her estranged grandmother is called Iris. Coincidence? Returning to her dysfunctional family in search of answers, Stefani meets resistance from both her father and uncle, who remain tight-lipped about the past. Eventually, she discovers that Iris is still alive, now living off-grid and consumed by conspiracy theories that took root in her youth. Her obsession with death and fate drove a wedge between her and her children, who were ultimately placed into care. Determined to confront the truth, Stefani seeks out her grandmother. But the answers she finds are far from comforting: Death, it seems, hasn’t forgotten the Reyes family and it’s coming to collect.

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At this stage, the success of a Final Destination film largely hinges on the filmmaker’s grasp of what audiences seek from these entries. Most of us aren’t expecting a radical reinvention of the formula—just an entertaining, revitalised take on it. We’re after over-the-top, intricately staged set pieces, gruesome deaths, a likeable central cast, and a deliciously dark undercurrent of fatalistic humour. Bloodlines delivers on all these fronts, thankfully. And in an era when nostalgia, callbacks, references and easter eggs are beginning to feel overused, it manages to be reverent without becoming saccharine or glib. It’s a fresh chapter in an established franchise, but one more invested in having fun with its current characters than in winking at the audience or recycling old ground.

 

The opening sequence in the Skyview is a blast (literally) but there are some other wonderfully tense sequences where the possibility of a grisly death feels particularly probable; a family BBQ, complete with rakes, shard of glass and propane gas. A guy closing up shop in a tattoo parlour. And a trip to the hospital to locate a potential lead. The deaths when they do come (not necessarily in these scenes) are delightfully bloody and efficiently executed. Lipovsky and Stein ensure the franchise’s signature kinetic energy and tight editing remain front and centre.

 

Bloodlines is also perhaps the funniest of the series to date as well. As mentioned, there has always been a slightly tongue-in-cheek feel to all of these films. There has to be when the situations people find themselves in are so utterly absurd. But here there are definitely a few more laughs to have than normal. Whilst Stefani our lead is pretty much playing it straight, her family are a bit more idiosyncratic. Their initial laissez-faire attitude to their dilemma generates some laughs and when they realise they are in genuine peril, their efforts to protect the one next in line to die are pretty hilarious too. Combined with a couple of laugh out loud death scenes, it all makes for a rather jolly time.

 

Still, it’s not all gallows humour. There is some semi-serious stuff about family estrangement and the sacrifices parents make for their kids. And as funny as the family collective is, it’s still sad to lose the ones that go. The Final Destination franchise has always aimed to entertain, but it still manages moments of poignancy. None more so than the appearance of the late, great Tony Todd, who reprised his role as William Bludworth shortly before his passing. Though visibly unwell, his performance remains commanding. “Life is precious. Cherish every second,” he tells Stefani and her cousins - and he’s not wrong. In a franchise that treats death with gleeful irreverence, it’s a powerful reminder to embrace life fully, because we never know when it might end. It’s a moving and profound moment in the midst of what is otherwise a darkly enjoyable dance with death.