Starring Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Richard Harmon, Tony Todd

Directed by Zach Lipovsky & Adam Stein

Warner Bros., in cinemas now

In 1968 Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger) and her fiancé Paul (Max Lloyd Jones) attend the opening of the SkyView Restaurant Tower. Paul proposes, Iris accepts, tells him she’s pregnant and as their happiness swells, the tower collapses, everyone in it dies and… Iris wakes up.

Fifty six years later her granddaughter Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) dreams of the disaster every night. She’s failing school, she’s driving her roommate up the wall and she has no choice but to go home and find out what Grandma Iris did. And what’s coming for them all…

Bloodlines is great, and it builds on every movie that went before it to create something new that ties them all together. The concept of killing someone to ‘take’ their life, of short circuiting Death’s plan by dying and being resuscitated and the order in which Death comes for people are all central to the movie. The core conceit is particularly clever. This is both movie six and movie zero, wrapping the entire franchise up in a coherent and meaningful story that somehow stands on its own. You don’t have to watch the other movies to enjoy this but if you do you’ll enjoy it in a different way.

That idea of the same story played in a different key is central to Bloodlines. This time round the victims are all members of the same, blended family and the movie gets its best moments from colliding familial drama with the traditional Wile E. Coyote style kills. Not all the kids have the parents they think they do, and not everyone is telling the truth even now. It’s a refreshingly complex dynamic, and it’s one the movie finds sincerity and humour in in equal measure. No one here is especially deep, but the other characters, and you, feel it when people are picked off and that’s a lot better than the series sometimes managed in the past. Plus the consequences of Iris’ premonition really are central, both to the movie and the family and it has some smart things to say about generational trauma. Stef, her mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt) and Iris (Gabrielle Rose) are all tough, competent women doing their best in impossible circumstances, knowing it’s not enough and doing it anyway. You like all of them, because of their flaws as much as their qualities. This Is Us it’s not but the emotional core of those three performances and Teo Briones as youngest child Charlie give this a weight a couple of the previous movies sorely missed.

It also helps that this time round the franchise has reverted to Wile E. Coyote style glee instead of the mean spirit of some of the other movies. Death is an active participant here, a never seen but always sensed predator with too many teeth and a wicked sense of humour. There’s a lovely, awful, delayed punchline involving a set of tree clippers that made me laugh way too hard and a sequence in the third act that’s the most fun the franchise has ever been. Brothers Erik (Richard Harmon) and Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) are the Pinky and the Brain of the affair and they get a movie stealing extended bit involving a cunning plan, a peanut butter cup and an MRI that’s horrific, hilarious and a standout beat in the movie.

Then there’s the late great Tony Todd. This was his last role, and he’s not only visibly ill but it’s acknowledged in the movie. After decades of stalking through this franchise like a jovial grim reaper we get to spend a full scene with him. By the end of it, we understand why he’s the backbone of the series and why he’ll be so missed. It’s a lovely, gentle, cheerfully fatalistic curtain call that puts a button on the series and on an incredible career. Thank you, sir. For everything.

Verdict: Bloodlines is both ambitious and respectful. It’s a sequel made by people who seem to love the movies that preceded it and want you to have a good time regardless of whether you’ve seen them or not. I have, I did, and I hope you do too. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

An accident; someone has a premonition; people are saved; Death comes to get them anyway… Can they cheat Him? (i.e. the same plot as all the other Final Destination movies).

Full disclosure. I’m a total sucker for a Final Destination movie. I’ve seen them all… I think. In preparation for writing this review I checked out the Wiki synopses for the whole franchise and realised that they’re so similar, I couldn’t swear to it, but even if I had missed one along the way, it probably didn’t matter.

It’s a quarter of a century since a very young Devon Sawa (regular of my beloved Chucky TV series) had a premonition about Flight 180 exploding in mid-air and lucratively cheated Death for the best part of 90 minutes, spawning the hugely successful franchise culminating in this latest and sixth movie, Bloodlines, previewing in selected cinemas this week along with the original. Although, it is fun to contemplate that if that first film had been called Flight 180 as originally intended, New Line Cinema might have struggled to find a titular handle for the sequels.

Even if you can’t get to one of these marathon screenings, it’s worth replicating the experience at home by re-watching the first movie from 2000, if only for the opening act which is as perfect a fifteen minutes of teen horror set-up as has ever been committed to celluloid. As the formula hadn’t been established yet, rather than waiting for the ‘mousetrap’ moment, we are simply following Alex Browning (Sawa) on a surprisingly complex emotional journey as his premonitions start to come true.

I’d forgotten how serious and beautifully crafted it is, although once the pattern is established, the characters are subordinated to the concept and it degenerates to a sort of horror game as you chomp on your popcorn wondering how Death is going to ensnare each character one by one.

So, does Bloodlines add anything to the franchise? No, not really. That’s not to say it isn’t a lot of fun along the way, like a sort of cinematic theme park ride, with added feints and teases designed to outwit a savvy audience’s expectations – especially if you’ve seen the trailers – plus it’s lovely to see the late Tony Todd reprising his role as William Bloodworth from the earlier movies for one last time.

The ‘Death’ set pieces are inventive as ever, although two of them are marred by the overuse of VFX that isn’t quite up to the job. The second it starts to look like CG animation, any sense of physical jeopardy evaporates.

Verdict: If you enjoy the ongoing nature of this franchise’s finality then Bloodlines will do the job nicely. It won’t rock your world – nor will it scare you – but it’s still bags of fun, although you might think twice about getting a genital piercing after watching this movie, and if you already have one, you’ll be crossing your legs. 6/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com