Directors: Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein

Stars: Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Gabrielle Rose, Tony Todd, Brec Bassinger, Max Lloyd-Jones, Alex Zahara, Tinpo Lee

The darkly humorous horror Final Destination series proves surprisingly durable with this, the sixth, does-what-it-says-on the-rusty-tetanus-spiked-tin entry.

It begins in 1968 as young woman Iris Campbell (Bassinger) and her fiancé Paul (Lloyd-Jones) attend the opening ceremony of the Skyview Restaurant Tower. As the guests stomp their feet on the glass floor to a band playing ‘Shout’, Iris has a premonition that a broken chandelier will set off a chain of events that will cause the tower to collapse altogether, sending them all tumbling to the street below.  It’s an ingeniously orchestrated and dizzyingly vertiginous sequence that ends on a wonderfully nasty gag worthy of a Looney Tunes cartoon. The film never tops it but what follows is entertaining enough.

Jump to present day and college student Stefani (Santa Juana) is haunted by dreams of Iris. Knowing her maternal grandmother was called Iris she returns to the family home to find answers. Her divorced dad (Lee) is reluctant to discuss her grandmother, but Stefi’s Uncle Howard (Zahara) explains that Iris was abusively overprotective toward him and Stefi’s mother Darlene.

Stefi eventually tracks her grandmother (played in her older incarnation by Gabrielle Rose) to a heavily fortified cabin where Iris explains how her premonition cheated death and that it will now work its way through the family bloodline. Initially Stefi’s family are sceptical until fatal accidents start piling up. She enlists her teenage cousins to help her fight he curse.

The rinse and repeat formula of exposition and elaborate set pieces is familiar but the makers are still able to wring some macabre fun from the premise, while dreaming up new phobias for the audiences. The most inventive and funniest has Stefi’s amusingly obnoxious Emo cousin Erik (Harmon) getting his nose ring stuck in a propellor fan in his tattooist workshop.

There is also a lovely, tastefully handled send-off for the late Tony ‘Candyman’ Todd retuning as regular series character, enigmatic death expert William Bludworth, who gives the characters some sage and apposite advice on mortality.

Final Destination Bloodlines is out now

David Willoughby

Follow David on Bluesky @davidwilloughby.bsky.social