Review: 'Final Destination: Bloodlines' is a fitfully clever horror contraption, and a tender sendoff to the iconic actor Tony Todd

Watching a “Final Destination” movie is like watching someone play the children’s game “Mouse Trap” — you see the pieces placed to start the chain reaction of events, then watch in delight as those steps play out exactly as you expect.

The sixth chapter of the franchise, “Final Destination: Bloodlines” — which is also the first made since “Final Destination 5” back in 2011 — follows the familiar formula, with a few gruesome surprises along the way.

The opening sequence is worth the price of admission. It’s set in 1962, where a young man, Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones), is taking his girlfriend, Iris (Brec Bassinger), out to a special dinner on the opening night of The Skyview, a restaurant atop a high tower that I’m sure the lawyers representing Seattle’s Space Needle have made clear bears no resemblance to their client’s landmark. Iris sees the whole evening end in disaster, as the tower falls apart and people in cartoonishly nasty ways — except that in the cartoons, Wile E. Coyote wasn’t crushed into a bloody pulp.

The opening is too good to sustain, and it turns out it doesn’t have to. The Skyview disaster is seen in the nightmares of a present-day college student, Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), which are so disturbing they’re messing with her sleep cycle and her grades. So she goes home to ask her relatives about what she’s seen, particularly Iris, the woman at the center of it all.

Iris turns out to be a sore subject for the family, who finally divulge that Iris is Stefani’s long-absent grandmother — whose paranoia about death made her obsessive and drove her away from her two children, Stefani’s absentee mom Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt) and her uncle, Harold (Alex Zahara). Stefani goes to talk to Grandma Iris (Gabrielle Rose), and finds her in a heavily fortified cabin deep in the woods, working to cheat Death.

Stefani discovers that her dream of Iris at The Skyview wasn’t a dream, but a premonition Iris had while on the tower’s observation deck — and her warning got everyone out of the place before it collapsed. After that, Grandma Iris tells Stefani, Death is working to pick off all the people who should have died in The Skyview disaster, and because that’s a multi-decade task, Death is trying to take out the children of those people. (Apparently, Death obeys the same rules of succession as the British royal family: After Iris is out, Death goes after Harold, but then goes after Harold’s kids before going after Darlene and her children.)

Directors Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky, following a sometimes-clever script by Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor, stage some elaborate scenes where all the ways someone can die are put into motion, and it’s a waiting game to see which one will do the job. There’s a good one fairly early during a backyard barbecue at Harold’s house, where shards of glass in an ice bucket, a rake under a trampoline, and various gardening implements are set in place waiting for their turn. (I didn’t spoil too much, as this sequence is shown in the trailer.)

The other cool thing in “Final Destination: Bloodlines” is the swan-song performance by Tony Todd, playing the mysterious coroner, William Bludworth, for the fourth and final time. Todd, 69, died from cancer last November, and was clearly ill when the movie was filmed some six months earlier. (The movie is dedicated to his memory.) Gaunt and careworn, Todd recites a short but memorable monologue about the inevitability of death and the preciousness of every second of life. His words and their meaningful delivery transcend horror movies and become a coda for what appears to be a life well lived.

——

‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’

★★★

Opens Friday, May 16, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong violent/grisly accidents, and language. Running time: 110 minutes.