O Último Destino: Descendência

This is also the series at its best ... [T]he Bloodlines filmmakers have found a way to reinvent the Final Destination wheel - and then promptly crush someone's head with it.

Maybe the best explanation I can offer for the success of Final Destination is this: It's funny 'cause it's true. When you die, you probably won't go squish, but you'll go, and so will everybody else.

Bloodlines is well plotted and brilliantly grisly, but most important, it knows how to enjoy itself. I'd say that having fun, more than anything, is what people are seeking from the communal cinematic experience.

There are a few breath-snatching moments here and there, but Bloodlines generally strikes a balance between gruesome and funny as it sprints along.

Bloodlines gives us plenty of what we want from a new Final Destination movie, but it also could have given us quite a bit more.

It's a rare franchise reboot that works as a standalone, even with a few choice callbacks and links to the previous movies.

We're here for the kills and, again, every single kill in 'Final Destination Bloodlines' is a winner. Every time a head explodes, which is a lot, you'll want to stand up and cheer.

Lipovsky and Stein elicit not a single solid performance from their cast, and their tale's twists are illogical even by the material's established guidelines.

It was a mistake to make a Final Destination movie into an almost two-hour-long family drama.

Lipovsky and Stein don't go straight for the jugular, they feel around it and drag out the inevitable, and the fun is in the tension they build and the false finishes they tease.

There's not much more a Final Destination fan could ask for, but Bloodlines - which at times feel more like a dark satire than a straightforward horror movie - reminds us we're powerless against the world's morbid whims. Best we can do is laugh about it.

"Bloodlines" reinvigorates "Final Destination" in a way that makes its predecessors proud.

You may watch "Final Destination Bloodlines" through fingers covering your face. But chances are high you'll be smiling, too.

Are these movies deep? Yeah, in their way. Because they get you thinking about metaphysics, free will, and karma by killing people in chain reaction Destruct-O-Ramas that are framed, lit and edited with all the dark magic at cinema's disposal.

While a canonically satisfying sendoff to the late Tony Todd's William Bludworth bolsters the series' morbid gravitas, a cast of playful, mostly likable 20-somethings keep proceedings light in juxtaposition to the filmmakers' fiendishly inventive kills.

Not only does Bloodlines scratch the itch the original started - the twisted thrill of what happens when you get caught up in death's design - but it does so by putting a genius spin on the lore, one that well serves its high concept and its characters.

The highs of creative kills and Tony Todd's poignant final bow are offset by an underdeveloped story that struggles beyond its solid concept. While uneven, it does at least succeed in delivering some summer horror fun.

With its outlandish-homicide DNA popping up in The Monkey, it's probably a good time to end this series. At the same time, Bloodlines reminds us of why these hilarious horrors have been such crowd-pleasers and why their creators might never call it quits.

Directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein have crafted an elegantly sadistic entertainment. The pace here is deliberate as complicated, lethal traps are teased, faked-out then sprung with surprise-enhanced relish.

Final Destination: Bloodlines reinvigorates a franchise that...appeared finished for good. The results are an altogether mixed bag of fun and inventive kills trying to buoy up a haphazard story and selectively interesting characters.