The premise of “Final Destination” is delightfully simple: If you somehow manage to cheat death, the grim reaper will claim your soul through a series of lethal, Rube Goldberg-esque traps. But like so many other long-running horror franchises, the rules that guide the “Final Destination” universe have become increasingly complicated over time.

In 2003, “Final Destination 2” introduced the concept of “new life,” as an antidote to death (more on that later), while “Final Destination 5” revealed that its doomed protagonists could kill innocent people to steal their remaining lifespans.

To be fair, not every movie in the series is as preoccupied with these rules, but “Final Destination Bloodlines,” which hits theaters Friday, is weirdly obsessed with them. In the process, it’s broken the most important one.

What’s The Plot Of ‘Final Destination Bloodlines’?

Like every great “Final Destination” movie, “Bloodlines” begins with a massive, deadly set piece. In this case, it’s the 1968 grand opening of the fictional Skyview Restaurant, a soaring tower of steel, concrete and glass. We follow Iris (Brec Bassinger) as she and her boyfriend attend the opening-night event and die in a tragic accident that kills hundreds and brings the tower crashing down.

Except, as is typically the case in these movies, that initial scene was just a premonition. Iris sees the entire deadly event play out ahead of time and manages to save everybody. Of course, Death has other plans.

Over the following decades, Death meticulously kills each person who should have perished that night. And because the process takes so long, Death has to take out their children and grandchildren, too. For Iris, that means her two middle-aged children and a brood of young-adult grandkids. This brings us to the present day, where the movie takes place.

It’s a compelling premise, and a clever new twist on the franchise, which typically focuses on a group of high-school students rather than a family. But there’s just one little problem, and it boils down to two words: New life.

The Rules Of ‘Final Destination’

Most “Final Destination” movies include a pivotal scene where a spooky mortician named William Bludworth (Tony Todd) shows up and explains what’s happening. In “Final Destination 2,” that includes the revelation that if one of the survivors gives birth to a child, it will stop death in his tracks.

“Solus novus anima licet evinco mortis; only new life can defeat death,” Bludworth explains in the second “Final Destination” installment. “The introduction of life that was not meant to be, a soul forbidden to roam the earth, that could invalidate death’s list, shatter its very existence.”

Much of “Final Destination 2” revolves around this concept, though it ultimately fails to save them. Instead, it’s when one of the protagonists drowns and then is resuscitated that “invalidates death’s list” at the end of that movie. (In “Final Destination 5,” Todd returns to explain the whole lifespan-stealing thing, which is honestly too disturbing to take seriously, even within the “Final Destination” universe.)

So it’s notable that, when Todd appears in “Final Destination Bloodlines,” in a posthumous role he filmed before dying of cancer in November 2024, his character never mentions “new life.” Instead, he reveals all the other established ways to cheat death, either permanently or temporarily.

Why the omission? Well, the obvious reason is that the entire movie hinges on “new life” not stopping death. Since “Final Destination Bloodlines” is all about the grim reaper chasing after the children and grandchildren of the survivors of the Skyview Restaurant, it wouldn’t make sense for the existence of those children to shatter death’s list in the first place.

It’s a frustrating plot hole in an otherwise well-constructed scary movie. But here’s the thing about the “Final Destination” movies: nobody ever really escapes death.

At the end of each installment, a small group of survivors may think they’ve made it out alive, but like any good thriller, the story always ends with one last scare — a reminder that death never gives up.