BORN TO DIE

Final Destination: Bloodlines

- BEATRICE LOAYZA

It's no surprise that the Final Destination franchise — a schlocky, spectacularly gory series of horror films that kicked off in 2000, spawning a total of five movies — has staying power.

Unlike most horror properties, there's no big baddie (à la Jason Voorhees or Leatherface) - or at least not one capable of getting old and seeming played out.

The villain is Death itself, and both onscreen and off, it's coming for us all, though in the Final Destination movies this unseen force is a shameless showboat.

That's no exception in the new, sixth instalment, Final Destination: Bloodlines, which begins with a terrifically tense set piece in and around a Space Needle-style glass tower in the 1950s. Iris (Brec Bassinger) is on a date with her beau on the building's opening night when she experiences a vivid hallucination of their imminently brutal deaths by towering inferno. The vision allows Iris to escape her grisly fate and save everyone around her.

In this regard,