It makes sense that a gore-soaked horror franchise built around the universal fear that our time is running out would be as elegant and precise as a stopwatch. You can practically hear the ticking sound in Final Destination Bloodlines, the first new entry in the series in 10 years. It’s a tour-de-force of voluptuously bloody slapstick that knows that we know how these movies work. It leans into that familiarity by staging a series of fiendishly elaborate deathtraps and giving us lots of time to admire their construction, note all of the rude, heartless, or complacent people who are fated to die super-nasty deaths, and keep a running list of all of the outwardly ordinary objects that are about to become links in a chain of destruction. 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.

Co-directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, Bloodlines is, per the subtitle, built around multiple generations in an extended family. Their genetic founder went on a date with her boyfriend in 1959, which was supposed to set the stage for a marriage proposal, but became a catastrophe instead. The location is a newly opened tower that resembles Seattle’s Space Needle. We know from our first glance at that thing that it’s going down, and it’s just a question of when and how. Soon enough, we also learn that Iris isn’t feeling queasy because she’s afraid of heights.

As Iris (Brec Bassinger) and her sweetheart Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) board an unnervingly rickety elevator and make their way to the restaurant at the top of the tower, the filmmakers cut to so many closeups of incidents and objects that might come into play that you may laugh at how each new hint about where the scene is headed gets not just presented but unveiled, with distorted closeups and disorienting sound effects.

Iris, like many a Final Destination protagonist, has a detailed premonition of the catastrophe that’s about to unfold, but is killed anyway. But quite naturally, as per tradition, the splendidly elaborate account of her fate is revealed as a nightmare, dreamt by her granddaughter Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juan), who can’t get through the night without reimagining the tower collapse.

Wait, what? Granddaughter? Might that suggest that Grandma miraculously survived the disaster? And might she still be alive and able to deliver spooky exposition? Well, of course!

It would be unsporting to discuss the plot in more detail, because it might give away too many of the contraptions and a couple of plot twists that are as amusing as they are clever. Let’s just say that the collapse of the tower left 10-12 names for Death to cross off his list; also, that there’s a reason why Erik owns a tattoo parlor, and it isn’t because we’re gonna get a tutorial on how to ink a tramp stamp; and that the filmmakers don’t keep referencing trains because they’re setting up a scene where everybody has a wonderful afternoon at the railroad museum. These films are essentially anthologies of fated tragedies interspersed with discussions of free will and chance. They’re strung together by the idea that if you’re marked for extermination by Death but somehow end up getting spared, it will pursue you and everyone directly connected to you, no matter how long it takes to wipe you all out.

There’s a sober and thoughtful subtext in Bloodlines. It is similar to, but perhaps subtler than, all of the head games that are constantly being played in science fiction and fantasy movies about parallel timelines and universes, with their babble about “anchor beings” and “canon events,” and their discussions of whether you can really change the future or if your actions end up depositing you where the cosmos always knew you would go, by way of a different, somewhat longer route.

Speaking of the grave: the late, great Tony Todd, who played funeral home proprietor, lore explicator, and series mascot William Bludworth, makes his final film appearance here, six months after his death from cancer. The result is not just a worthy sendoff for the character and the man who played him, but one of the very best scenes ever performed by an actor who knew he was dying and decided to make his last performance one for the ages. Hearing that rumbling voice come out of an emaciated and clearly suffering body is more unsettling than any of the film’s bloodbaths, but it’s also inspiring and moving. Todd was a consummate professional who wanted to give us one last thrill before he left, and he did.