Life is full of unexpected moments: Birthday celebrations. Snowy surprises. However, one thing that never catches anyone off guard is the “Final Destination” franchise. These movies deliver precisely what they promise. “Final Destination Bloodlines,” slated for release in 2025, is the newest addition to this series that revolves around outsmarting Death. Despite the well-worn theme, directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, who previously directed the indie thriller “Freaks,” have crafted an entertaining experience. With creative, gruesome scenes and engaging performances from a young ensemble cast, “Final Destination Bloodlines” delivers a dose of pure, thrilling fun.

By now, you know the routine. When someone narrowly escapes a fatal event—usually after having a premonition about a catastrophe they manage to avert—Death isn’t pleased and works tirelessly to find morbid ways to reclaim them, restoring the cosmic balance. In this installment, our prophetic protagonist is Iris (played by Brec Bassinger), who is taken by her boyfriend to the grand opening of Skyview, an extravagant restaurant perched high above the ground and questionably constructed. She foresees the structure collapsing and warns everyone just in time to avoid casualties. Naturally, this does not sit well with Death.

Fast forward five decades, and Iris’s granddaughter, Stefani (portrayed by Kaitlyn Santa Juana), is haunted by terrifying dreams of Skyview. This leads her to reconnect with her distant grandmother. What she learns is startling. Death has been hunting down the survivors of the near-disaster at Skyview, and once it finally claims Iris, it will target her descendants. So, Stefani must find a way to shield her family, prolonging their evasion of Death’s grasp as long as possible.

The fact that the story is built around a family unit that is being picked off one-by-one goes a long way in adding to its emotional currency. It becomes easy to care about this tight-knit group of cousins because the stakes for them are immediately clear. Each death is not just a shock, but the loss of a beloved family member. Each of the kids — from Stefani and her younger brother Charlie (Teo Briones) to their three cousins, Erik (Richard Harmon), Julia (Anna Lore), and Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) — are well-cast and genuinely engaging. They’re each far less one-dimensional than we might expect from this type of horror film, and the brothers Erik and Bobby are standouts. The comedic relief they bring speaks to how well the directors understand how to balance humor and gruesome death in a film like this.

Because if there’s one thing “Final Destination” has mastered, it’s the art of the inventive, unabashedly gruesome set piece where someone is killed by a version of Death who’s nursing a bruised ego. The death scenes here are top-notch, from the extended opener with the Skyview Restaurant to the family barbecue that sets off the violence in the present day. Although there are comedic touches that prove no one involved in the production was taking things too seriously, there’s also a palpable tension as you, like Stefani and Iris before her, begin to clock all the ways that the characters might die horribly.

Ultimately, the biggest metric of success for a horror film like this, where characters are killed off in rapid succession, is whether or not the audience cares when they die. It is shocking how many horror films stumble over this hurdle. You can put in as many bloody hatchet jobs and jump scares as you want, but if we’re not rooting for the characters to overcome the odds and survive, none of it really matters. “Final Destination Bloodlines” doesn’t have an issue here: We become attached to the misbegotten Campbell-Reyes clan, and hope that they might somehow manage to pull one over on Death.

Not that movies like this need to have themes or a deeper message — most of the time we’re satisfied with buckets of gore — but there is something compelling about the idea of generational trauma in “Final Destination Bloodlines.” The young cousins make an effort to “break the cycle,” ostensibly referring to the path Death takes to reclaim those who have outsmarted him and their descendants, but also the inherited trauma of their family. Iris caused harm to her children — by becoming so fixated on Death, they were eventually taken away from her — and Stefani’s mother left her and Charlie to avoid doing the same thing to them. With this battle against Death, they have a chance to stop this pattern in its tracks, one way or another.

Don’t get me wrong, “Final Destination Bloodlines” is a profoundly silly movie. There are no Oscars heading its way, and even a top-tier “Final Destination” film is going to fall somewhere in the middle of the larger horror genre. It’s a one-trick pony, and only the skill of the directors keep it fresh. But that said, “Final Destination Bloodlines” is a tremendous amount of fun, especially if you can see it in a theater (preferably with an audience willing to match its energy). I said that “Final Destination” offers no surprises, and yet this iteration of the concept is a pleasant one.

“Final Destination Bloodlines” hits theaters on May 16.