Following in the rebooted footsteps of its sister horror franchises “Halloween,” “Hellraiser” and “Evil Dead,” the “Final Destination” series is back from the dead after fourteen years with “Final Destination: Bloodlines.”

Production on this latest installment began in 2021, when “Wicked Wicked Games” scribe Lori Evans Taylor was hired to develop the story. The film began picking up steam when “Spider-Man: No Way Home” filmmaker Jon Watts joined the project to assist in the story and act as producer in January 2022. Veteran horror screenwriter Guy Busick (“Scream VI,” “Ready Or Not”) was hired alongside Watts to write the screenplay.

Out of over 200 applicants, “Kim Possible: The Movie” directors Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky were hired to head the project by New Line Cinema executives. The duo had worked together since their low-budget horror film “Freaks” in 2018.

“One of the things you learn about working on a low-budget movie is ‘time is money.’ You have less time to prep and even less time to shoot,” Stein said. “But on ‘Final Destination,’ we worked on this movie for years. We really could talk about every single detail until we were sick of it, so that we could really plan together and be on the same page.”

Stein and Lipovsky prepped for two years with cinematographer Christian Sebalt and production designer Rachel O’Toole before the duo called action on set in Vancouver.

“There was already a script when we were hired. … The first thing that we got to do was sit down with the writers, Jon and the producers, and basically brainstorm all kinds of new ideas,” Stein said. “As new people got involved — actors, stunt coordinators, special effects coordinators — every new person has new ideas, and as you start scouting locations and finding locations that work for the movie, you get new ideas. The writers were never done.”

The series is known for elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque sequences of destruction that cause a catastrophe where hundreds of people die.

Watts’ spin on that concept is that of a horrific event which takes place in the past yet continues to haunt the future. Said sequence — occupying the opening fifteen minutes of the film — is set atop a hastily constructed new skyscraper imbued with the aesthetics of 1960s Americana.

“We spent a massive amount of time on that sequence, probably a third of the entire shoot of the movie was just that first 15 minutes,” Lipovsky said.

The scene required building an entire restaurant that was designed to be destroyed, in which glass would shatter, floors would crumble, and people would be lit aflame.

“We wanted to have as many practical elements as we could at the center of the frame and then extend the visual effects beyond that, so that it felt as real as possible,” Lipovsky said. “The more real it felt, the more the horror would feel visceral.”

As production ran forward, the cast inhabiting this story of unstoppable death and destruction began to fill out.

The cousin trio of Julia (Anna Lore), Bobby (Owen Patrick Taylor) and Erick (Richard Harmon) found a camaraderie amongst their group by spending extensive amounts of time together.

“We were given improv rehearsals that allowed us to find a sibling dynamic faster, so by the time we got to set, we felt like a family,” Lore said. “It’s very rare in the film industry that you get rehearsals of any kind.”

Thanks to the rehearsals beforehand, the three felt comfortable improvising on set when possible.

“Especially if we had a comedic scene, they really kind of let us just fly,” Taylor said. “The baby stuff (in the film) was really nothing at first. Obviously it was a set plan for the day, but a lot of those different cuts were from multiple different takes where they (Lipovsky and Stein) said what they thought was funny. A lot of it was just riffing around.”

Kaitlyn Santa Juana took on the lead role of Stefani, a college student besieged by visions of a tragedy that happened nearly sixty years earlier. Returning home, she reignites her troubled relationship with her younger brother Charlie (Teo Briones), the two clashing due to their absent mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt).

Despite the dysfunctional family unit present in the film, the cast found a chemistry on set that led to a familial bond between actors.

“We fell into it so fast,” Briones said. “We all clicked like right away. The chemistry was really effortless, which doesn’t always happen.”

“At the beginning (of the film), you see Stefani alienated from everybody. But between takes we were just laughing and having a good time,” Juana said. “We were all kind of in that space of like, ‘Yeah, this really is a family.’”

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