Following Jason Lives, the Friday the 13th franchise appears to have been written into a bit of a corner. Up until Part VI, Jason had just been some towering disfigured momma’s boy who happened to be very hard to kill. It wasn’t until this film that his decaying corpse was brought back from beyond the grave as an actual supernatural being. He was quite literally unkillable and could only be defeated by weighing him down to the bottom of Crystal Lake with a very heavy rock. How do you continue a franchise built upon a masked killer preying upon teenagers when the masked killer is an unstoppable force akin to death itself? Enter Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, or “the one where Jason squares off against a telekinetic girl.”
Despite taking the franchise even higher into the stratosphere of ridiculousness, The New Blood fixes a lot of the issues I had with the previous installment. This time around we’re following Tina, a young woman with psychic powers who is struggling with the psychological trauma caused by accidentally killing her father as a child. While spending time away with her mother and therapist at Crystal Lake, Tina unintentionally frees Jason from his watery prison, sealing her fate as well as those of teens staying at a cabin nearby. Already we have a more compelling setup and potential for a story arc than a majority of the previous film. While this film significantly cuts down the comedic elements from Jason Lives, it doesn’t forsake the goofiness and overall fun.
Although the film’s kills feel comparatively tamer than they have been in previous installments, there’s quite a lot to like here. Many of the gorier kills cut away just after, or even sometimes before, the blood begins to fly while some take place completely off-screen. Kind of ironic how a film subtitled The New Blood ends up being one of the least bloody films of the franchise. However, it manages to provide one of the franchise’s most iconic and morbidly hilarious kills. I’m speaking, of course, about the infamous “sleeping bag kill.”
Surprisingly, what initially seems like a “jump the shark” film for the franchise ends up being one of the more enjoyable entries to this point. The characters are well-defined enough, albeit walking stereotypes, and the core conflict ends up more entertaining with stakes slightly raised. I was fully expecting to be completely tuned out of the franchise by now, but now I can’t stop thinking about more crossover potential movies now that I’ve essentially seen Jason vs Carrie.
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Current Ranking of Friday the 13th films:
1. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
2. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
3. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
4. Friday the 13th Part III
5. Friday the 13th Part 2
6. Friday the 13th (1980)
7. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning