Review of Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood (1988) by Cathi C — 15 Jan 2012

Jason VS. Carrie - that would make a good alternate title for this entry. This time around in Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood, Jason has to contend not only with his usual victims, but a young woman with psychokinetic powers.

Originally this film was written to be the long-awaited Jason VS. Freddy film, but when New Line Cinema and Paramount couldn't reach an agreement about the character rights, it was re-written to accomodate the VS storyline with a different character.

Noted to death by the MPAA, Part 7 is really sparse as far as blood and gore go (probably the least amount of the entire series). The heroine of the film is also, character-wise, unwatchable. She is a constant cry baby throughout the entire film because her father was killed when she was very young.

Most of the time she just comes off as annoying, and the story suffers for it. As for the other aspects of the film, they're all pretty much mediocre. Nothing new and nothing spectacular, especially as heavily-edited as the film is (which really destroyed its chances anyway).

It has some fun moments, but overall, it's nowhere near as impressive as the previous entry. Fans tend to rally around the film because it marked the first appearance of Kane Hodder as Jason. Although he does give Jason a lot more strength and menace than any of the other actors who played him before, the overall quality of the film itself leaves much to be desired.

It's definitely not a highlight of the series for me, and it's also the beginning of what I consider to be eventual downfall of the quality of the series.