Until the 2009 reboot, this was last traditional Friday the 13th movie that would be made for over two decades. Every movie after this featured an outrageous gimmick of some kind such as Jason in New York, Jason in Space, Jason as a body jumping Hell Baby (yeah…) but here it’s just good old hockey puss in his natural element, near Camp Crystal Lake dispatching with another horny band of teenagers, and what a horny band of teenagers it was this time.
I believe this movie had the biggest cast to date in terms of disposable twenty-somethings. They were all as forgettable as usual. There’s a blonde character named Melissa who was quite hateable, and the token nerd Eddie.
The main premise of the movie however was kind of a deal breaker for me. Tina Shepard is a patent rip-off of Carrie. She uses her telekinesis first to raise Jason from the watery graves, and then in the finale uses it to bounce him around like a ping pong ball.
I know it’s a little beside the point to complain about logic in one of these movies, but absurdity of the final fight between the main survivor and Jason knocked this one down a peg.
This movie is helped by the first appearance of Kane Hodder in the role of Jason though. Kane is definitely the most natural Jason to have ever dawned the mask. He would hold the role longer than any other of the actors/stuntmen to have dawned the old hockey mask.
Hodder’s Jason is the Jason most people associate with the role now – a stealthy zombie terminator – far removed from the lanky lumbering killer of previous films. Hodder’s physicality and ease of movement really helped make Jason into a fresh entity in these movies.
Friday The 13th Part 7: The New Blood gets a three out of five: SATISFYING.
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