Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood (1988)
★★★ — Friday the 13th Part VII - The New Blood (1988)
There's a moment in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood where a teenage girl, wracked with guilt and grief, accidentally pulls a rotting, chained Jason Voorhees up from the bottom of Crystal Lake through sheer psychic force. And I sat there thinking: yeah, alright, I'm in. That's the kind of gleeful lunacy that makes this franchise worth sticking with, even when it's testing your patience.
By the seventh entry, you'd be forgiven for assuming the series had completely run out of road. It very nearly had. But then someone in a writing room asked "what if Jason fought a telekinetic girl?" and suddenly there's a reason to pay attention again. The Carrie comparisons are absolutely intentional, and I think the film is better for leaning into them rather than shying away. Borrowing from a genuine classic isn't always shameless, sometimes it gives a flailing franchise a spine to build around. Here, it gives us a final girl with actual power, actual trauma, and something resembling an arc. That's more than most of these films manage.
What strikes me most is the tone. This one's genuinely gothic in a way the series hasn't been before. The stormy visuals, the lakeside atmosphere, the dreamlike way scenes bleed into one another. It doesn't feel like a slasher so much as a fever dream you can't quite shake. There's a nightmare logic to the whole thing, where the rules of reality feel just slightly loose, and that suits the material down to the ground.
And then there's Kane Hodder, making his first appearance as Jason. Previous films have had decent stuntmen in the role, but Hodder is something else. There's a physical menace to him, a weight and deliberateness in every movement, that makes Jason feel genuinely threatening again rather than just a plot device in a hockey mask. You understand immediately why Hodder would go on to define the character for a generation of fans. He's not just lumbering about. He's hunting.
The kills are creative and the practical effects work is solid throughout. This was a period when that craft was being taken seriously by people who genuinely cared about it, and it shows. There's an inventiveness to the set pieces that keeps you engaged even when the script around them is doing the bare minimum. Which, let's be honest, it often is.
Is this good cinema? No, I'm not going to pretend it is. The supporting characters are largely there to be dispatched, the dialogue is functional at best, and the whole thing moves on dream logic rather than anything resembling coherent plotting. But here's the thing: it knows exactly what it is. It commits to the madness with genuine style and doesn't once lose its nerve. That's harder to pull off than it looks.
Saying this is the best Friday film I've seen so far probably sounds like faint praise, and I suppose it is. We're not exactly swimming in competition. But "best in a patchy series" is still something when the film actually earns it rather than just being the least boring option. This one earns it. It's silly and it's trashy and I had a genuinely good time with it.
Three stars.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1988 | Watched: 2025-10-01
Where to watch
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