Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood . Weekly Alibi . 11-24-97

Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood

DIRECTED BY: John Carl Buechler

REVIEWED: 11-24-97

Now this is more like it. Kickin' it old school (as my homey Coolio might say), this one opens with a bunch of scenes from earlier F13s, then gets down to business with nonstop cheesy slasher action. It must've sounded great in the pitch meetings: "We'll do a Jason-meets-Carrie sort of thing! The kids'll love it!" And, while it never quite lives up to its potential, the goofy telekinetic stuff makes PTVII one of my favorites. Uh, I mean in the F13 series, not, like, one of my favorite movies, y'understand. The flick opens as blonde, Poltergeist-girl-lookin' l'il Tina gets fed up with her dad's abusive ways and storms out of their house--on the shore of Camp Crystal Lake! She sails off in a motorboat, and when her dad begs for her to come back, her accidental telekinetic outburst kills poor ol' pop, sending him to the bottom of the lake. Years later, Tina, now a teenage neurotic, returns home to spend some time with her therapist, a manipulative bastard who wants to use Tina's snazzy powers for his own gain. After a grueling therapy session, Tina's emotional turmoil revives the corpse of Jason, who leaps out of the lake and heads into the woods. Next door, a bunch of teenagers (imagine that!) arrive for a surprise birthday party, and the slaughterfest begins! While the gore is pretty sparse, some of the murders are kind of cool--in one scene, Jason grabs a girl in a sleeping bag, hauls her around like a sack of groceries, then thwacks the sleeping bag into a tree to finish her off. We also get the obligatory Cat Scare; a slutty chick dressed in some kind of space-Indian outfit; Jason's cool zombie face; and in, one goofy scene, the Nerd Girl gets tarted up to impress the Dope-Smoking Idiot, who was last seen partying downstairs--but when she's ready for action, she goes outside and looks for the guy in the woods! When Tina and Jason finally face off, the flick becomes an oddball mix of Carrie, Scanners and Home Alone (with Jason in the Joe Pesci role) as stuff blows up, nails zip around and fire spews from the furnace. The coolest thing in the movie, though, is when Jason tries to kill a guy by stepping on his butt! (Paramount)

--Scott Phillips

Film Vault Suggested Links
The Flesh Eaters
Darkness
Friday the 13th, Part 4: The Final Chapter

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