After Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews) attempted to put an end to Jason Voorhees (C.J. Graham/Kane Hodder) for the final time, new blood accidentally comes across the deceased body and things take a turn for the worse. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood’s protagonist, Tina (Lar Park-Lincoln), is both blessed and cursed with telekinetic powers. A horrible memory from her childhood continues to haunt Tina to this day and has led her to Camp Crystal Lake to undergo extensive therapy with the help of her mother (Susan Blu) and her doctor--Dr. Crews (Terry Kiser). When she accidentally brings the demented Jason back to life, the people closest to her will suffer. With her special abilities, and the help of her new friends, Tina will do all that she can to destroy Voorhees.
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood starts off with a recap of the entire series, dating back to the 1980’s Friday the 13th. Writers Daryl Haney and Manuel Fidello, with director John Carl Buechler make sure to bring audiences up to speed and ensure that they are fully aware of what has taken place over the course of the Voorhees’s journey. It is smart to catch audiences up considering that so much has happened over the course of six feature length films, however, explaining the past in the way they did makes audiences think there will be a larger connection to the past than what there actually is. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood abandons all reality and attempts to create a film focused almost entirely on the supernatural.
Even though Jason is given supernatural abilities in the previous film, there is some subtlety to this ,and audiences are still able to appreciate the sentiment and the reality of the series as a whole. Fidello, Haney and Buechler try too hard to build on the supernatural and occult roots of Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives and create a story that revolves entirely around these themes. These ideas, however, have viewers of Friday the 13th VII: The New Blood tired and bored with mostly everything. Everything that writer Victor Miller and director Sean S. Cunningham built within the first film is lost (possibly even destroyed), and audiences of the original film are sure to have some impolite things to say about the direction the franchise is heading from here.
As the franchise strays further and further away from the ideas that made Jason Voorhees (and his mother) dreadfully famous, audiences feel as if they are trapped in a bad episode of The Twilight Zone. As things progress, less and less makes sense and the franchise crumbles more and more. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood possesses a lot of what is wrong with modern horror films. Writers and directors try too hard to be original and abstract, veering too far from what is enjoyable and coming dangerously close to insanity.
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