An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at the seventh film in the Friday the 13th series, 1988’s Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood
After accidentally releasing Jason with her telekinetic abilities, Tina (Lars Park-Lincoln) must stop him as she deals with the trauma of her father’s death.
Is Friday the 13th 7: The New Blood Scary?
Nah, Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood doesn’t really have any jump scares as many of the kills involve Jason stalking his prey. This film is also well-known to have been severely edited in order to maintain an R-rating and avoid an X-rating so you won’t see a lot of gore or blood throughout the film.
Overall you won’t leave Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood scared of anything unless you accidentally released a supernatural serial killer from his watery prison.
All Friday the 13th Explanations/Reviews:
Related Article: Friday the 13th (1980) Explained
Related Article: Friday the 13th Part II (1981) Explained
Related Article: Friday the 13th Part III (1982) Explained
Related Article: Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter (1984) Explained
Related Article: Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (1985) Explained
Related Article: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) Explained
Related Article: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) Explained
Related Article: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) Explained
Related Article: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Explained
Related Article: Jason X (2002) Explained
Related Article: Friday the 13th (2009) Explained
Friday the 13th 7: The New Blood Full Plot Summary:
Last we left Jason, Tommy Jarvis was tired of the shit he’d been through and decided to burn Jason’s corpse. Unfortunately, this accidentally to lightning hitting Jason’s body and Frankensteining him into a more powerful relentless killing machine.
With the help of camp counselor Megan, Tommy was eventually able to lure Jason to Crystal Lake, wrap a chain around his neck, and drop a boulder the chain was attached to into the lake. The film ends with Jason trapped underwater but still alive.
Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood opens with a narrator telling us all about Jason as we see flashbacks to several movies, except Part 5 because, again, fuck Part 5. (It’s actually not that bad) As the narrator tells us Jason is still waiting down in the lake we get a title screen and some dramatic opening credits.
We open at Crystal Lake on October 13th where we see Jason chained underwater. Based on the lack of deterioration of his clothes or body, this must be shortly after the last film. Outside of a nearby cabin, 10-year-old Tina Shepard (played by Jennifer Banko) hears her parents arguing and her father hitting her mother.
Tina runs to the lake and hops on a boat as her father, John, and mother, Amanda, both run outside looking for her. John spots her at the lake and runs to the pier attempting to call her back but Tina refuses. Angered that he hit her mother, Tina wishes her father dead and then really focuses on that wish.
The water beneath her ripples and violently shakes the pier. Shocked, Tina tries to stop it but the pier collapses dropping her father into the lake and killing him.
Years later Tina (played by Lar Park-Lincoln) and Amanda (played by Susan Blu) return to Crystal Lake for some therapy sessions with Dr. Crews (played by Terry Kiser). We learn Tina has been in a psychiatric hospital since her father’s death and due to the lack of progress in controlling her abilities plus the trauma, Dr. Crews suggested they return to the cabin.
Meanwhile, in the next cabin, a group of teens around Tina’s age are preparing for a party. I’m sure that won’t cause any unwanted stress to the traumatized Tina.
Immediately after arriving, Dr. Crews starts the first session by attempting to get Tina to move a matchbook across a table with her mind. When Tina is unable to move the matchbook Dr. Crews shows his “proficiency” by taking a note from Nike and yells, “Just do it!”
This leads to an argument and the matchbook finally moves but Tina questions how any of this is supposed to help her. Crews claims her inability to control her powers is due to her guilt stemming from causing her father’s death but, this only angers Tina further causing the matchbook to ignite.
That night Tina sees a picture of her father and breaks down crying. As her mother consoles her, Dr. Crews comes in causing Tina to run out of the house and to the lake. Tina stares out into the lake and we have a flashback of the scene where she kills her dad. Yea, we just saw that scene ten minutes ago but we have to pad the runtime somehow!
After wishing for her father to come back, Tina “feels” something in the lake and focuses on whatever is causing it. Hey, remember how there’s an undead serial killer chained under the lake?
Seeing Jason, Tina immediately faints and collapses on the pier. Maybe because she freed him or maybe because of plot armor, Jason doesn’t kill her and simply walks out of the lake and into the woods. Another possibility is that after all that time trapped underwater, Jason has learned the error of his ways…
A short time later, Amanda and Crews find Tina at the pier and bring her inside. She tells them about the man who rose from the lake but Crews believes it was just a hallucination. One of the partygoers from next door, Nick (played by Kevin Spirtas) arrives and invites Tina to the surprise party they’re throwing for his cousin Michael next door.
Meanwhile near a sign showing Crystal Lake is 5 miles away (hey, they changed the name back to Crystal Lake), Michael and his girlfriend, Jane, break down and decide to walk the rest of the way to the cabin. But first, Michael’s gotta pee and leaves Jane as he searches for the best spot.
Jane starts to get the creeps and she had good reason to because Jason appears behind her. Placing one hand over her mouth, he takes a tent spike and drives it into her neck. Forget what I said about Jason learning the error of his ways. Moments later, Michael returns and gets the worst surprise party anyone could get.
Micheal runs away but doesn’t get too far as Jason throws the tent spike into his back and kills him. At the surprise party, Nick introduces Tina to the rest of the cast AKA people who are definitely not going to be alive by the end of this movie.
In the screenshots below from left to right we have:
- Maddy (played by Diana Barrows) who has a crush on David,
- Sandra (played by Heidi Kozak),
- Robin (played by Elizabeth Kaitan) who also has a crush on David,
- Sandra’s boyfriend Russell (played by Larry Cox),
- Eddie (played by Jeff Bennett) who is a writer,
- David (played by Jon Renfield) who is the stereotypical stoner,
- Tina our hero of this story,
- Nick our hero’s sidekick,
- and Melissa (played by Susan Jennifer Sullivan) who is your stereotypical stuck-up rich kid and is trying to get into Nick’s pants.
There are also two other characters who for some reason aren’t shown at the surprise party but do appear the following day at the cabin. It’s implied they were there the entire time but they’re never shown in the background.
Were they late? Who knows, but they are Ben (played by Craig Thomas) and his girlfriend Kate (played by Diane Almeida). Maybe they were still hiding, waiting to yell out surprised when Nick introduces Tine to the rest of the gang?
After bumping his head on a lamp, David enters the kitchen and shotguns a beer but proceeds to spit it all out on everyone… we get it, drugs bad. As this happens, Tina gets a vision of Jason killing Michael with a tent spike which causes her to drop her drink and run out of the cabin.
Outside of her cabin, Tina finds a tent spike embedded in the porch and runs inside to tell Crews and her mom. Crews, once again, believes Tina is having delusions and is seeing her father despite Tina very clearly saying it’s not her father she’s seeing.
Crews heads outside to check for the tent spike but calls Tina and Amanda over when he doesn’t find anything. This causes Tina to question herself, completely ignoring the hole in the pillar left by the tent spike.
Meanwhile, out in the woods, couple Dan and Judy are camping and since they have no relation to our main cast, you know they’re not long for this world. Armed with a machete, Dan goes out to get some wood for the fire and you just know Jason is breathing heavily at the sight of that machete.
Jason sneaks up to Dan and punches him straight through the chest. Grabbing the machete, he makes his way to the tent.
At the tent, Jason cuts through it finding Judy in her sleeping bag. As she screams, Jason grabs the sleeping bag, drags it to a nearby tree, and slams Judy against it killing her.
The next day Tina and Nick bond at the lake and she tells him all about her trauma and her dad’s death at her hands. Feels a little heavy for a first date. Nearby Melissa has been spying on the two and watches as they kiss.
Back at the party house while everyone is setting up for a barbeque, Melissa enters and gets Eddie to wear his jacket backward. As Tina walks in, Melissa goes full mean girls and loudly asks her if this is the way they wear jackets in the mental hospital.
Angry, Tina loses control of her abilities and force-chokes Melissa but instead only breaks her pearls.
Tina rushes out of the cabin and that night begs Crews and her mother to let her leave as she can’t control her abilities. Though her mom agrees they should leave, Crews refuses leading to a heated argument where Crews threatens to lock Tina away in the hospital for the rest of her life.
Tina once again loses control of her abilities and launches a TV at Crews that narrowly misses. This is the 80s so those things easily weigh like 50 pounds on a good day. Tina rushes out of the cabin and bumps into Nick who came to apologize about Melissa. Tina asks to see a picture of Michael and luckily Nick carries pictures of his cousin in his wallet.
Tina instantly recognizes him as the guy in her vision who was killed by Jason and tells Nick she thinks he’s dead. Before she can elaborate further, Amanda comes out and tells Tina to pack as they’re leaving in the morning. Tina rushes inside and Nick stays outside like he didn’t just hear his relative is dead.
Later, Sandra and Russell are walking by the lake and we get our obligatory skinny-dipping scene when Sandra decides to go for a swim. As Russell gets undressed and Sandra dips underwater, Jason appears and golf swings an axe into Russell’s face. Sandra doesn’t see any of this because Jason has perfect timing.
Sandra emerges from the water, sees Russell’s body, and correctly freaks out especially since Jason is nowhere to be found. Jason suddenly appears behind her in the water because I guess he can teleport now and drags Sandra underwater, killing her.
Back at the cabin Maddy sees Robin cozying up with David and decides to give herself a makeover, 80s movie style. Outside Jason arrives at the cabin and sees the teens having a party through the window and if there’s anything Jason hates more than being trapped underwater for years, it’s parties he’s not invited to.
In the woods, Dr. Crews is out for a walk and discovers Michael’s body along with a bloody tent spike. Meanwhile, at the cabin, Amanda goes through Dr. Crews’s notes and discovers he never intended on helping Tina with her trauma and, is purposely trying to get her to relive her trauma so he can induce a psychokinetic reaction.
In his desk, she also finds the tent spike that Tina saw embedded in the porch earlier. Dr. Crews then walks in and Amanda confronts him with the evidence. Tina overhears the two arguing and hears Crews tell Amanda the therapy is over. Crews tells Amanda to start packing as he now plans on committing Tina to the hospital against Amanda’s wishes.
Tina runs downstairs, grabs the car keys, and drives off but, an implied short distance down the road, she sees a vision of Jason killing her mother and crashes into a tree. I say “implied short distance” because this happens moments after she drives away from the cabin but she passes by Michael’s car which we saw earlier was 5 miles from Crystal Lake.
Back at the party cabin, Maddy finishes her makeover and heads into the woods to look for David despite him having been inside the cabin earlier. Realizing she’s dropped her earring somewhere, she retraces her steps and eventually finds it but also finds Russell’s body when it falls from a tree.
Maddy screams which is like calling for Jason and he unsurprisingly answers the call.
Maddy runs to a nearby toolshed and hides behind a wall but Jason is no fool. He breaks through the wall and kills her using a scythe. In the woods, Tina is running back to the cabin and bumps into Nick who is out looking for Michael.
Meanwhile, Crews and Amanda find Tina’s car and Amanda runs into the woods to search for Tina. Outside the cabin, Ben and Kate are having sex in a van when Jason starts shaking the van. Thinking it’s Michael who has finally arrived to his party, Ben goes outside with a party horn to check and gets his head crushed by Jason.
Not having heard Ben’s brain popping, Kate rolls down the window to call out for him and gets grabbed by Jason who kills her by embedding the party horn in her eye.
Inside the cabin, Eddie and Melissa are about to have sex when she stops him and reveals she only seduced him in order to make Nick jealous. In a nearby room, David and Robin are having sex when Jason rips the electric cable outside the cabin. But you can’t stop horny teens so no one decides to go outside and check on it.
Instead, David heads downstairs to get something to eat and gets a butcher knife to the stomach courtesy of Jason. After rejecting Eddie, Melissa leaves the cabin, completely avoiding seeing or hearing Jason. Eddie, on the other hand, is opening up Michael’s gifts and having his own pity party when Jason walks up behind him and stabs him in the neck.
Wondering why David hasn’t returned to the room, Robin searches for him but for some reason searches the rooms on the second floor despite the kitchen being on the first. In David’s room, she finds his head perched up on the window seat which causes her to scream and we all know that’s Jason’s signal.
Jason walks into the room, grabs Robin, and throws her out of the window; killing her.
In the woods, Tina and Nick find Michael’s body and return to Tina’s cabin. There, Tina finds Crews’s notes, his gun, and discovers Crews knows about Jason. Realizing Jason is who she brought back from the lake, Tina loses control of her abilities and shakes everything in the room but Nick is able to calm her down.
Tina has a vision of her mother in the woods and Nick agrees to go look for her but wants to get everyone from the party cabin together first… that’s gonna be awkward. Tina agrees but stays behind as Nick heads to the party cabin to look for the others.
In the woods, Crews and Amanda are searching for Tina when Crews hears someone walking around in the woods. Knowing that Jason or a killer is out there, Crews tells Amanda he’s getting the fuck out of there but doesn’t tell her why. That question is answered when Jason appears behind them carrying a bush axe.
The two run but Jason eventually catches up to them and Crews uses Amanda as a shield allowing Jason to stab her with the bush axe.
Nick arrives at the party cabin, finds Eddie dead, and nopes out of there back to Tina’s cabin. Instead of finding Tina, he finds Melissa who doesn’t believe that the others are dead. In the woods, Tina finds Crews and questions where her mother is. Crews lies saying she’s back at the cabin but the blood on his shirt makes Tina doubt his story.
Crews reveals Amanda is dead and Tina runs off to find her as Crews runs the opposite way. After stopping to catch his breath, Crews hears an electric saw and turns around to find Jason wielding a new murdering tool.
Crews runs but Jason does his teleporting schtick that he must be able to do because he appears behind Crews and sneaks up to him. After throwing him on the ground, Jason uses the saw to gut Crews.
Meanwhile, Tina finds Amanda’s body and spots Jason in the distance. Chasing after him, she finds all the other partygoer’s dead bodies strewn up on trees. Tina runs toward the road and is spotted by Jason who is just standing there watching her.
Using her powers, Tina lifts several branches to bind Jason in place and then drops him into a nearby large puddle. She then rips an electrical cord from a phone line and drops it into the puddle, electrocuting Jason.
Unfortunately, Tina doesn’t know that Jason was brought back to life through electricity so she’s shocked when he gets back up like it’s nothing. Tina runs to the party cabin but Jason jumps in through the window and carefully approaches Tina. Using her mind, she launches a couch at Jason and then throws a nearby plant that for some reason is now holding David’s head.
Tina runs outside and as Jason comes outside, Tina drops the porch roof on his head. Tina runs back to her cabin where she tells Nick and Melissa that Jason is dead. Hard cut to Jason climbing out of the roof rubble.
At the cabin, Melissa refuses to believe Jason was real and curses out Tina and Nick. Opening the door to leave, she finds out Jason is very real when he shows up and puts an axe in her face. Jason then throws Melissa’s body across the room to add insult to injury.
Nick and Tina run upstairs with Jason right behind them until Tina throws a lamp in his face causing him to fall back and crash through the stairs. Hopping over the gap created by Jason, Nick and Tina make their way back downstairs. Before they can get to the door, Jason breaks through the staircase and grabs Nick.
Jason throws Nick across the room and attempts to stomp on him but Tina uses her abilities to constrict Jason’s mask causing the straps to dig into his skin. The straps snap and we get a clear look at what Jason now looks like.
Using a lamp cord and her mind, Tina wraps it around Jason’s neck, lifts him up in the air, and drops him into the basement. Before Tina can get to Nick, Jason wakes up and grabs her, dragging her into the basement with him.
With her mind, Tina launches several nails into Jason, sprays him with gasoline, and uses the fire from the furnace to ignite him. Who knew having gasoline so close to an open fire source could come in handy one day?
Nick finally wakes up and together with Tina, they run out of the house and to the pier just as the house blows up behind them.
Somehow Jason is still alive and, in a jump scare, grabs Tina, throwing her across the pier. Nick remembers he has Crews’s gun and shoots Jason. For some reason, Nick is surprised that a bullet doesn’t stop Jason and this allows Jason to reach him and push him onto a boat, knocking him out.
Jason turns back to Tina who focuses her abilities as we see the water of the lake start to bubble up. Tina’s father, who doesn’t look like he’s been trapped underwater for years, breaks through the pier with a chain in hand. After knocking Jason to his knees, Tina’s dad wraps the chain around Jason’s neck and drags him into the lake as Tina passes out.
The next morning firefighters, police, and paramedics at the camp load Tina into an ambulance with Nick. Nick asks where Jason is and the film ends as Tina tells him “We took care of him.” By “we” she means her and her father because Nick didn’t do shit.
Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood Spoiler Review:
Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood is okay. It feels like one of the earlier films where it’s just Jason murdering teens and that gets kind of old when you’ve seen it multiple times. Especially after Part 6 where there’s a lot going on, this one seems like a step backward. Luckily it’s a small step as this movie introduces Tina who has abilities and elevates the movie. We get to see a real battle between Jason and someone who can stand up to him.
The dialogue and acting were alright, nothing great and nothing atrociously bad. There were attempts to give some characters a backstory or some conflict to make them feel real but because there were so many characters it doesn’t really land. This is not a bad thing if you’re just trying to watch a slasher. It’s just something that becomes apparent when you watch someone die and you have to ask, “What was his name again, David, Eddie, or Kevin? Oh, there is no Kevin, well it doesn’t matter.”
I do think Tina was a great addition and made the movie much more enjoyable and exciting, sort of teetering on going full action. The ending kind of misses the mark based on the rules the film establishes itself but it does make perfect literary sense. Tina who has been plagued with the trauma of killing her father is able to conjure up her father (or his spirit) to save the day. In a way that helps her get over her guilt and accept what happened.
What doesn’t make sense is how she was able to do it with her powers. Tina’s abilities allow her to move things with her mind but can she also bring people back to life? In the last film, we saw Jason was still alive just trapped in the water but it’s sort of implied she brought Jason back to life at the start of this film. Was Jon in the lake the whole time? Why doesn’t he look deteriorated like Jason does? If it was his spirit, that opens up a whole other can of worms.
Overall I recommend Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood to those who are fans of the previous Friday the 13th films and enjoyed the supernatural twist Part 6 added as this one goes full into the paranormal. If you weren’t a fan of the first 3 films or you’re not a fan of supernatural abilities in your stores you’re probably not going to enjoy this one.
Cast IMDB