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'Friday the 13th' may have been panned by critics when first released but since then it is one of the most famous and influential horror films, the franchise containing one of horror's most iconic villains. The film is popular enough to become a franchise and spawn several sequels of varying quality and generally inferior to the one that started it all off.
'The New Blood', the seventh instalment, is not among the best films in the series from personal opinion, though far from awful. It does have good things and a couple of interest points, but there is the general sense that things and the concept were becoming half-hearted and stale. Not sure as to whether 'The New Blood' is the worst film in the series as some critics and fans have said it to be.
As aforementioned, 'The New Blood' has strengths. The make-up effects are genuinely gruesome and frightening and the telekinetic effects are surprisingly good. The music score once again is hauntingly eerie and there are a couple of deaths that are well done, the sleeping bag one is the best one and not just one of the film's highlights but also one of the best death scenes to me of the whole series.
Kane Hodder sends chills down the spine as Jason. The interest point of 'The New Blood' is the supernatural, telekinetic element, the one thing that stops the film from being severely fatigued and from it being a complete retread. It is a very strange idea and doesn't feel like it entirely belongs within the film, but it's pretty clever.
However, Lar Park-Lincoln is fairly overwrought in places, though she does have good moments especially with Hodder, and the rest of the acting is nothing to write about. Their characters are hard to care for, due to them being so sketchy and in a couple of cases grating. The dialogue continues to be crude and simplistic. None of these were strengths anyway in the 'Friday the 13th' series ('Jason Lives' is an exception), but for all 'The New Blood' is one of the worse-faring cases.
Pacing feels rushed in the telling of the story, which can feel jumpy, and dull because it's all so bloodless. The humour is more goofy and annoying than tongue-in-cheek and witty, there is a real shortage of suspense, far too tame scares (and it's not just because the film is very un-gory, the only one that shocks is the un-masking) and the deaths have been far more imaginative and creepy elsewhere in the series, with one exception. The ending is ridiculous and over-extended.
On the whole, lacklustre but not a waste of time. 4/10 Bethany Cox
4/10
