4 out of 5

Directed by: John Carl Buechler

‘New Blood’ isn’t the best Jason movie, really.  It lacks the raw verve of Part II, or the inspiration of Part VI, but it has one major thing going for it that sets it apart from the pack: It made Jason scary.  Jason hasn’t really been frightening since his original (grown) incarnation in Part II – but that was different.  That played on the character’s animalistic nature, painting him more as unhinged than the stalker-killer director Miner wished to turn him into in Part III.  That was the archetype the films went with moving forward, but writer / director McLoughlin’s ‘Jason Lives’ is really what gave the series the proper tools to turn Jason into Something More; by fully unleashing us from reality and turning the killer into a supernatural zombie, you no longer had to ‘think’ about the man behind the mask and you could just go all out.  Not to discredit any of the actors who have played the character prior to VII, but it did take someone who could fulfill that potential – and helped by being paired with a visual director like Buechler – to really bring the scares back, and Kane Hodder’s looming presence as Jason absolutely succeeded.  He’s not exactly mindless, or bloodthirsty, just frighteningly relentless, taking a moment to decide the best way to achieve his goal of gutting you.  And since this is meant to be a horror flick, I won’t apologize for being grim: Buechler, bringing impressive effects skills to the pic – while VII is still beleaguered by the same censorship most of the entries faced – added to his flick’s dark and dreary vibe by piling on more impressive gore and kills, an aspect that’s also commonly fallen into tedium post Part II.  As a kid, for whatever reason I’d associated a chainsaw with Jason; watching these now, the dude has never really been partial to a particular implement, and ‘New Blood’ has fun with this by having our killer pop up with something new and brutal in each scene.  Besides these highlights, the plot is fairly standard (get the teens together in the forest and off them one by one), but the chick with psychic powers who frees Jason from his watery prison was a pretty smart kick in the pants to give the baddie a worthwhile a  opponent.  The script also scoots the comedy back to stemming mostly from the teens being teens, instead of wedging unnecessary extra characters in for forced laughs, and welcomes back in the T&A that’s forever a part of the genre.  Part VII is also one of the best paced from the series, letting Jason loose during most of the runtime – filling in the slow spots with our psychic – but not forgetting to build to a climactic chase sequence.  And though Buechler’s framing feels a bit too staged at times, the moments where Hodder’s on the prowl, we get some great, energized shots.

Examined beat by beat, ‘New Blood’ isn’t any different from what’s come before.  But comparing it to the series, it’s here that it feels like the idea of Jason was finally ‘realized,’ and it sets the franchise back on a path that had been wandering since Part II.