A pretty pure distillation of the later Friday the 13th sequels in which Jason has transformed into a hulking, putrescent beast and the film, which revolves solely around his kills, almost plays more like action than horror. Jason’s cartoonish appearance, a cross between a muscular superhero and roadkill, is one of the best aspects of the film. This is one of the only in the series to give us an unmasked Jason that doesn’t look like a melted science project (thanks to some quality effects work, he looks pretty badass in a rubbery, ’80s make-up sort of way).
Unfortunately, The New Blood gets Jason right, but just about everything else wrong. The writing is worse than a meat cleaver to the face, which means that it’s still twice as good as the acting. Those two catastrophes go hand-in-hand to make any scene in which Jason is not hacking someone to death (granted, these account for about 40% of the movie) embarrassingly awful. Director John Carl Buechler is able to make some of the set pieces pop, and the film’s finale 20 minutes has some genuine tension and ridiculous, bat-shit crazy surprises.
Our heroine, I should note, is a psychic, and her telekinetic powers give her an edge on most of the franchise’s forgettable scream queens. It’s a nice change of pace for the film’s climax to see Jason pitted up against someone who can actually give him a run for his money. These changes in an otherwise extremely formulaic series are welcome, but amateurish execution relegates this to middle-of-the-pack for Jason fans.
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