Friday the 13th Part 7 Re-Review
I originally reviewed Friday the 13t Part 7 way, way back in 2011. It was sone of my first reviews, an actual Facebook post from so long ago that Facebook had a word limit and I had to write the review in multiple comments. I was hardly the writer back then that I am now, and I couldn’t have predicted that what started as a handful of incisive and involved Facebook rants would evolve into a blog, then a book, and ultimately the discovery of my true talent and only real happiness in life.
So this re-review is a little personal for, both because it recalls my early days as a critic, and because Friday the 13th Part 7 is my favorite of the franchise. Oh the horrid, horrid stuff I have seen since those halcyon days when I thought Beastly was the worst thing I had seen. It’s been an unforgettable ride, and although I’ve publicly and privately quit several times, I have no intention of stopping now.
So, anyway, let’s revisit this polished turd once again, shall we?
Friday the 13th Part 7 features a telekinetic girl who has some daddy issues. In the prologue of the movie, which is the only prologue to have a voiceover recap the previous movies, she accidently drowns her father in a telekinetic spasm. But don’t get too excited: there’s no thematic parallels between Jason’s accidently drowning and the father’s, it’s just pure accidental plot boiling.
Accidentally or maybe incidentally drowning your father would be enough to cause anyone to have mental issues, so Tina – our heroine – has a very intense and not-so trustworthy psychiatrist, Dr. Crews, who is more interested in exploiting her telekinesis than working out her daddy issues. Tina’s mother isn’t much help; I’m not entirely sure why she’s in the movie; not even her death is cool: she’s just there. Dr. Crews takes Tina back to Crystal Lake, mainly to test her abilities by pissing her off, although he doesn’t carry this technique to the extremes Kevin Bacon did in X-Men First Class by capping her mother in the face.
But what would a Friday the 13th movie be without an expendable cast of kids to annihilate? So we have a disparate group partying in the house next door. It’s a common complaint about these movies that kids keep partying at Crystal Lake well after it’s known Jason habitually pops up and kills everyone young, dumb, and more or less full of cum (males and females). (Yeah, work those ratios out). But it’s a shallow complaint. The first four movies occurs within days, Part 5 s non-cannon, and Crystal Lake is renamed Forrest Green in Part 6. But all that aside, I mean – kids do like to party where they know they could be killed. It’s such a well-established slasher trope that one can hardly expect kids not to want to drink and screw at Crystal Lake, where Jason might resurrect himself and impale them pressed together in a dying embrace.
Kids continuing to party at Crystal Lake is actually the most realistic thing about the franchise. It would be more unbelievable if they partied somewhere else and Jason followed them.
Anyway, who will be killed this time? We have a science-fiction nerd, who sucks; Nick, who will be the Love Interest; a couple; a stoner; a slut; a wanna-be slut; and a socialite. Clearly the most diverse cast that accurately represents virtually everyone you knew in high school except yourself and the Goth.
Part 7 is particularly fun, and this is one of the reasons it’s my favorite, because it has sexual selection unfold in all its awkward glory. There is only one established couple, so everyone else is free for grabs, and the tides and tables turn this way and that in fascinating ways unseen in the other movies. The socialite wants Nick, but Nick wants Tina – who also wants Nick. This causes mot of the friction in the movie, with the socialite, Melissa, making a big bitch out of herself pretty much the whole time although she could just dump all these losers and find a better party.
There’s further drama, however, as the stoner is also a man wanted by two women: the slut, Robin, and the wanna-be slut, Maddie. There’s really not much competition, as Robin is willing to smoke pot with the stoner, which is somehow an edge, so Maddie has a total makeover to become more attractive.
At some point, Tina has a major telekinetic episode that wakes Jason up. The shot with him walking out of the lake is quite good. The majority of the second act is mainly Jason killing virtually everyone as the drama between the teens runs its course and Tina finally figures Dr. Crews out as a bad, bad man. There’s a sex scene to keep you interested while this goes one, the only memorable death is a girl getting killed with a kazoo.
Melissa, however, being the bitch she is, ups the ante on the drama and starts making out with the science-fiction nerd, only to spurn him when this ruse fails to arouse Nick. There’s enough backstabbing and sexual frustration and fragile egos in this movie that Jason himself seems unnecessary, as if the natural events of having these assholes all together would eventually, inevitably end in mass murder anyway.
The best death is when Melissa opens the door to Jason and he not only axes her in the face, but then, completely unnecessarily, throws her body across the room as it grows limp in death. Jason is somewhat catty in this movie.
But the real enjoyment from this movie comes when Tina finally confronts Jason and fucks him up real good with her telekinesis. The list of things she does to him is quite long and hard to remember, but she shocks him with a telephone cable, throws him literally through the stairs and into basement, where she sets him on fire, then hangs him, then drops the house on him. It’s amazing and gratifying and totally awesome in every way, and is the main reason I love this movie to death. All else is secondary. Tina does more damage to Jason singularly than the collective damage done to the entire prom in Carrie.
She kills Jason by somehow resurrecting her dead father from the lake, who must have been in there with Jason, oddly, and who drags Jason down and, I suppose, holds him in a choke hold until Part 8. It’s a lame anticlimax, but – short of exploding the bastard – was the best they could come up with.
Part 7 is wild and sexy and not-for-one-minute boring, knowing it’s trash and giving no fucks about it and giving you exactly what you want in every scene. Whereas Part 4 is the best in terms of a textbook slasher, and Part 6 in its tone and technique, Part 7 is the best if you don’t care about such things and just want to see some boobs and gore and a telekinetic girl fuck up a man for twenty minutes.
It remains my favorite, and I give it five stars.
I originally reviewed Friday the 13t Part 7 way, way back in 2011. It was sone of my first reviews, an actual Facebook post from so long ago that Facebook had a word limit and I had to write the review in multiple comments. I was hardly the writer back then that I am now, and I couldn’t have predicted that what started as a handful of incisive and involved Facebook rants would evolve into a blog, then a book, and ultimately the discovery of my true talent and only real happiness in life.
So this re-review is a little personal for, both because it recalls my early days as a critic, and because Friday the 13th Part 7 is my favorite of the franchise. Oh the horrid, horrid stuff I have seen since those halcyon days when I thought Beastly was the worst thing I had seen. It’s been an unforgettable ride, and although I’ve publicly and privately quit several times, I have no intention of stopping now.
So, anyway, let’s revisit this polished turd once again, shall we?
Friday the 13th Part 7 features a telekinetic girl who has some daddy issues. In the prologue of the movie, which is the only prologue to have a voiceover recap the previous movies, she accidently drowns her father in a telekinetic spasm. But don’t get too excited: there’s no thematic parallels between Jason’s accidently drowning and the father’s, it’s just pure accidental plot boiling.
Accidentally or maybe incidentally drowning your father would be enough to cause anyone to have mental issues, so Tina – our heroine – has a very intense and not-so trustworthy psychiatrist, Dr. Crews, who is more interested in exploiting her telekinesis than working out her daddy issues. Tina’s mother isn’t much help; I’m not entirely sure why she’s in the movie; not even her death is cool: she’s just there. Dr. Crews takes Tina back to Crystal Lake, mainly to test her abilities by pissing her off, although he doesn’t carry this technique to the extremes Kevin Bacon did in X-Men First Class by capping her mother in the face.
But what would a Friday the 13th movie be without an expendable cast of kids to annihilate? So we have a disparate group partying in the house next door. It’s a common complaint about these movies that kids keep partying at Crystal Lake well after it’s known Jason habitually pops up and kills everyone young, dumb, and more or less full of cum (males and females). (Yeah, work those ratios out). But it’s a shallow complaint. The first four movies occurs within days, Part 5 s non-cannon, and Crystal Lake is renamed Forrest Green in Part 6. But all that aside, I mean – kids do like to party where they know they could be killed. It’s such a well-established slasher trope that one can hardly expect kids not to want to drink and screw at Crystal Lake, where Jason might resurrect himself and impale them pressed together in a dying embrace.
Kids continuing to party at Crystal Lake is actually the most realistic thing about the franchise. It would be more unbelievable if they partied somewhere else and Jason followed them.
Anyway, who will be killed this time? We have a science-fiction nerd, who sucks; Nick, who will be the Love Interest; a couple; a stoner; a slut; a wanna-be slut; and a socialite. Clearly the most diverse cast that accurately represents virtually everyone you knew in high school except yourself and the Goth.
Part 7 is particularly fun, and this is one of the reasons it’s my favorite, because it has sexual selection unfold in all its awkward glory. There is only one established couple, so everyone else is free for grabs, and the tides and tables turn this way and that in fascinating ways unseen in the other movies. The socialite wants Nick, but Nick wants Tina – who also wants Nick. This causes mot of the friction in the movie, with the socialite, Melissa, making a big bitch out of herself pretty much the whole time although she could just dump all these losers and find a better party.
There’s further drama, however, as the stoner is also a man wanted by two women: the slut, Robin, and the wanna-be slut, Maddie. There’s really not much competition, as Robin is willing to smoke pot with the stoner, which is somehow an edge, so Maddie has a total makeover to become more attractive.
At some point, Tina has a major telekinetic episode that wakes Jason up. The shot with him walking out of the lake is quite good. The majority of the second act is mainly Jason killing virtually everyone as the drama between the teens runs its course and Tina finally figures Dr. Crews out as a bad, bad man. There’s a sex scene to keep you interested while this goes one, the only memorable death is a girl getting killed with a kazoo.
Melissa, however, being the bitch she is, ups the ante on the drama and starts making out with the science-fiction nerd, only to spurn him when this ruse fails to arouse Nick. There’s enough backstabbing and sexual frustration and fragile egos in this movie that Jason himself seems unnecessary, as if the natural events of having these assholes all together would eventually, inevitably end in mass murder anyway.
The best death is when Melissa opens the door to Jason and he not only axes her in the face, but then, completely unnecessarily, throws her body across the room as it grows limp in death. Jason is somewhat catty in this movie.
But the real enjoyment from this movie comes when Tina finally confronts Jason and fucks him up real good with her telekinesis. The list of things she does to him is quite long and hard to remember, but she shocks him with a telephone cable, throws him literally through the stairs and into basement, where she sets him on fire, then hangs him, then drops the house on him. It’s amazing and gratifying and totally awesome in every way, and is the main reason I love this movie to death. All else is secondary. Tina does more damage to Jason singularly than the collective damage done to the entire prom in Carrie.
She kills Jason by somehow resurrecting her dead father from the lake, who must have been in there with Jason, oddly, and who drags Jason down and, I suppose, holds him in a choke hold until Part 8. It’s a lame anticlimax, but – short of exploding the bastard – was the best they could come up with.
Part 7 is wild and sexy and not-for-one-minute boring, knowing it’s trash and giving no fucks about it and giving you exactly what you want in every scene. Whereas Part 4 is the best in terms of a textbook slasher, and Part 6 in its tone and technique, Part 7 is the best if you don’t care about such things and just want to see some boobs and gore and a telekinetic girl fuck up a man for twenty minutes.
It remains my favorite, and I give it five stars.