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Random Creepy Scene #846: Friday the 13th - Part VII: The New Blood

The Friday the 13th franchise isn't exactly renowned for its subtlety. It is a series of movies essentially repeating a very familiar pattern: teens in secluded backwoods by Crystal Lake fall victim to hulking killer Jason Voorhees. After they’ve indulged in booze, drugs and premarital sex, naturally. It’s generally held that the higher the number of the sequel, the lesser the quality of the film. This has never stopped me from enjoying each instalment though. With a nice, dry Sauvignon blanc.

In Part VII of the series, the filmmakers actually attempted to take the franchise in a slightly new direction – as well as all the usual oblivious teens wandering around in the dark woods investigating strange noises and getting murderlised by Jason, a young woman with latent telekinetic powers is also thrown into the mix. It’s essentially Jason vs. Carrie and was intended to directly compete with the successful and more overtly supernatural A Nightmare on Elm Street Series – in fact The New Blood started out as the first attempt to face Jason off against Freddy Kreuger. This fell through though.

Years after Tommy Jarvis seemingly defeated him and chained him underwater at Camp Crystal Lake, everyone’s favourite hockey-masked killer, Jason Voorhees, returns to stalk and slash teenagers when he's accidently released by a young woman with psychic powers…

The film does exhibit one moment of genuine creepiness and subtlety. After David and Robyn have sex, he ventures downstairs to get a midnight snack. As the power is out, he takes a torch. Moving through the darkened house – lit only by his torch and sporadic lightning from the storm raging outside – David enters the kitchen and fails to see the hulking brute Jason standing stock still in the corner behind him (visible in top left-hand corner of the fourth still below). Just standing there. Watching. Waiting. In the dark. We only see him briefly when lightning momentarily lights the entire room. This is one of the few instances in the series where we get a genuine hint of Jason’s sadistic and darkly calculating nature. There is something supremely creepy about him just standing there, so out of place in the cosy confines of this secluded, balloon-filled holiday cabin home… 






The creepiness ends here and the usual in-your-face and bloody, bull-in-a-china-shop carnage associated with Friday the 13th soon recommences... 



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