Part VII is, predictably, another barely sufferable episode in this wretched horror series. There's a LOT of bad movie stupidity, but very little of it is funny.

We start with the usual pointless flashback sequence. This one looks a lot like the one in Part VI, using some of the same exact flashback scenes and looking like an advertisement for the series rather than a part of it. The sequence is revisionist concerning Jason's stupid resurrection at the beginning of Part VI -- it would have you believe no one was around when the lightning struck. But what's it matter anyway?

After the flashback sequence, we get the opening credits, accompanied by this episode's musical theme, which is a series of repetitive, discordant thumpings. Then we cut to a Traumatizing Flashback scene, where the film's star undergoes a greatly disturbing childhood episode. Mommy and Daddy are fighting, and Daddy gets violent, so Little Girl takes a boat and paddles out on Crystal Lake, then wishes her Dad was dead. Just then, some bubbles come out and shake up the dock that Daddy's standing on. Rather than turning around and seeking the safety of dry land, he stands there until the dock's rocking becomes so violent, it breaks and sends him plunging into the lake.

Cut to the actual movie. She's a teenager now, of course, and undergoing therapy from a psychiatrist who is so conspicuously unprofessional and driven by alterior motives that she and her mother have to be the world's stupidest human beings not to have fired him long before. He's only interested in exploiting her psychic powers (although in what way, we never know) which can be made to move objects around when her emotions run high. The doc tells her this is due to her "suppressed guilt feelings," at which the girl tells him to "speak English." Huh? It *was* English. I understood it perfectly. I hate it when movies have the Professional Uses Long Words And The Other Person Tells Him To Speak English cliche, but it's even worse when what the guy says is understandable in the first place.

Angry, the psychic woman runs down to the beach (Doc thought it would be therapeutic if he brought her back to the scene of her father's accident!) and tries to resurrect her father with her powers. She resurrects Jason instead (??) who shrugs off the chain that killed him in Part VI and emerges to kill again.

Poor Jason. He's doomed to wander the woods of Crystal Lake killing people, and apparently every kill makes him just a little bit uglier. In this movie he walks around with a backbone taped onto the back of his jacket. He runs across his first pair of victims and kills one while the other runs away. Jason walks after him, and as horror film fans are well aware, a badguy's walk outruns a goodguy's run any day.

Cut to some more plot. Cut back to another random pair of killings. These two teens are hanging out by a tent. One of them obviously runs out into the woods, motivated by a plot device, and gets killed. The other one hangs out in the tent. (The tent, by the way, is a boxy shape most of the time, but in one Jason's-eye-view shot, it's dome-shaped.) Jason comes along. The intended victim tries to escape by burying herself in her sleeping bag. Jason drags it out, swings it into a tree, and that's the end of her. The final shot is one of her head and shoulders, bloodied, hanging out the end of the sleeping bag. One problem. Jason swung her feet-first into the tree, and the most it would have done was break her legs, even as viciously as he swung her (which belied the fact that it was only stuffed with something like pillows at the time).

Cut to some more of the plot. The two main characters are hanging out by the woods. They hear a noise from some distance away, so the male lead goes to investigate by taking two steps toward the noise and staring. "I saw it," he says. "It's a big pink elephant." They laugh. Har har har.

Now between all these scenes of Jason killing stuff and Psychic Woman having emotional spasms are the usual scenes of teens mucking around. Their dialogue here is some of the worst. ("You really mean it -- I'm cute?") It's almost a relief when they inevitably bite it. And this crew seems *anxious* to bite it. TWICE in this movie one of them just starts calling out someone's name for no particular reason and roaming around in the darkened woods. Hey, if you're going to recycle this cliche, at least find an actual reason for these people to be doing it. Don't just cut to someone out of context who, just because, decides to go out in the woods and say, "Dave? Dave? Dave? Dave? Dave?" until she dies.

Then there's the obligatory cat scare. Then Jason starts running after Psychic Woman's mother and doctor. Doc and Mom run away, through the woods, and then, suddenly, STOP, mid-flight, to explain plot details to each other. Then Jason catches up and kills one of them -- he was only twenty or thirty feet behind them anyway -- while the other escapes, but only for a little while. Predictably, the movie never addresses what crushing psychological effects Mom's death has on Psychic Woman, because in movies like this, characterization is unimportant, and only the body count matters.

Then it gets down to the last few, and we have the Finding of the Bodies ritual, where the main character finds all the bodies during her flight from Jason. This time it's sillier than usual. She's in the woods, running along, and she appears to be alone. Then BAM, suddenly they're bodies all over the place, three feet from her in every conceivable direction.

In her final confrontation with Jason, she pulls a Freddy or a Darth Vader or something and starts making inanimate objects attack him. She makes Jason fall in a mud puddle, then throws a live power line into it. After the sparks die down and Jason stops thrashing, she goes to investigate. (Live wires do not worry her, apparently.) Predictably, Jason jumps to his feet and starts chasing her again, this time into the camp. (We knew he wasn't dead anyway, because there's still an expendable character alive.) She hangs him with an electric wire, then blows a hole below him, and drops him into the cellar. (Why not just leave him hanging?) He lies motionless. Predictably, Jason jumps to his feet and starts chasing her again. Then she throws gasoline on him and sets him on fire. She and Male Lead bolt out of the house, just in time to escape the most INSANE explosion EVER. That camp just BLOWS apart. In a single INSTANT, there is NOTHING left of that camp larger than a toothbrush. Yes, the house was constructed out of solidified nitro-glycerine. This shot was the movie's biggest laugh, and, for me, pretty much the only one. In a different mood, I think I would have found other things funny too, but I'm sick to death of this series, and it's starting to grate.

Anyway, Jason *survives* that ridiculous explosion that, in one single instant, obliterates any sign the house ever existed. In fact, he survives unharmed. Psychic Woman summons her dead father, who comes flying out of the lake and drags Jason down with him. Uh huh.

Rating: 1.5 turkeys.