You have to give Friday the 13th fans credit. While Sean Cunningham and Victor Miller are slashing it out in court over the F13 film rights, the fans have kept Jason Voorhees alive via a number of fan films. In the last few months, I've seen a bunch of them from Never Hike Alone (2017) to Friday the 13th: Vengeance (2019). They are fun and often cast F13 alumni, but I couldn't help but lament that I wish the filmmakers did more than just having Jason chase folks around the woods. Rose Blood seemed to be fulfilling that possibility by acting as a direct sequel to Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988). Unfortunately, the execution is woefully inadequate.
The majority of the film takes place in June 1989 at the Camp Crystal Lake Research Facility, a military lab studying psychic phenomenon. To give you an idea at how careless the filmmakers are, they decorate their set with a picture of President Reagan on the wall. Dang, if only there was some kind of machine that they could type into to find out who was President that year. Anyway, the prize subject here is Tina Shepard (Jessica Hottman), a year removed from her tangle with Jason. Also working in the facility is Creighton Duke (the truly awful Jequient Broaden), the bounty hunter from Jason Goes to Hell (1993). There are lots of military and medical types talking in white rooms before the arrival of Rose (Sanae Loutsis), another teenage girl with telekinetic powers that dwarf even Tina. To establish this, director Peter Anthony shows members of the team watching a horrific security video of Rose brutally murdering her parents. We just have to assume it is super graphic as Anthony films it by just showing people watching it in silence, wincing and then going, "Turn it off!" Anyway, this all builds to an experiment on Tina and Rose together that results in Jason (the aptly-named Jason Brooks, who also played Jason in the Vengeance films) being resurrected at the 65-minute mark and killing a few not-so-elite soldiers rather quickly before he has to face another manifested boogeyman.
I almost feel guilty giving this film a bad write up. After all, the filmmakers are obviously fans of the F13 series and you can't hold a fan film to the same standard as films with 500 times the budget. That said, there is no excuse for terrible acting, bad dialogue, and a painfully laborious scenario that only features Jason Voorhees for ten minutes of the 90-minute running time. Writer-director Anthony (who also hams it up as a General) seems more focused on putting on something more akin to Sole Survivor by Dean Koontz with the military focusing on how to use telekinetic children as weapons along with a side order of way too many random Nintendo and Sega references (nostalgia!!!). This level of stiltedness carries over to the kill scenes as well. Look in awe as Jason attacks some soldiers in a 10x10 black room (and, yes, one soldier sleeps through most of the carnage because he has a Walkman on). Perhaps the most offensive element is the film using the main selling point of bringing back VII's stars Lar Park Lincoln, Terry Kiser, and Kevin Spirtas, only to give them a few minutes of screen time. Bummer.
