Mike_Bracken's Full Review: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday: New Line Cinema Rating: USA: R (theatrical release) Unrated (video release)
After the abysmal Friday the 13th Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan (which ends with the infamous Jason dissolving in a pool of toxic waste, then turning up as a small child), Paramount Pictures decided they’d milked everything they could out of the franchise. Series father Sean Cunningham had control of the rights again, and he promptly offered the title to New Line Cinema, who snatched it up and viewed this as something of a horror coup considering that they also owned the rights to Freddy Krueger and Leatherface. New Line couldn’t wait to test out their newfound prize, and hence fans were treated to 1993’s Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, a real mixed bag of a film.
Things start off promising enough—a young woman makes her way to a cabin on the shores of Crystal Lake. After stripping down for a shower, she encounters the evil zombie Jason, who takes a few good whacks at her with his machete. She runs into the forest (notice both that her towel stays on even when she falls down, and that she goes from running barefoot, to wearing socks, to wearing sneakers during the course of the chase) with Jason in pursuit, then finds herself in a clearing—where a gazillion SWAT guys materialize out of nowhere and blow Jason into pieces.
His remains are taken to a Federal institute in Youngstown, Ohio, where a medical examiner performs an autopsy while armed men stand guard outside (the tall bearded guy is none other than Kane Hodder—the guy who plays Jason). While performing the autopsy, Jason’s heart (which isn’t in his body) begins to beat, and soon, the coroner’s devoured it—thus becoming Jason (we know this because whenever he walks by a mirror, the reflection is Jason). In no time at all, he’s killed everyone and taken off, heading back for his old stomping grounds, Crystal Lake.
Meanwhile, we meet up with the rest of the cast, including nerdy hero Steven (John D. LeMay, who was one of the original stars on Friday the 13th: The Series) and mystical bounty hunter Creighton Duke (Steven Williams: The X-Files). Duke doesn’t believe that Jason is dead because he knows the real deal about everyone’s favorite hockey mask-wearing madman. Forget everything you know about Jason, because it’s all about to fly out the window to make way for a new set of mythology. Duke informs Steven that Jason is sort of like some parasite that wears bodies—which is part of the reason why he can’t be killed. He also informs Steven that only a Voorhees woman can kill Jason—and that Jason will try and kill the women so that he can be reborn through them.
So, how does this tie into Steven, you ask? Steven, it turns out, managed to get local girl Jessica pregnant. Jessica’s mother, Diana (Erin Gray) is revealed to be Jason’s sister (you know a film’s in trouble when it starts creating new siblings for the villain), which makes her, Jessica, and Jessica and Steven’s newborn daughter targets for Jason (and in another continuity gaffe, watch the baby change throughout the movie—sometimes it has hair, sometimes it doesn’t).
From there, we watch as Jason pukes his turd-like true form from one person’s mouth to another (he burns up these regular bodies quickly, which necessitates lots of switching) and chases after the Voorhees women before the final showdown where he gets sent back home to Hell (and that’s not a spoiler—the title tells you that much).
Overall, the film plays out as a fairly elaborate homage/spoof (or rip-off if you’re overly cynical). Director Adam Marcus (who also worked on the screenplay) has clearly been inspired by numerous other genre films. Astute viewers will notice that the Necronomicon (from the Evil Dead movies) turns up in the Voorhees family home, along with a crate from an arctic expedition that was featured in one of the stories in George Romero’s Creepshow. The whole body switching angle (including the form of the parasite that exits through the mouth) is borrowed from Jack Sholder’s classic sci-fi B film, The Hidden, The parasite runs loose near the climax in a scene reminiscent of the original Alien, and the sister subplot seems to evoke memories of Halloween 2.
These homages are an interesting touch—they give the movie a lighter tone and picking them up is often more fun than watching the plot (which is filled with mystical mumbo jumbo and truckloads of exposition to try and explain it all) unfold.
However, these touches can’t completely save the film. On the whole, there are numerous problems here, the first being a complete lack of Jason. Everyone’s favorite hockey loving psychopath has roughly 10 minutes of screen time in this film, a fact that hardcore fans are quick to cite when they condemn this movie. Jason taking other forms is an interesting idea, but on the whole, it doesn’t really work. Fans come in to these things with certain expectations, and I really don’t think the film meets them. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself, but perhaps this film would have been better received if they’d dropped the whole Friday the 13th angle and told an original story with original characters.
The other problem is the one I mentioned above—the convoluted plot. It’s admirable that Marcus would try and take the series in a new direction for a ninth installment, but the direction he’s chosen is such a radical departure from the other films that it was bound to inspire both resentment and confusion. Whether or not the idea is a good one (and I happen to think the new idea is a decent one—a little too familiar, but not awful), Marcus has to consider the hardcore fans of this series—fans who will be none too pleased to see a film where Jason is relegated to an almost cameo-like role, and that basically tells them everything they’ve known about the series up ‘til this point isn’t true or important. Adding all this new mythology requires scenes to explain it, which bogs the pace down considerably. The end result is a film that’s incredibly chatty for a slasher film.
On the other side of the ledger, the film gets points for having a solid cast. LeMay plays the nerdy hero role well, and it’s a nice touch having an actor from the TV series show up in one of the films. Steven Williams hams it up big time as bounty hunter Creighton Duke—the performance often wanders into over-the-top territory, but nothing here was really geared toward subtlety anyway. Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the supporting performances, a waitress at the local diner who grabs a shotgun and goes to town on the pseudo-Jason prior to the climax…whoever this woman is, she’s a regular Linda Hamilton.
KNB handles the FX chores this time out, and as usual, they do a solid job. Jason looks a little cartoonish (he’s looking pretty ripe by this point, and his mask has almost become one with his head), but the gore work is pretty decent. This film boasts what is perhaps the most graphic death in the entire series, a woman who is impaled on a tent spike, then split in half with it. This is arguably the best kill in the entire series. Other than that, there’s the usual assortment of slasher-style killings including slashings, crushed heads, etc.
Gore fans will want to make sure they seek out the unrated video release, which features more blood and guts (and a longer sex scene) than the R rated theatrical cut. Fortunately, this version is fairly easy to find.
Harry Manfredini returns to handle the score. Overall, it’s fairly forgettable stuff, although the opening credits music is a nice piece that really sets the mood. The infamous ‘chi-chi-chi-ha-ha-ha’ is present and accounted for, but the nerve jangling violins are gone.
Overall, reaching a final rating for this movie has proven to be a difficult task. While I think the movie has some interesting moments and ideas, I can also understand hardcore fans who felt let down by both the new mythology and the lack of Jason. Can you really have a Friday the 13th movie with only 10 minutes of Jason in it? Ultimately, the film is caught in a no win situation--F13 fans dislike it because it’s not like the other films, and more mainstream audiences won’t see it because it’s the 9th film in series that regular people go out of their way to avoid. So, I’m going to give this film three stars—one for the interesting homages, one for some decent gore, and one for the corny twist ending that sets up New Line’s Freddy versus Jason film, which is still languishing in development Hell and will probably never see the light of day. If you’re a slasher fan, this one’s worth a look. It’s not great, but it’s not unwatchable, either.
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