And now here we are at the third and final part of my Friday the 13th retrospective (and unlike this film series, i intend to keep that promise). The last four films are a bit of a mixed bag. As the films transitioned to the nineties and beyond, some of the charm got lost. They varied from pretty bad (Jason Goes to Hell) to pretty awesome (Freddy vs. Jason) and everything in between. I started this retrospective way back last Friday, June 13th and continued it on Friday February 13th and we finish up now on another Friday the 13th...
"We're going to Camp Crystal Lake."
"Oh yeah? Planning on smoking a little dope, having a little premarital sex, and getting slaughtered?"
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday marks the second time this neverending series tried to end. It is certainly the oddest duck in this series. The film aims to be something different than what came before while delving into the mythos of Jason Voorhees and why he just can't seem to stay dead.
The film opens much like any other film in the series with a pretty young lady traveling to a remote cabin in Crystal Lake. Soon enough, she is attacked by Jason and she leads him on a chase through the woods. It's here that the plot takes it's first sudden turn as it's revealed the woman was actually bait, leading Jason to an assault team who proceed to riddle Jason with bullets and ultimately blow him up.
Jason's remains are packed up and shipped for examination by the Government. One of the Coroners is shocked when he sees Jason's heart start to beat and then gives into a compulsion wherein he devours it, becoming possessed by Jason himself. From there, Jason makes his way back to Crystal Lake, jumping from human to human making his way to his hereto unmentioned sister (played by Erin Gray) and niece (played by Kari Keegan), whom Jason can be reborn through if he possesses one of them.
The film is a half baked attempt to try and give some more scope and depth to the series but yet strays so far from what had been established previously, it feels like another movie altogether. It gets points for trying to be different, but it's still a very odd film. You have a bounty hunter skulking around named Creighton Duke (played by Steven Williams) who provides most of the exposition by explaining how Jason can only truly be killed by a blood relative. How did he come upon this information you ask? He never says and the other characters never ask. He does, however, agree to give this information to our adorkable hero Steven (played by John D LeMay) if he lets Duke break his fingers (Okay...). The film has some interesting ideas and two likeable leads in LeMay and Keegan. It has a couple nice action set pieces with Jason rampaging through a police station and diner as well as a decent final fight between newly reborn Jason and Steven. However, as a whole the film doesn't quite come together.
"Guys! It's ok, he just wanted his machete back!"
Once upon a time, someone asked John Carpenter what he would do for another Halloween movie. Carpenter responded he wanted to send Michael Myers into space. I'm fairly confident he was joking. Either way, the Friday the 13th crew thought it was an appropriately daft idea and gave us the tenth entry in the series, simply titled Jason X.
The film opens in present day as Jason has returned from his sojourn to hell and looking all the better for it. He has once again been captured by the Government who are interested in his cellular regeneration and general ability to cheat death. Not one to be put down easily, Jason gets free and wipes out everyone in the facility except Rowan (played by Lexa Doig). She manages to lure him into a cryogenic chamber and freezes him, but she gets trapped and freezes with him.
Four Hundred years later, a group of teens on a field trip to Earth, now a wasteland, discover the human Popsicles that are Jason and Rowan and bring them back to their ship with them. They are able to revive Rowan, who is horrified to find out they brought Jason on board as well. Before she can convince them to jettison him, he's thawed out and on another rampage.
There is a certain charm to this entry. It has it's tongue firmly planted in it's cheek and knows full well how ridiculous it truly is. There are far more laughs to be had than scares as the film continually pokes fun not only at itself but at the series trademarks. It is never something that will be mistaken for intelligent Sci-Fi, but in it's own dopey, midnight movie sort of way it's a lot of fun.
"Place your bets!"
Freddy vs. Jason had been an on again, off again thing since 1987 but the two studios, Paramount and New Line, could never reach a deal. When New Line picked up the rights to the Friday the 13th series in 1994, it seemed like the film was finally going to happen, even teasing it at the end of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday with Freddy's claw pulling Jason's hockey mask down to hell. Sadly, it would take another nine years for the film to finally arrive in cinemas. But for a group of fans of either Jason, Freddy or both, myself included, when it finally arrived it was a huge event.
Freddy (played once again by Robert Englund) has found the children of Springfield have forgotten about him, rendering him powerless to invade their dreams. To counteract this, he recruits Jason (played by Ken Kirzinger) to head to Springwood and create a little terror with the idea that it will get people thinking Freddy again and he can come back. However, Jason gets carried away bringing about Freddy's ire and leads to an epic showdown between the two.
While by and large Freddy vs. Jason delivered on it's promise, it's not exactly perfect. The acting is a bit all over the place, with Kelly Rowland being the biggest offender playing an overall unpleasant character, Kia, whose improvised homophobic taunts to Freddy were less than appreciated not only by me but the film's writers as well.
In the end though, the film is quite a bit of fun seeing two titans of terror square off against one another. The film really picks up once their fight starts, first in the dream world Freddy inhabits and then finishing in the real world. The film manages to accomplish the daunting task of blending the imaginative and surreal Nightmare on Elm Street series with more grounded stalk and slash Friday the 13th series. It's a film that was made for the fans of both series and for the most part, it delivers.
The 2009 "re-imaging" of Friday the 13th combines plot elements of the first four movies into one updated film with mixed results. While the film gives Jason a bit more depth as a character, the remainder of the film follows the same well worn plot points of the original films while giving everything a nice polish.
The film centers on Clay (played by Jared Padalecki), who ventures to Crystal Lake in search of his missing sister, Whitney (played by Amanda Righetti). He meets up with a group of vacationing young adults that include romantic interest Jenna (played by Danielle Panabaker) her dickhead boyfriend Trent (played by Travis Van Winkle), stoner Chewie (played by Aaron Yoo) and Dick Casablancas (played by Ryan Hansen, who is actually playing a character named Nolan, but come on, it's Dick from Veronica Mars...). It's not long before Jason starts knocking them off one by one until there is only a couple left.
This latest rendition of Friday the 13th checks off all the boxes of the series staples while managing to throw a few surprises in to keep the audience on their toes. It does actually make Jason a bit smarter than he was in the original films, with the old campground now wired up with floodlights and traps. He has built tunnels under the cabins which shows how he gets around undetected. It probably is the best possible a remake or re-imagining could be. It just never breaks any real new ground and that's it's biggest flaw. Yeah, it's shiny and new but once that wears off, it's all business as usual and doesn't do much that is really inventive and new. Some of the death scenes are impressive and brutal in how they pulled off the effect (especially the cop getting impaled with the fireplace poker through the door as the camera dollys from outside to in all in one shot being a big standout for me). But aside from that, it didn't really blow me away. I didn't hate it, but I don't hold it in the same regard as the first four films. There's something missing and I'm not sure what. Maybe it's just the nostalgia.
So, that pretty much brings us up to date on the entire Friday the 13th saga, from beginning to end. Like any long running series, it has it's ups and downs. I keep hear rumors of another sequel, but nothing has materialized yet. That said, I doubt we've seen the last of Jason Voorhees, for better or worse.
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