After previously having watched all the
Halloween,
Scream and
Nightmare movies, as well as the entire first season of the
Fear the Walking Dead television series, throughout the month of October, only one more franchise stands in the way of me and total Halloween movie bliss, and it comes in the form of twelve movies and one masked madman who prefers to butcher people with a machete. In case you haven't caught on by now, yes, I am referring to Jason and his entire
Friday the 13th franchise!
The only problem I have here is that, unlike the other franchises in which I own pretty much all the movies, I don't actually own any of the Fridays, so I couldn't call it anything but pure luck when my need to watch this entire franchise lined-up perfectly with AMC's need to schedule them all back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-you get the point.
That's right, y'all, we've done DVD, VHS and TiVo marathons, but now it's time for us to tackle the boob tube. Thank you, AMC, for saving my spooky season!
Friday the 13th (1980) - Run Time: 95 mins. - Released: 05/09/80 - My Rating: 8/10 - This movie was produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, who had previously worked with filmmaker Wes Craven on the film The Last House on the Left. Inspired by John Carpenter's Halloween, he wanted this newer movie to be shocking, visually stunning and to make people jump out of their seat, so he called on Victor Miller to write up the script, and together, they came up with a revolutionary way to contribute to the horror movie genre – by creating its first ever human female serial killer. "But isn't Friday the 13th where Jason goes around killing all those kids," you ask? It is, starting with part two, but in part one, the story was a little bit different. It was actually Jason's schizophrenic mother, Pamela Voorhees, who was doing the killings. Her motive? While she was working as a cook at Camp Crystal Lake in the summer of 1958, her son Jason drowned when two camp counselors were thought to be watching him. Instead of watching him, they were off having sex with each other, leaving the little boy, whom they knew was not a very good swimmer, to fend for himself. So on what-would've-been Jason's birthday, his mom is back at camp seeking revenge in the form of the camp being closed forever and everyone associated with it being killed. Since this one was essentially the only Friday the 13th to not feature Jason Voorhees as the main antagonist, it was much more slow moving than the rest... probably because their intent was simply to scare camp-goers, not start up a franchise that has now gone on to span 12 films in total, including one crossover film and one remake. Who could have ever predicted such success for a film whose biggest scares were its shaky POV camera view, its creepy chant for background music ("Chh! Chh! Chh! (Kill! Kill! Kill!)"), some suspenseful timing and a mysterious killer who's kept from us until the final reveal? Not even Kevin Bacon, who was 22-years-young when he starred in this movie, would have predicted that!
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) - Run Time: 87 mins. - Released: 05/01/81 - My Rating: 7.5/10 - Turns out, Jason wasn't dead, as his mom and the rest of us thought. However, even in this film, Jason still isn't the recognizable entity we've come to know, as he had yet to don his signature hockey mask. Instead, he's made to be the same type of enigma that his mom was in the franchise's initial outing, since we only see his arms as he sticks an ice pick through the head of Alice, the girl that decapitated his mother in the first film, and we again only see his arms as he chokes Crazy Ralph, the prophetic town drunk, using barbed-wire wrapped around a tree. In this film, Jason basically resembles the killer from the film The Town That Dreaded Sundown, as he is shown wearing a burlap sack to conceal his face the few times he does appear on screen, wears a long-sleeved flannel shirt and uses everyday camp tools (e.g. pitchfork, machete, hammer claw, etc.) as weapons. Applying some of the same elements that made the original a sleeper hit, such as a first-person camera perspective, gory stalk-and-slash scenes and campground settings, this film also added a few more bits by showing us the abandoned shack in the woods where Jason had been hiding and the rough altar he built around his mother's decomposing head. It would appear that his only motive throughout this entire film was to get revenge for the death of his mother, but the apple really doesn't fall that far from the tree, as Jason is just as maniacally delusional as his mother used to be, which leads to some funny scenes such as when an out-on-the-town Ginny talks about what kind of feral child Jason would be "were he still alive" (just as they cut back to Jason killing some of her friends back at camp), and when, after she finds out that he is still alive, she dons a sweater and recites the speech his mother once gave him to try and fool the big dummy into thinking she was his mother, a plan which seems to be working until he spots his real mother's head on the altar behind her. However, what I like most about this film is that Jason still appears to be human, as A, a cop spots him running through the woods at one point (nobody would ever catch him stalking about in these newer Jason films), and B, one strong machete hit to the shoulder is what essentially puts Jason down for the count (no way would one hit be enough in these newer films!). Also, and I'm not sure if that's what was intended, but wheelchair-bound Mark in this film reminded me a bit of wheelchair-bound Franklin in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, another grainy "real"-ish horror movie. If that was meant as a homage to a great horror movie of the same style, then kudos to director Steve Miner. But either way, I appreciated the could-be realness of this film, and I feel like that's something the newer films in this franchise lack, as Jason's now at times unbelievably superhuman.
Friday the 13th Part III (1982) - Run Time: 95 mins. - Released: 08/13/82 - My Rating: 7/10 - A van loaded with stupid twenty-somethings heads up to Crystal Lake for the weekend for no other purpose than to smoke pot and screw each other silly. Among them are pudgy guy Shelly who enjoys immature practical jokes, a newly-pregnant girl, a hippie couple who are constantly ensconced in a cloud of pot smoke and the emotionally-damaged Chris, who loves Crystal Lake but has terrible memories of it. See, some time ago, Chris was attacked in the woods by a man with a terribly deformed face. During the attack, she passed out, waking up the next morning safe in her own bed at home. She is not entirely convinced that it was all a dream, and so she decides that a weekend at her former haven may just be what she needs to deal with the past. But of course, it was not a dream, as all of us already know. The man who attacked her was Jason Voorhees, and no sooner do the kids settle in and start partying and screwing than he shows up again, ready for some post-coital killings. First to get beat up are an obnoxious trio of motorcycle thugs who harassed our heroes. Then, Jason gets right down to what he does best – stabbing, skewering, bisecting and impaling anyone who is stupid enough to wander off alone waiting for him to approach. Still, I liked this movie because alas Jason gets to don the signature hockey mask we've all come to know and fear, and I also liked the ending, in which the rotted remains of Mother Voorhees rise from the lake in a nod to the first films' shocking ending. (I'm still not sure how Mother Voorhees got her head back on, but who cares? This isn't a movie you're supposed to think about too much. And plus, it's explained away as having possibly been the sole survivor's delusion, anyway.) Another thing I noticed was how closely unmasked Jason resembled a grown-up version of the banjo player from Deliverance. Yeah, this movie is stupid, but it's harmless fun, and it actually does have some great parts to it. For instance, I really enjoyed the start of it, as the film picks up from the day after the events of the previous film, with Jason going to a lakefront store to replace his clothing and his mask, but where he instead ends up killing both of the store owners with – what else? – a meat cleaver and a knitting needle. After that, he sneaks into the barn at a local farmhouse called Higgin's Haven to recover from his injuries, only to find the aforementioned biker gang unwittingly disturbing his beauty sleep. Big mistake, y'all! Also, big mistake here by director Steve Miner, as anybody who knows anything about biker gangs knows that every member of the same gang has the same roller on the back of their vest, not three different designs for three different members (e.g. Fox's motorcycle demon, Loco's skull & Ali's spider). However, that's neither here nor there, that's just me being OCD. Not to knock Steve Miner too much, though, I will give him props for a couple of things. One, for making a very atmospheric and tense film with the foreground being used for false scares, doors opening when no one's there, strange noises constantly being heard, missing props that the characters know were just there and other such techniques. Two, for giving Jason his signature hockey mask, forever securing his place in Friday the 13th folklore. Three, for featuring some of the most creative and gruesome deaths of the series (Vera with an arrow through her eye, Andy while walking on his hands, Debbie's knife-through-the-hammock stabbing, Shelly's "nice make-up!" neck slashing, hippie Chuck's electrocution with the fuse box, Rick whose head gets squeezed until his eye pops out, etc.). Four, for giving us our first-ever 3-D horror movie, as that was a movie-going option for the film's theatrical release. And five, for making a Friday the 13th with which you just can't go wrong!
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) - Run Time: 91 mins. - Released: 04/13/84 - My Rating: 6.5/10 - Hockey-masked Jason goes after another batch of teens at Crystal Lake, and this time the group he's targeting includes "dead f**k" Crispin Glover, “Mouth” from The Goonies (the always-lovable Corey Feldman) and other youngins that are definitely in over their heads without even knowing it. Much like its predecessor, and just as its title suggests, this film was initially supposed to end the series, but Hollywood has a funny way of rescinding their promises when the word “money” is involved, so that's of course what happened at this point in the franchise, and Jason lived to see many, many, many more mostly bad days after these ones. However, these ones really weren't bad, as this film succeeded in many regards in addition to its financial success. Creating an unusually dark atmosphere, this fourth installment in the franchise was especially good at mixing Ted White's praise-worthy portrayal of Jason with Tom Savini's brutally gory effects, as Jason escapes cold storage at the county morgue before working his way back to camp. Continuing from the night after the events of the previous film, this film quickly works its way through to its conclusion, but not before adding a few memorable things to the franchise. Among those things: Crispin Glover's weird white boy dance moves, Sara's pick-up line ("Do you mind sleeping on the bottom bunk tonight?" "Why? Do you want to sleep on the top?" "No," with a sly smile and an "I'll be right back, let me go freshen up first!"), the very first all-shadow death in the series (how very Hitchcockian of them!), silent-film stripshows that eventually lead to Ted's interesting 8-mm. film projection screen death, and lastly, Crispin's gruesome death at the hands of a corkscrew/machete combo, and his later crucifixion to the front door of the house. All these fun activities eventually lead us to the final showdown where Tommy and Trish Jarvis take on Jason Voorhees. In the end, Jason's skull get impaled by his own machete at the hands of the brother-and-sister duo, after Tommy had shaved his head to confuse the serial killer. However, we all know Jason has more lives than a cat, so that doesn't kill him. What does kill him is when “Mouth” – err, I mean, Tommy Jarvis (sorry, but The Goonies will always be the first movie I think of whenever I look back on Corey Feldman's career!) – notices Jason's fingers twitching, and proceeds to hack at his body while screaming “Die! Die!” in a very un-Corey Feldman-like moment. I don't know if Corey was trying to shed the reputation left on him by this horror film or what, but after he broke through with this role, he went on to star in such '80s classics as Gremlins, the aforementioned Goonies and Stand by Me. Nonetheless, watching this in the year 2015, it was good to again see him in that old light. And furthermore, the fun with his character was only just beginning. (Enter Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.)
Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) - Run Time: 92 mins. - Released: 03/22/85 - My Rating: 4.5/10 - Now, before we go any further, let me tell you straight-up the reason for my giving this film a much worse rating. Tommy Jarvis, Corey Feldman's character from The Final Chapter, did in fact return, but he was no longer portrayed by our favorite “Lost Boy,” in a stunt that I've never liked horror franchises pulling. He was instead portrayed by an actor named John Shepherd, not to be confused with the character Jack Shepherd from LOST. However, they didn't totally kick “Mouth” to the curb, as he did still appear in the movie, albeit in a way smaller cameo role during the film's prologue. Having gotten that dislike out of the way, I can still honestly say that Tommy Jarvis is still a pretty interesting character study in this film, despite the actor switch. Another thing the makers of this movie did that I didn't like was that A New Beginning also departed from the Camp Crystal Lake setting and Voorhees-themed mystery of the previous four installments, instead acting as a psychological horror film set at a fictional halfway house in Pennsylvania, and was going to set up a new trilogy of films with a different villain for the series. However, all these changes really ticked more people than just me off, and with the steep decline in box-office receipts (it was the second poorest-performing film in the entire series) came the inevitable return of Jason Voorhees in Part VI. However, this film is all the evidence you need to prove that by expediting graphic violence and gore, frequenting drug use and making the nudity and sex scenes more explicit, your movie will always find its way to new viewers and won't ever fully go away, as this film has developed something of a cult following in recent years, so it really is the most polarizing movie in the franchise. To briefly summarize it so that you can decide whether or not it'd interest you, Tommy Jarvis has ended up institutionalized at Pinehurst Halfway House, six years after Jason killed his mother and came after him and his sister. Unable to shake his Jason nightmares while there, Tommy struggles with his own sanity, something that's made worse when residents of the area start being killed off at an alarming rate in very brutal and seemingly random ways. Of course, everybody suspects Jason, but everybody's suspicions are wrong. It's not Jason doing these killings, but rather a paramedic by the name of Roy Burns, who decides to copycat kill after his son Joey dies at Pinehurst. Of course, Roy and Tommy eventually end up crossing paths, forcing Tommy to kill him in self-defense. Able to stave off Roy, the already-unhinged Tommy has less luck against insanity, and starts giving into his visual and auditory hallucinations during a psychotic fit where he dons a hockey mask, brandishes a knife and prepares to murder his friend Pam, when the screen suddenly cuts to black.
Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI (1986) - Run Time: 86 mins. - Released: 08/01/86 - My Rating: 6.5/10 - Originally, this film was going to be Tommy Jarvis' coming-out party as the new villain in the series, but because of the previous film's initial piss-poor reception, Jason was instantly thrust back into that role. And not only was he placed in that role, but for the first time in the series, he was brought back to us as an undead more powerful superhuman who was raised from his grave at Eternal Peace Cemetery via two lightning bolts of electricity, and he instantly goes to work as a super killing machine proving what I was talking about in my write-up on part two of this franchise, that nowadays, it takes a whole heck of a lot more to kill Jason than it used to. Here, what eventually does it is a showdown in the middle of the lake at what's now been reopened and renamed Camp Forest Green, where Tommy, sitting in a boat, sets Jason on fire and chains him to a boulder that ends up at the bottom of the lake, after which the movie's lead female Megan cuts into the still-fighting Jason's neck using the detached motor from Tommy's boat. (And in case you're wondering, Tommy's “attack” on Pam at the end of the last film got explained away by saying that he was stopped before he could attempt it and placed back into the institutional system.) Though a lot of things make this particular movie a fun-to-watch fan favorite, such as its self-referential humor and its breaking of the fourth wall, what I really enjoyed most in it was the ways in which director Tom McLoughlin incorporated children to build suspense throughout the film, from the one girl Jason hovers over who closes her eyes and wishes her nightmare to end, to the one boy who looks at another boy and, as if their death is already inevitable, says, “so, what would you have liked to have been when you got older?” Jason lives, indeed, as does the fear of him!
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) - Run Time: 88 mins. - Released: 05/13/88 - My Rating: 6/10 - They should've subtitled this movie "Carrie vs. Jason," as that's essentially the concept here. Tina, a stringy-haired blond woman with telekinetic powers, attempts to resurrect her dead father from Crystal Lake, but succeeds only in raising somebody else from the dead – the psycho killer Jason! Without so much as a thank you – I mean, seriously, Jason, where are your manners? – the machete-wielding madman goes on to kill a group of teenagers vacationing next door to Tina, as well as Tina's mother and doctor. Of course, all these events lead to a final showdown, where Jason's supernatural strength (breaking through walls, surviving electrocution, etc.) is pitted against Tina's telekinesis (dropping a house onto him, electrifying a puddle he's standing in, hanging him until his mask breaks off to reveal an alien-like creature, engulfing him in flames, etc.). But even after all that, plus Tina's love interest Nick putting three bullets into Jason's chest, Jason's still standing... until Tina finally causes the spirit of her father to rise up out of the water and drag Jason back into the lake! Though the deaths in this movie are nothing new or special, Lar Park-Lincoln's acting makes up for them. She is truly part of a rare specie: the good slasher movie actress. There's only one other thing that I'd like to point out about this movie before we proceed: the missing (read: killed by Jason) birthday boy in it is named “Michael,” something that one can only assume was done as a tribute to Halloween. I just love it when these horror franchises reference one another, don't you?
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) - Run Time: 100 mins. - Released: 07/28/89 - My Rating: 1/10 - A non-explanation for the resurgence of Jason (his corpse just seemingly reanimates due to a passing ship suffering an electrical mishap)? Hair metal characters? Horrible '80s fashions? A graduation cruise departing from isolated Crystal Lake (and bound for Manhattan, of all places)?! Side stories that go nowhere (for example, what happens with the girl that tries to blackmail McCulloch, and why is that one kid so pissed at his dad for his dad wanting him to become the captain of a ship someday)? The worst representation of New York ever (you get mugged the minute you dock, there's barrels of toxic waste just sitting out in the streets, nobody lifts a finger to help you when you're blatantly being chased by a serial killer in the subway system, etc.)? The return of the “this voyage is doomed!” character being spoiled by his redundancy throughout the movie (you only need him to do that once, not every time our cast turns the corner)? A scrawny black kid trying to box with a 230-240 lb. serial killer wielding a machete on a New York rooftop (what is this, The Karate Kid)? The captain absolutely refusing to believe that Jason's on the ship despite the mounting body count and all the eyewitnesses that have already seen him and are attesting to that fact? Funny moments that just seem forced (like when Jason climbs onto the dock in New York and curiously wonders why the Eastern Hockey team's goalie looks like him)? Deaths that are very uncreative and uninteresting? Possibly the cheesiest ending ever (after giving chase through the subway system and Times Square, Jason gets injured within the sewers of New York with a splash of acidic waste and then the sewers flood, as our heroes walk off into the city)? The comic book-like silliness that is Jason's face near the end of the movie? Easily the worst acting ever? Basically, writer/director Rob Hedden got everything wrong, as this movie is sooo far removed from what a Jason movie is supposed to be. It's even worse than Halloween: Resurrection, and who knew any movie could even be that?! Hell, this is arguably the worst movie of all-time!! First mistake: taking a killer that lives out in the woods and placing him on a cruise heading toward a concrete jungle like Manhattan. Because really, though it's nice to see Jason taking a vacation on a cruise ship, it's not nice to see Mr. Hedden taking this franchise for a ride. I've got absolutely nothing nice to say about this movie, and frankly, if I could rate this movie lower than a one out of ten, I would. Too bad that's not possible, so let's just do what everyone else did, which is to move on and try real hard to forget it later.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) - Run Time: 87 mins. - Released: 08/13/93 - My Rating: 3/10 - How do you overcome a stupid movie like the one we got in part eight? By starting off stupid in part nine to work your way back? At least, that appears to be the thinking here. At the start of this movie, psychopathic killer Jason Voorhees is lured into the woods and literally blown to pieces during an FBI sting operation, yet his remains are taken to the federal morgue in Youngstown, Ohio, where the coroner discovers Jason's supernatural power. Jason, who's a demonic spirit at this point, can now exist without his own skin, as we first witness when the coroner swallows his still-beating heart to be taken possession of. Now in a new body, Jason begins to kill again. Having 83 confirmed kills (with five more pending confirmation) by the time he leaves the federal morgue, Jason of course beelines it to Camp Forest Green, where people go to "smoke a little dope, have a little premarital sex and get slaughtered," as one character so astutely, albeit jokingly, points out at the beginning of this film. Meanwhile, bounty hunter Creighton Duke, having found out that only the three living members of Jason's bloodline (his half-sister Diana Kimble, her daughter Jessica and/or Jessica's infant daughter Stephanie) can truly kill him and that Jason will return to life if he possesses a member of his family, asks for $500,000 in order to finally rid the world of Jason, machete, mask and all. Shortly after this revelation is made, and with Jason already having shifted bodies from the black coroner to the white sheriff, Jason kills his sister Diana, and Steven, Jessica's baby daddy, is framed for the murder. Jason's niece Jessica is now the only one left through which Jason can be reborn, but she's dating an unethical journalist named Robert, who is the host of a show called American Case Files, and Robert is currently trying to do anything possible to spice up his ratings by putting emphasis on Jason's return from death, even offering to pay the $500,000 for the supposed good of the world and kidnapping Diana's dead body from the morgue to host a secrets revelation special at the Voorhees home. Before he can host that special, though, Jason takes possession of him. In a showdown between Robert and Jessica, Jessica temporarily bests him, before reading a note from Duke that says that he has her baby and that he'd meet her at the Voorhees house, "alone." There, he informs her that he needs her help, as Jason can only die at the hands of a Voorhees, and he hands her the mystical dagger with which only she can send Jason to Hell. What happens then is that Jason, having now transferred his possession into a police officer named Randy, shows up at the Voorhees house. Possessed Randy attempts to be reborn through Stephanie, but Steven arrives and slices his neck open with a machete. Jason's heart, which has now grown into a demonic infant, crawls out of Randy's neck and makes its way to the basement, where it crawls into Diana's dead body. Steven and Jessica pull Duke out of the basement, as Jason is reborn. While Steven and Jessica attempt to retrieve the dagger, Duke distracts Jason and is killed. Jason turns his attention to Jessica, and Steven tackles Jason, who both fight outside while Jessica retrieves the dagger. Jessica stabs Jason in the chest, releasing the souls Jason accumulated over time. Demonic hands burst out of the ground and pull Jason into the depths of Hell. Steven and Jessica reconcile and walk off into the sunrise with their baby. However, after a dog unearths Jason's mask, the clawed hand of Freddy Krueger appears and drags the mask down to Hell, setting up the events of Freddy vs. Jason. Yes, the plotline of this movie is straight-up dumb, but how else can you take us from Manhattan in the last movie to what would've been Hell for the next one (but turned out not to be; more on that in the next blurb)? Something stupid had to be done, and frankly, I think this was a pretty valiant attempt at that. Watched alone, it'd be a horrible movie, but considering the tie-ins, it really ain't all that bad. And, if nothing else, at least it's an original idea, something you don't see too much of anymore in Hollywood, so I appreciated the effort.
Jason X (2002) - Run Time: 91 mins. - Released: 04/26/02 - My Rating: 2/10 - This is a marvel of modern filmmaking, the acting was on par with some of the finest films of all-time and this is clearly the single greatest masterpiece of the new generation. Haha, just kidding! This is diabolical murderer Jason Voorhees emerging from his cryogenic sleep to terrorize a group of teens on a futuristic starship orbiting the ruins of Earth in 2455, for God's sake! What were you expecting here – Oscars all around? No, the only reason this film even exists is because it was conceived by writer Todd Farmer as a means to advance the film series, while Freddy vs. Jason was stuck in developmental Hell. This is just a silly movie meant to be taken that way and watched on a humdrum day. After the crap we'd gotten during the last few films of this franchise, wherein the series' creators weren't just beating a dead horse, but were actually driving it around the track behind a tractor, this movie at least tried to give that horse a jolt with the defibrillator. In spite of the second-rate effects and general silliness, this tenth film in the series brought some visual energy and freshness back to it. Sure, the characters are all stereotypes, but they're stereotypes in new, colorful futuristic costumes, who get to use snazzy new assault rifles, hologram projectors and stuff like that to fight back. It doesn't work, of course, as Jason still kicks everybody's butt, but the change in atmosphere and sets does at least rescue the film from the boring tediousness of its more recent installments. Going that far into the future, you'd probably expect humans to be way smarter, but the funny thing about this film is that NOTHING has really changed in that regard: there are still tons of model-like teens showing their belly buttons and having casual sex, and they still get slaughtered by the antiquated monster in the hockey mask, who FYI, gets an upgrade near the end of the movie to become a "mansterchine," some kind of hybrid man/monster/machine killing apparatus. That really doesn't add anything at all to his character, but it does at least allow you to see him in a new light, too. So yeah, the special effects of the future may be just good enough to catch your eye, but basically, that's all I can say in defense of this God-awful movie. If you take Jason in space as nothing more than what it's supposed to be, which is a stupid movie, then maybe you might slightly enjoy this crock. Otherwise, it'll probably be nothing more than a waste of your time. This really was the textbook definition of a filler movie, and nothing more. It was something to (barely) whet your appetite as you waited for the main event, which of course was...
Freddy vs. Jason (2003) - Run Time: 97 mins. - Released: 08/15/03 - My Rating: 7/10 - Previously known as A Nightmare on Friday the 13th, which frankly I think is a much cooler title, this film went on to become the highest grossing one in Nightmare's entire series history. How'd that happen? By having great crossover storytelling and by giving fans of both franchises a chance to miss their preferred serial killers. What happened here is that Freddy Krueger is trapped in Hell, it's 2003 and four years after the events and time of the sixth Freddy film – remember, the seventh Nightmare movie was "real life," so there was no "Freddy" in that one – but due to the fact that the teenage residents of his town of Springwood have forgotten about him, he's been rendered powerless and can no longer return to Springwood because there's no fear of him left in the entire town. He "can't come back if nobody's afraid," so, under the guise of Jason Voorhees' mother, Freddy manipulates Jason, who he found while searching through the bowels of Hell, into killing the teenage residents of Springwood, hoping the mass fear will restore his powers. After all, residents of Springwood were terrorized by Freddy, not Jason, so obviously, every ounce of fear would be directed toward him, giving him more power than he'd ever hoped for. His plan works, but only to the extent of allowing his return. Once Freddy regains enough energy from the town's fear to once again give him life, he finds that Jason's like a big dumb dog that doesn't want to stop killing the "bad kids" of Elm Street, which Freddy, of course, sees as his job – and it's one that he really enjoys doing! Therefore, Freddy must stop Jason from killing somehow, and so the two start trading attacks, with the town's children (a group that includes Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child in her introductory film role) eventually sending Lori Campbell, current resident of 1428 Elm Street, into the dream world to pull Freddy out, as they drive Jason, who they've hopped up on Hypnocil, to Camp Crystal Lake, in order to give him home-field advantage. The plan works, and the stage is set: Freddy vs. Jason at Crystal Lake! However, if you're expecting to find a victor here, don't, because Freddy gets beheaded, but as Jason walks away carrying Fred's head, Freddy winks at the camera, so this battle may not yet be over. It either may have continued once we stopped following, or it will continue in a future sequel... who knows, and really, who cares? As long as both of our preferred serial killers are still around to taunt and terrorize teenagers in the future, it's all good with us! *Wink.*
Friday the 13th (2009) - Run Time: 97 mins. - Released: 02/13/09 - My Rating: 5.5/10 - Okay, let me start by saying that Jason really did need to go back home already, as the chronological events in his life had stopped making sense a long time ago. I mean, c'mon, dude went on a cruise, then to Manhattan, then into other people's bodies, then to Hell, then into the future, then to Elm Street (another serial killer's domain), so really, where else was there left for Jason to go BESIDES back home in this much-needed franchise reboot? I almost feel bad for Kane Hodder, the actor who played Jason through the grand majority of those horrendous sequels, as he's the one who was truly most affected by them. But notice, I said “almost,” because the guy did get some of those big Hollywood paychecks for portraying Jason in those worst of times. In contrast, for watching them, we got nothing, so who're Jason's real victims here? LOL – I keed, I keed, Jason's movies are always fun, even when they're bad (well, with the exception of that unwatchable Manhattan movie, anyway)! With that said, however, this rebooted version wasn't great either. At best, it was just mediocre. It didn't really stick to the original story all that much, as it put the entire first movie with Pamela Voorhees into a minute-long flashback, and took off on a whole new – and often times, very predictable – adventure from there. Hell, even Jason's origins story changed, as he now got his mask from the attic of some stoner redneck guy who looked nothing like the pudgy, perm-sporting Shelley Finkelstein. The one thing that really ticked me off about this movie is that half of it is spent following a dude who is looking for his sister all throughout Sussex County, New Jersey, and we get zero action until he FINALLY gets to Camp Crystal Lake, which frankly, can't come soon enough. None of the characters in this film are all that likeable either, as the blond guy's a cheating douchebag, his girlfriend and the guy she runs off with seem forcibly nice, and the rest of the characters are just stereotypes – the rap-loving black kid, the nerdy Asian friend and the promiscuous blond girl. The characters are so phony (and so “ethnically diverse,” which I'm sure was no coincidence in this politically-correct world we're living in), that it almost makes you want to root for Jason in this one. But then again, character development has never been this franchise's strong suit, so you really can't hold that against this film too much, can you? Still, if I had my choice between this one and the original, I'd pick the original ten times out of ten. It was just way cooler and much more innovative than this mediocre cash-grab of a film could ever hope to be. Yes, Jason needed to go back home, but he really deserved a better homecoming!
So that just about wraps it up for my marathons, as we've now seen Jason go everywhere BUT to the kitchen sink! Maybe I shouldn't give them ideas, though, because who knows? As silly as some of these movies were, what's really stopping some uncreative cash whore of a Hollywood producer from commissioning another dumb sequel where Jason takes on a regular 9-to-5 and becomes an unnerving pissed-off masked plumber? Sadly, that wouldn't even be a bad enough idea to be the third worst one in this franchise! I mean, seriously, other people's bodies?! The year 2455?!?! F**kin' Manhattan?!?!?! ($#!+, I'd probably want to kill people, too, if I lived in Manhattan!) Just kidding, New Yorkers, you know I love y'all! Now, who wants to play some hockey?!
*Slides hockey mask on and grabs his machete.*
