04/17/10 - Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984, 91 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087298/

I continue with the Friday the 13th franchise in what is now the fourth film. I haven't really liked a lot of the aspects of the Friday the 13th films but they've also had a special cheesy quality about them that makes me want to continue watching them. Plus I want to work my way to the new reboot from 2009 to see how it expands (or destroys) the Jason character I will have come to "understand" from watching the plethora of films in the series.

This time the film takes place right after the events of Friday the 13th: Part III. Jason Voorhees (Ted White) again goes hunting for moronic teenagers. After quite the slaughter, he is eventually "killed" via the duo of Trish Jarvis (Kimberly Beck) and Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman).

Could this be? A Friday the 13th film with Jason that isn't bad? It actually is. The story is the same old thing as always. It tries to be a little creative when it includes this one guy that is hunting down Jason for revenge (Jason killed the guy's sister in the second film of the series). However, this character never really does anything so it's pretty lacking there. Really, I think this character could've done something to make himself memorable and add to the film. Oh well. Also, the complaint I had from the previous films stands again: the kills just aren't setup at all. By this I mean we know exactly when a kill will occur. After a while it gets boring and too predictable. Jason kills in somewhat unique methods though so at least that's interesting.

The great part about Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is the grand finale. We get a well setup confrontation between Trish and Tommy and Jason. Tommy manages to make himself up to look like Jason (I think the amount of time this took was unrealistic but whatever) and uses a similar tactic as in Friday the 13th Part 2 to confuse Jason into not killing. The memorable point though is how the film leads us to believe Tommy also went crazy in this process, giving a final shot of a psychotic Tommy as he hugs his sister in the hospital. It's a pretty cool ending, turning the typical boring slasher finale of the other parts into a more psychological ending. It really did remind me of the ending of the second film, but the characters that Jason "lost to" here were a little cooler. Trish and Tommy never were moronic teenagers like everyone else was so I was more rooting for them to survive than any of the other groups. Also, Feldman did a pretty good job as Tommy, making him into a cool kid that I liked as opposed to an annoying brat that I wanted to be killed off. When I look back on this film I won't remember it for the stupid kids or how sorry most of the acting was; I'll instead remember this final confrontation and how well done it was.

Overall, I gave this film a 5/10. It's the best Jason Voorhees film in the franchise so far (recall that Friday the 13th doesn't have Jason doing the killings). The kills still aren't surprising or scary though so it didn't give me any jumps. However, the ending is pretty good (easily the best so far) so it gets points there. Overall though it just results in an average film.