08/31/10 - Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993, 87 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107254/

I'm so close to the end. I've read that this one and Jason X are supposed to be really bad so I don't have high hopes. Hopefully it surprises me in some way like the last film did.

Taking place again some years after the previous film this one starts with Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) getting blown up. However, we soon learn later that he can actually take possession of other people's bodies (or something) and so this leads to the typical slasher fare. The heroes are Steven Freedman (John D. LeMay) and Jessica Kimble (Kari Keegan). The plot revolves around only a blood relation being able to kill Jason once and for all.

I don't know what was going on here. I don't know why this movie was even made. First, off I'm just going to straight up say that this film looks like some sort of SyFy Original as opposed to a Friday the 13th movie. Sure, the Friday the 13th films never had gigantic budgets or anything but at least you could tell that some thought was put into the making of them. The plots were generic and all that but it was still twisted fun in its own way. That's why I came back to see nine of these films even though not a single one garnered higher than a 5/10 from me. They were fun. That all changes here. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday isn't fun - it's stupid. The plot is atrocious. Basically there's magic daggers and blood relatives and mystical forces at work. This isn't what Jason is at all. Sure, he's some sort of undead zombie that has otherworldly powers but that doesn't mean that you can throw this plot out there and expect a "seasoned vet" of the franchise to enjoy it.

Next, the movie is low budget in all the other bad ways. The sets are bad, the weapons are bad, and the makeup isn't even that great. Where the film does succeed to some point is in the gore and that when "Jason" kills someone. It's over-the-top and the effects here are halfway decent. However, the overall kills are lacking except for one tent scene where a girl gets ripped in half. Most of them are just knife kills again which I've grown accustomed to by now.

Nothing really works for this movie and that's about the only way I can put it. I mean, even the opening credits are stupid as they are spliced with footage of Jason's autopsy. But the splicing pacing is just awkward and doesn't work. The credits also are like this big spectacle or something, hinting that this movie will be more grandiose than it really is or perhaps just an effort of the filmmakers to make me believe I'm watching a real movie and not this trash. Next, at only 87 minutes it still dragged on way too long. There were too many pointless characters floating around doing meaningless stuff and none of them could act. I never became attached to anyone even in the typical slasher way. I mean, at least in that last film I kind of liked Rennie just a smidgen. Here, no one is memorable and it's almost like they tried to recapture the feel of Tommy Jarvis with a male lead that's equally helpless. It fails, just like every other aspect of the movie.

Overall, I gave this film a 1/10. Nothing works right and it's really embarrassing on every level if you've watched the previous eight films like I have now. Introducing magic and all that in the ninth film is just beyond stupid. This is easily the worst film in the franchise and I didn't think I'd be saying that after I saw Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Not surprisingly, both feature Jason very little.