Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday review
The Friday the 13th series went off the rails long before Jason Goes to Hell…but it might be the series low point. A look back at the only Jason movie of the 90s on its 30th birthday.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
Directed by Adam Marcus
Screenplay by Jay Huguely and Dean Lorey
Starring John D. LeMay, Kari Keegan, Allison Smith, Steven Culp, Erin Gray and Kane Hodder
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Review
The Friday the 13th franchise hates itself. While that may come across as a bold statement, the evidence is overwhelming. No slasher series in history has run from its core concept as strongly or as often as our favorite hockey mask wearing, machete wielding, mama’s boy has. It’s worth pointing out that the franchise changed course completely as early as its first sequel. Jason Voorhees was a legend in the original movie. He drowned years earlier and his mother killed a lot of people to prevent the camp where it happened from re-opening. By Part II, Jason was alive, fully grown, and out for vengeance of his own.
He’d wreak havoc for three movies before being killed by a young Tommy Jarvis in The Final Chapter. After that…things went off the rails. Jason isn’t in A New Beginning…replaced by Roy, the paramedic. Part VI brings comedy into the mix but does restore Jason to his hunting grounds. He continues his massacre in Part VII…with the bonus of fighting telekinetic Tina. From that point (1988) until the remake in 2009…the series was completely done with the formula. From Manhattan to outer space to Freddy Krueger’s famous street…we never again saw original timeline Jason butchering teens at Crystal Lake. We did, however, get one movie set around Crystal Lake. The only installment released in the 1990s…Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.
Slashers in the 90s, of course, are divided into two time periods. The pre-Scream era where all the old icons took their final, underwhelming bows. And the post-Scream era where slasher movies were given a new lease on life. Jason Goes to Hell is in the former. Like Freddy’s Dead and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, The Final Friday saw its famous lead in sharp decline. Freddy would get a creative reprieve from Wes Craven’s New Nightmare…but for all intents and purposes…the main line stories of the classic slasher icons were fading away with a whimper.
I’ve argued before that the biggest issue Friday movies face is that Jason Voorhees doesn’t feel like he belongs outside of the 1980s. Craven found a brilliant way to address the end of the Nightmare era in 1994. Michael Myers has adapted to new eras with relative ease. Jason just hasn’t worked as well once the 80s ended. That’s not for lack of effort. In fact, no series has tried harder to keep its character relevant. Big ideas with poor execution define post-80s Friday the 13th. No idea was bigger than Jason Goes to Hell’s. No execution was poorer either.
This is the body-swapping Jason movie. After an inspired opening sequence that finally sees the government involve itself in the ongoing mass murders of Crystal Lake…Jason Voorhees is blown up. The camp and surrounding town were finally freed from his rampage. As oddly jammed in exposition machine Creighton Duke (Steven Williams) says at the end of the cold open however, “I don’t think so”. The morgue scene that plays throughout the opening credits of The Final Friday ends with an unexpected meal…as the coroner devours Jason’s heart…becoming Jason Voorhees in the process.
Jason Goes to Hell throws a lot of new lore at you. More than should ever come up in the ninth entry of an ongoing franchise. Suddenly…Jason has a sister. Creighton Duke explains things throughout the movie…Williams doing his best to make some of the dumbest ideas sound palatable. Jason, it turns out, can only be truly killed by a member of his own bloodline. He can only be reborn from his current form through a relative as well. There’s also a dagger…and the Necronomicon. As Jason passes his essence from body to body…he continues his killing spree.
What he doesn’t do is kill teenagers at a summer camp. Most of The Final Friday takes place in the town…and involves adult characters. In fact, Camp Crystal Lake has been torn down altogether. The one decision in Jason Goes to Hell that makes any narrative sense. Jason is finally defeated in the end by his niece…a character we barely know anything about and don’t meet until well into the story. Through no fault of the actress…it’s the worst final girl in the franchise.
What we do get in The Final Friday is a lot of bad dialogue in a story that plays like bad fan fiction. There’s also a score that makes you want to bang your head against a wall. A repetitive music sting accompanies…well…everything. The opening credits are the biggest offender…falling back on the terrible sound over and over. The rest of the movie uses it only slightly less often. I don’t recommend watching Jason Goes to Hell…but if you do I suggest doing so on mute.
There are a few positives here. Some of the rampages by not-Jason are fun. They’d be a lot better with actual Jason…but in this movie you take what you can get. Some of the kills are very good as well. The unrated version has some of the most memorably violent action in the series. If you cover your ears and turn off your brain, there are a few moments to enjoy here. Plus…it’s ending moment would have broken twitter faster than Elon Mush had it existed in 1993. Freddy’s glove pops out of the ground to drag Jason’s mask into Hell.
Oh yeah…Hell. The title of this movie isn’t exactly what we get. Not only is this not the final Friday…but Jason doesn’t go to Hell until the final minutes of the movie. We never see him there…this isn’t a movie about Jason in Hell. With the hindsight and wisdom of thirty years…I can safely say that this is the movie where the franchise does though.
Scare Value
For whatever reason, the Friday the 13th franchise cannot pull off new ideas. From Imposter Jason to body swapping to space…the series repeatedly took wild swings and missed them all. Jason Goes to Hell may be the worst offender. It doesn’t feel like a Friday the 13th movie. Thirty years later it stands as one of several missteps in the series. It also stands alone as the only release the franchise saw in the 90s. We should leave it there.
1.5/5
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Links
Rent/Buy on VOD from Vudu and Amazon
Buy the Friday the 13th Collection on Blu-Ray from Amazon
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