Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

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While 'Jason Goes to Hell' manages to do something very different with 'Friday the 13th' material, speaking personally, it doesn't feel like a proper close to the franchise (which it was meant to be at the time). I think it's the worst of the bunch, mainly because they suddenly seem to crowbar in a bunch of lore we didn't know about before and, basically, everything awesome and fun about this series is pretty much taken away, save for Kane Hodder's portrayal of Jason, maybe one other character, and some of the kills.

It's funny, but after its Home video release, it seemed like all my peers wanted to rent it. I tried watching it, but the heart-eating scene in the beginning kind of got to me, so I headed off to another room to watch 'Aladdin' instead. Eventually, however, I managed to warm up to these movies, going through them one by one on my horror-renting sprees I'd go on around the turn of the century. I think even back then, I probably considered this among the worst of the bunch, so I guess nothing has changed, and to this day, I'm still trying to wrap my head around why this one seemed to be so popular as opposed to the films that really made the franchise.

For starters, 'Jason Takes Manhattan' sees Jason die super hard in a flood of toxic waste (because apparently NYC just has this stuff in its sewers as a regular thing). It straight-up dissolves him to nothing. But after a few years, he returns in complete form and even finds his way back to Crystal Lake, somehow, because now that New Line had him (which is a whole other story), it was time to "kill Jason off". So, just to reiterate, New Line bought a property that may as bloody well already be done, and the only REAL reason to make 'Jason Goes to Hell' was dollar signs. But I digress.

This chapter opens with an undercover FBI agent (Julie Michaels) who heads to Crystal Lake to lure Jason (Hodder) into an ambush. The ambush is successful, and Jason blows up, sending his still-beating heart flying. While a coroner (Richard Gant) is examining the body, he sees the heart still beating and starts eating it (while I go watch 'Aladdin'), which, in turn, possesses him with what I like to call "Jason's Essence". Having taken over a new body, the killing starts, and "Jason" jumps from body to body as he seeks out a member of his own bloodline, allowing him to fully resurrect again as the Jason we all know and love... somehow complete with his hockey mask.

Jason's primary targets are his only living blood relatives, Diana Kimble (Erin Gray), her daughter, Jessica (Kari Keegan), and Jessica's infant daughter, Stephanie (Brooke Scher). Meanwhile their protectors are Stephanie's birth father, Steve Freeman (John D. LeMay) and a bounty hunter named Creighton Duke (Steven Williams), who provides just about the only reason to watch this from the hero's perspective. He's who figures out that Jason needs another Voorhees to resurrect. But unfortunately, it will also take a Voorhees to get rid of him once and for all, and the options, let's face it, are pretty slim.

There's not a whole hell of a lot more to the plot, though. It's essentially the race between hero and villain, and we go into it knowing exactly how it will end. Along with 'Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare', this was the movie meant to put the nail in the coffin for a particular horror icon because people were bored with it now. However, even at the time, we just plain knew things weren't over, as this film famously ends with Freddy Krueger's clawed hand reaching up, grabbing Jason's mask, and pulling it down to the depths of Hell. A tease that took 10 years to finally fulfill with 'Freddy vs. Jason' in 2003.

Aside from a few Easter eggs, some of the kills and Creighton Duke being a badass character, there really isn't a whole lot of redeeming quality to this. Maybe it's just a me thing, but I don't like the extra lore they crammed into things here. While much of it explains Jason's supernatural ability, I feel like it just goes off the rails a little too hard. And if you've come to see Kane Hodder kick ass and take names, you're out of luck because he probably gets about 5 minutes of total screen time. It's not without a moment or two, but there's too much "new" and "different" crammed in here, and the final showdown involves heroes I simply don't care about. I tend to stand pretty solo on this, but again, weakest of the series, and that says almost too much.

1/5

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