Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday
When Paramount Pictures (who had often considered the Friday The 13th Series to be a laughable, yet highly profitable low rent, low budget film franchise for them) sold off the rights for the Jason Voorhees character (but not the actual Friday The 13th name) to New Line Cinema, the new owners vowed to do right by the whole fanbase in taking both the character and his mythos seriously and thus bringing it to a entire new level, even going so far as to hire Sean S. Cunningham (writer and director of the original film) as a Producer and quickly making the first film under their auspices an âeventâ movie as evidenced by the title that was used when released in 1993. What happened next pleased very few people in so very few ways, as the film boasted an overdeveloped story with underdeveloped and forgettable characters and according to some, a disastrous, almost toxic atmosphere on set created by Adam Marcus, a young director in his early 20s(!) making his first ever feature film after having been mentored by Cunningham himself (when much more prestigious names such as Tobe Hooper had been offered and turned down the job) who both alienated key members of the cast and crew along with mangling the final edit of the film so badly (in a desperate attempt to quicken the pace) that several important plot points and bits of exposition were completely cut out of the film rendering it full of plot holes and inconsistencies. The film opens with a beautiful girl (Julie Michaels) taking part in a textbook (and tedious) classic Friday kill setup, arriving at a cabin in Crystal Lake and going through all the necessary motions before Jason (finally) appears and starts chasing her down. Turns out that it was a setup alright, as an FBI SWAT team pops up when she leads Jason into their trap and opens fire with extreme prejudice, pumping some extra bullets into him before hitting him with an explosive device that blasts him into several pieces, literally blowing his head and body apart BEFORE the opening credits tell us that this is indeed The Final Friday. We then arrive at an FBI run morgue where the coroner there (Richard Gant whom many remember as the unscrupulous fight promoter George Washington Duke in Rocky 5) sifts through Jasonâs remains up to and including his heart, which suddenly starts beating again right in front of him and even more bizarrely, compels him to pick it up and start eating it which, according to the rules of this sequel, causes him to become possessed by Jasonâs evil soul and worse, continue the killing spree that Jason has always been known for. The problem is that this plot point was directly lifted from ANOTHER New Line Cinema film, the underrated 80s sci fi / action classic The Hidden where the body jumping villain in question there was an alien, and worse, the young filmmakers when confronted with this truth could only sheepishly admit that they had never seen nor even heard of the earlier film before incorporating this story element into their own film (kind of like fumbling the ball at the 1 yard line right before the go ahead touchdown). So basically what we have is Jason possessing a series of âhost bodiesâ that continue to do his dirty work while Jason himself and the semi iconic actor who plays him (Kane Hodder) is sitting on the sidelines almost nowhere to be seen except for the beginning and the end. At least starting off as we do in the chain with Gant, the famed character actor does a decent job with displaying a bestial presence as he heads back to Camp Crystal Lake to complete his apparent mission, and it is there that we meet the other major players, including Jasonâs sister (who has apparently lived and worked there the entire time as a local waitress and has never ever been made reference to in the series) played by Erin (Buck Rogers ) Gray, her local sheriff boyfriend (Billy Green Bush) who has to be the weakest cinematic redneck sheriff on record, her bland yet pretty blond daughter (Kari Keegan) carrying around her newly born baby along with her newly found boyfriend (Steven Culp), a shifty tabloid TV reporter who is indeed only screwing her in order to get himself into the Voorhees family circle (given that he has extensively covered the Jason case on his show), the completely vacuous best friend (Allison Smith) who suddenly turns into a shotgun toting badass during one of the filmâs climactic scenes, and of course our ubiquitous hero, the ex boyfriend of Keeganâs and father of her baby played in a very clever bit of casting by John D. LeMay, mostly because of the fact that throughout much of the 80s he had starred as the hero in Friday The 13th: The Series as Ryan Dallion, toiling away in one episode after another to retrieve cursed artifacts and antiques (with the help of his superhot redhead cousin) and return them to his dead Satanist uncleâs store while always encountering a trail of dead bodies in their wake. LeMay actually does okay here, playing the part of a nerdy yet likable nebbish who realizes that stopping Jason means protecting his family even if no real backstory is provided as to how they became estranged in the first place. The real issue here comes from the performance and writing of easily the showiest character in the film (and probably the best piece of acting here) with Steven Williams in the role of Creighton Duke. Described as being a âworld famous bounty hunter who specializes in catching serial killersâ and dressing like a crazy looking cowboy type, Williams (a very good and intense actor who has been around for a long time) is first shown directly viewing Jasonâs opening âdeathâ before being interviewed on TV claiming that Jason is not really dead at all and that he will personally bring Jason down for the fee of $500,000. Now besides the fact that the character is very heavily built up with cool and clever dialogue and walks around with a genuine badass swagger and charisma before getting decimated by (Hodderâs) Jason in a mere matter of seconds, there is also the never explained question of how this seasoned bounty hunter seems to know so many intimate (and apparently accurate) âinsideâ details of just exactly what Jason is and precisely how to kill him âfor goodâ (does he have expert knowledge of the occult? Have other beings like Jason also existed before him?) which leaves the viewer scratching their heads over having this random character dropped into the story that just so happens to know everything that is needed to be known about the Jason character. Then there is the mystery of the bounty hunterâs true motivations, coming off at first as an uncaring mercenary type whoâs only doing it for the money before the implied curveball towards the end of him possibly having a past with Jason with no further explanation given. That answer actually lies within the movieâs original screenplay, where it is said that years ago Jason had actually murdered his girlfriend which in turn led to him becoming a bounty hunter who specialized in bringing down serial killers which in turn had led to him going after Jason himself when finally given the chance, none of which had made it into the final movie and can best be chalked up as being a major fuckup on the part of the young director, who also throws in pointless and needless references to other, better horror movies including the infamous crate from the segment of the same name in Creepshow, and even more ridiculously out of left field, a little stroll around the Voorhees house reveals (right out in the open) the Necronomican (Book Of The Dead) itself from The Evil Dead (itâs even the same prop that was used in the movie)! Of course, none of these things have their presence here even remotely explained (except maybe to set up the never got made Freddy vs Jason vs Ash movie, since it was clearly stated that there was only one Book Of The Dead) and in the end when we get to the drawn out fight between Hodderâs Jason and LeMay (with the primary conceit being that Jason can only be killed by a blood relative either being LeMayâs girlfriend or their baby and only by some kind of unexplained magic dagger in the bounty hunterâs possession naturally), it turns out that all of the hoopla, hype, and fireworks are not because our dear beloved Jason was actually, literally leaving us but rather just to set up the big showdown between Jason and another horror icon (in 10 years) whose gauntlet (so to speak) is only thrown down in the final seconds of this film, a poorly directed effort which weâd all like to move on from as quickly as possible despite some good gore effects and the very limited presence of our favorite masked killerâŚ
4/10