Review #41: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)


This review was originally written in October 2017.

Horror Movie October day 13: Jason Goes to Hell- The Final Friday

I knew I had to do a Friday the 13th movie (since it was, you know, Friday the 13th), so I decided to watch one that I haven't already seen. The only options were this one, or Jason X. So I went with this one.

This was an... interesting take on a Friday the 13th movie, to say the least. I like how it started out- I liked the idea of a special ops team setting up a sting operation to catch Jason Voorhees, because if he was the unstoppable supernatural being that the past couple movies have set him up to be, the world WOULD know about him by this point (which is a fact so many franchises don't even bother to acknowledge). The actual method for attracting Jason was a little weird (he supposedly goes after immoral people taking drugs and having premarital sex- the movie even points this out at least once- but the girl in the opening was by herself, just taking a shower. Since when is taking a shower by yourself an immoral act?) but it was an interesting opening.

That being said, the movie took a hard left turn into WTF territory right after the opening scene. Apparently Jason's life force (or whatever) is held inside some sort of weird slug thing inside his body? And he can transfer it from person to person whenever he wants? And this is apparently common knowledge (Dukes talks about it on live TV as the main part of his analysis of Jason) despite the fact that, so far, he has never done it (since he is still in his original body from Friday the 13th part 2)? That's a lot for me to just accept, but... okay, movie.

The movie's plot and progression is fairly standard but fun to watch. The nerdy main character comes into his own and becomes fairly heroic, and I felt like there were actual stakes and actual repercussions for most of the events in the movie. The ending got a little weird (like Jason's long-lost cousin or whatever conjuring a magical sword, or the slug thing crawling up the skirt of a corpse) but hey, it was a fun ride.

It's worth noting that like Jason Takes Manhattan (in which Jason doesn't actually reach Manhattan until the last ten minutes and is then immediately killed there), the movie is called "Jason Goes to Hell: the Final Friday" and Jason doesn't go to hell until literally end of the last scene. (And it's not the Final Friday at all- there's been like three more movies since then.)

Final Rating: 7/10 Broken Fingers

Favorite Easter Egg: The Necronomicon from Evil Dead just chilling in the Voorhees house

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