I find myself
struggling to identify why I liked the previous movies in this
series, but didn’t this one. It’s tempting to just say that the
formula was stale by this point, but I feel it was something more
than that. I suppose if I had to give an explanation it would be
that he film was unfocused. It seemed to feel that it had no
requirements beyond reviving Jason and having him kill whoever
happens to be in his path.
The plot of this
film is that Jason (Ted White) wakes up in a hospital and kills some
people, then goes back down to the lake to kill some people, then
goes to a house where teens are having a party and kills yet some
more people. I think by this point in the series we should have been
exploring either new premises, or at least more original locations.
The hospital is the only time when I felt that the atmosphere was
noticeably different from the preceding films, and that atmosphere
seemed ripped right out of Halloween II,
which did the “killer in a hospital” set-up better, and
three years earlier.
Beyond
that, the movie seems to just throw characters at us for Jason to
kill. In the first two entries Jason was attacking camp councilors,
in the third he was attacking a bunch of pot-smoking teens on a farm.
In this movie, Jason just kind of wanders around and kills whoever
he happens to come across without any real rhyme or reason.
And
then, of course, we have Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman). The young
brother of our resident Final Girl Trish (Kimberly Beck). Tommy is
one of the few recurring characters in this series, and will be
present for the next two films. He’s definitely the strongest
character in this film, but in an odd way that actually causes him to
fail at his intended purpose as a character.
From
the beginning the intention was to make Tommy a young Jason, with the
implication that he would eventually turn into a killer himself.
However, while it might relate to my own autism, Tommy comes across
as a mildly autistic, but well-adjusted kid. He makes masks and
plays video games because they interest him, and he may somewhat
relate to Jason as an outsider.
Towards
the end of the film Tommy shaves his head to distract Jason by
looking more like him, and then, after Jason is put temporarily down,
Tommy hits him repeatedly with his own machete to make sure he
doesn’t get back up. This is treated as proof that Tommy has a
violent nature...as opposed to Tommy being the only one smart enough
to make sure that Jason is dead. Tommy
isn’t going to turn into a slasher, he’s just not going to die by
one either.
I
don’t have much else to say about this film, honestly. I have no
idea why it was marketed as a finale, when it ends with Jason being
no more definitively dead than he was at the end of the previous
movie. I accept it as the end of this sub-series not because it
completed a story, but because the next film picks up years later.
Would
I recommend it? Honestly, not really. I wish they would bring Tommy
Jarvis back for future entries, but this is among the least memorable
F13 films. For a finale he truly falls short. It’s neither trashy
enough to be a true exploitation film, nor does it yet treat Jason
with the awe of an iconic character. If anything, I felt less awe
than in the previous entry.
To
end on a fun trivia note: I was mentally reviewing the F13 movies the
other day, and I realized that all parodies are actually spoofing
this movie. It’s the only one that has all the pop-culture traits:
Jason is the killer (he isn’t in I and V), he wears
his hockey mask from the beginning (he doesn’t have it in II
and gains it part-way through III), and he isn’t yet overtly
supernatural (VI+). Just a weird little bit of fanboying.
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