Friday the 13th: A New Beginning

MOVIE #1,199 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 10.19.23 50 MOVIES IN 32 DAYS! OK, so this is probably the worst movie yet (it’s neck and neck with Part III) but it's definitely not horrible. Forget the hilarity of the fact that it came out less than a calendar year after they closed the books on the saga, it’s just way too goofy to hate on its own, and so I’ll give it the slight bump over that one on grounds of unintentional comedy (it also features the most nudity and drug use!). A main problem in the first few movies is that the characters aren't memorable. Well, they are memorable here but for all the wrong reasons (I’m specifically talking about the mother and son hicks and enchiladas man — they are so grating and ridiculous, and unlike anything else beforehand).

I have to admit that I knew the general premise of this one (that Jason isn’t the killer) but I can still say that seeing it in action (the random ambulance driver finding his murdered son) is just as bad as hearing about it. So lazy and dumb. But I wasn’t aware of the ending which features Tommy Jarvis morphing into the Jason-esque killer: a concept which they simply ignored moving forward in the series after the audience reaction to this Jason-less sequel was tepid at best. It seems to stupid to overanalyze a movie that has a scene like this in it…


…but the main structural issue here is that Tommy as a character is pretty bad. I know he barely talks because of the trauma but it's just a nothing performance/role that's difficult for the audience to connect with. But maybe it's them damn enchiladas!!!

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Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (also known as Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning) is a 1985 American slasher film directed by Danny Steinmann and starring Melanie Kinnaman, John Shepherd, and Shavar Ross. The film also features a cameo appearance from Corey Feldman, who portrayed Tommy Jarvis in the previous film. It is a sequel to Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) and the fifth installment in the Friday the 13th franchise. Set years after the events of the previous film, the story follows a teenage Tommy Jarvis (Shepherd), who is institutionalized at a halfway house near Crystal Lake because of nightmares of mass murderer Jason Voorhees, whom he killed as a child. Tommy must face his fears when a new hockey mask-wearing murderer initiates another violent killing spree in the area. It was released on March 22, 1985.