Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

MOVIE #1,207 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 10.25.23 50 MOVIES IN 32 DAYS! After making eight Friday films in a decade, there was a four-year gap between Jason Takes Manhattan and this installment. New Line Cinema (home of Freddy) purchased the rights to the franchise from Paramount and O.G. director Sean S. Cunningham is back in the fold (as producers only) as we open on a girl wandering into a cabin at — you guessed it! — Crystal Lake. But it's all a rouse as she's actually a special agent there to lure Jason out of the woods to be shot with a million bullets before he's blown up. And we are off to the races. This was probably the one I know the least about going in and on some level, I do want to give them credit for doing something SO weird, but on the other hand, should we? What do we make of a movie that can be described thusly…

Set after the events of Jason Takes Manhattan, the film follows Jason's spirit as it possesses various people to continue his killings after his death. To resurrect himself, Jason must find and possess a member of his bloodline, but he can also be permanently killed by one of his surviving relatives using a magical dagger

…and which also features a tiny alien growing out of his removed heart that crawls into the body of his deceased sister (who knew he had a sister??) which regenerates him back into Jason, hockey mask and all.

It’s all too much to take seriously for one second and so… don’t! That’s the only way one can reckon with this movie. Made on a modest budget by a 23-year-old director, this is tonally and visually the darkest movie in the franchise, more in line with the spookier aesthetics of New Line/Nightmare than the classic slasher look and feel of all previous entries. But something that it does have in common with the earlier films? I definitely didn’t hate it even when it feels like it’s screaming to be hated.

It features great character actor Steven Williams in the role of a ludicrous “bounty hunter” named Creighton Duke who has been hired by… who exactly? Don’t worry about it — we never find out. The unrated cut is still 90 minutes on the dot and it’s jam-packed with gross violence and horrible dialogue. And, sure, when Duke unveils the magic dagger (the source of which is also NEVER explained), you’re meant to roll your eyes. The total disregard for rules and/or the mythology — to what degree that matters to you — are completely thrown out the window. I totally understand if these elements and the overall shift in tone is a roadblock for some viewers but I also land on the side of “who cares, let’s get weird, etc.” especially when it comes to what are ostensibly deep genre and/or B-level and/or exploitation pictures.

After they successfully send Jason “to hell,” we get a quick sneak peek of the crossover spectacular that wouldn’t come until a full decade later…


In the interim, there would be one more movie in the Jason filmography that is so disparate and fractured that it truly feels like it should exist outside of the canon entirely. I’m talking about the “Jason goes to space” movie, 2001’s Jason X. My thoughts on that final FINAL chapter: coming tomorrow.

---

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,206 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,208 ⫸

---

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is a 1993 American supernatural slasher film directed by Adam Marcus, written by Jay Huguely and Dean Lorey, and produced by Sean S. Cunningham. The ninth installment in the Friday the 13th franchise and a sequel to Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), it stars John D. LeMay, Kari Keegan, Steven Williams, and Kane Hodder as Jason Voorhees; the latter reprising his role from the previous two films. It is the first film in the series to be distributed by New Line Cinema. It was released on August 13, 1993.