Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
The creators of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter marketed their film by suggesting that this would be the last opportunity to experience ultimate terror at the hands of Jason Voorhees, everybody’s favorite hockey mask-wearing, forest-dwelling, deformed face-having, mass murdering loner. They lied. But, I will keep my promise. This is the last Friday the 13th Fest entry. I can no longer justify wasting any of my time watching these predictable crapfests.
The Final Chapter is nothing more than a collection of inconsistencies, implausibilities, and nonsensical plot twists so ridiculous that even M. Night Shyamalan couldn’t make them worse. Some evidence:
- The film starts out with the now expected recap of events from the previous film. Unfortunately, this recap wasn’t like that of Karate Kid II, which offered highlights from the All Valley Karate Tournament ta the end of The Karate Kid. That recap actually helped us revisit the emotions we felt as Daniel beat Johnny at the film’s conclusion. For The Final Chapter, they literally Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V’d the entire end of Friday the 13th: Part III as if nobody would notice.
- After starting The Final Chapter with another viewing of Jason’s “death” from Friday the 13th: Part III, we follow his body to the hospital–wait, why are they taking his dead body to the hospital!? Are they going to unkill him?
- A necrophiliac doctor refers to a female corpse as still being attractive and then solicits sex from a nurse by asking her to meet him in the “cold room”. What demographic is this kind of humor targeting?
- A bunch of kids drive by a headstone on the side of the road. It reads “Pamela Voorhees” (Jason’s mother). Who on earth would bury this mass murderer in a clearly visible headstone on the side of the road?
- In the one-sheet above, where does the blood come from if the mask isn’t on a face when someone stabbed it through the eye hole?
- The Final Chapter stars a young Crispin Glover, who inadvertently managed to be just as creepy as he was in his later films, and Corey Feldman, the most famous of the half dozen famous Coreys of the 1980′s, and it was still the worst entry in the series (so far).
- There is a sequence about halfway through the movie when Crispin Glover does a strange, robotic dance routine. It was the only scary part of the movie. It gave me nightmares for a week. I still can’t figure out if his dancing was absolutely horrible or if it was really good in 1980′s dance terms.
- Everyone seems to be wearing La Coste polo shirts. When did these shirts become so expensive?
- Of course, there are two more skinny dipping scenes full of 80s boobs and butts.
- Toward the end, Corey Feldman’s character is told to run away from the house while his sister tries to kill Jason. Instead of running, he inexplicably goes to the bathroom, trims and then shaves off his hair to varying levels of success, and transforms himself into something that ultimately inspired Peter Jackson’s version of Gollum. There is absolutely no explanation for why he does this, and must frustrating of all, this strategy somehow distracts Jason long enough for Feldman’s sister to kill Jason.
That’s all I have to say. I will leave you with this final image of Gollum 1.0 and 2.0. The Final Chapter was my final attempt to develop some kind of appreciation for the Friday the 13th series, but it’s just not going to happen. There are many, much better movies to watch, including but not limited to: Bebe’s Kids, Shakes the Clown, Sweet Home Alabama, any of the Air Bud movies, and the entire Land Before Time series. I’d even throw in The Dark Knight (aka Badman II) but only for posterity.
March 6, 2009
movies