Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday Reviews

In this eighth and surprisingly satisfying FRIDAY THE 13TH sequel, the filmmakers (including producer Sean S. Cunningham, who produced and directed the original) have devised a story that backs up hockey-masked killer Jason's actions and provided him with potential victims who are more than one-dimensional teenage stereotypes. The opening scenes find Jason lured into the middle of an ambush, where a SWAT team blows him to pieces. Creighton Duke (Steven Williams), bounty hunter of serial killers, goes on a true-crime TV show hosted by Robert Campbell (Steven Culp) and insists that Jason's spirit lives on. Sure enough, a coroner (Richard Gant) inspecting the killer's remains is suddenly driven to devour Jason's still-beating heart, whereupon the killer's life force enters his body. Back at Crystal Lake, young ne'er-do-well Steven Freeman (John D. LeMay) hopes to patch things up with his old girlfriend Jessica Kimble (Kari Keegan). Jessica's mother, Diana (Erin Gray), is accosted at the local diner by Duke, who claims she can help him stop Jason. Before he can explain, he's arrested by Sheriff Landis (Billy Green Bush). Josh (Andrew Bloch), a deputy, is abducted by the coroner and taken to the old Voorhees house, where Jason's evil essence is passed on in the form of a grotesque parasite. Josh attacks Diana and attempts to transfer the evil to her. Steven kills him, but the "dead" Josh disappears, and Steven is arrested for Diana's murder. At the police station, Steven sees Jessica with her new boyfriend: TV host Campbell. Placed in a cell alongside Duke, Steven learns that only through a Voorhees can Jason be reborn and only a Voorhees can stop him. Steven escapes and discovers that Jessica is a Voorhees--Diana was Jason's sister. Eventually, Jessica and Steven make their way to the Voorhees house, where Duke gives Jessica a dagger that, in her hands, becomes a magic blade. Steven decapitates Jason's newest minion, deputy Randy (Kipp Marcus), and the parasite crawls from his body to the cellar, where it enters Diana's corpse. A moment later, the reborn Jason bursts through the floorboards, kills Duke, and engages Steven in a terrible battle as Jessica scrambles for the fallen dagger. Racing outside, she plunges it into Jason's heart, and evil spirits rise from the ground to drag Jason to hell. The fact that this plot summary isn't simply a list of victims is one of the strong points of JASON GOES TO HELL. Though many characters are dispatched in various gory ways, the film gives them more to do than the have-sex-and-die victims of past entries. Director Adam Marcus and writers Dean Lorey and Jay Huguely give them some personality, and the acting is also generally better than in the previous FRIDAYs (with the exception of the rather stiff Green Bush and Gray); LeMay is a likable protagonist and Keegan a capable heroine, while Williams makes a strong impression as the obsessed Duke. While delivering effective, violent murders, Marcus and company also display a welcome sense of humor--from the opening scenes, in which a typical Jason stalk scenario is turned on its ear when the killer is confronted by machine gun-wielding sharpshooters, to several in-jokes designed to amuse knowing horror fans: Marcus, Lorey, and unmasked Jason actor Hodder appear in cameos, key props from CREEPSHOW and THE EVIL DEAD turn up, and the final shot features Freddy Krueger's knifed glove bursting from the ground to drag Jason's mask down to hell (obviously setting up a combined FRIDAY THE 13TH/NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequel, since New Line Cinema, NIGHTMARE producers, also produced this film). JASON GOES TO HELL clearly had more thought and ambition behind it than the usual horror sequel, and achieves something most such films don't: it's genuinely frightening. (Graphic violence, nudity, sexual situations, extreme profanity.)