Movie Info
Movie Name: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
Studio: New Line Cinema/Sean S. Cunningham Films
Genre(s): Horror
Release Date(s): August 13, 1993
MPAA Rating: R
The incredible melting Jason
Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) has haunted the people of Crystal Lake for years, but now it appears as part of a military strike, the terror has ended with Jason’s destruction. Jason however refuses to stay dead and is using the bodies of others to hunt down his sister Diana Kimble (Erin Gray). With Diana’s murder, Steve Freeman (John D. LeMay) is accused of the crime and Diana’s daughter Jessica (Kari Keegan) learns that the man of murdering her mother is the father of her baby. Jason must hunt Jessica and pass on his horror to his relative…before it is too late for him.
Directed by Adam Marcus, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (sometimes called Friday the 13th IX: Jason Goes to Hell) is a horror slasher movie and was originally titled Friday the 13th IX: The Dark Heart of Jason Voorhees. Following the poor performance of Friday the 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan in 1989, the movie was even more criticized than previous entries but a relative success due to the low-budget.
Give me some sugar!
The Friday the 13th movies at this point were just ridiculous. Jason Takes Manhattan was a poor sequel, and this movie doesn’t even have the humor that the previous entry had. Jason Goes to Hell might be my least favorite entry in the Friday the 13th “saga” (rivaling Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning) which says a lot.
The movie loses what made Friday the 13th great…it loses Jason. You can ignore the plot points like how Jason ended up back at Crystal Lake after “dying” in Manhattan (which was explained in a comic series), but you can’t ignore that the killer isn’t really Jason for most of the film. The “eternal evil” concept of the movie is lame and trite, and it isn’t scary or fun.
The movie has pretty weak actors once again. Kane Hodder is sidelined as Jason for most of the movie though he does appear as a guard and the hand of Freddy Krueger at the end. I always liked Erin Gray, and it is nice to see her pop up here as Jason’s never before mentioned sister. I like Steven Williams as the bounty hunter Creighton Duke, though he doesn’t really do much. The film also has a strange connection to the unrelated Friday the 13th: The Series in that John D. LeMay appeared in both this film as the show as a regular.
…and Jason is…this critter?
The movie looks cheap. When Jason is in another body, he doesn’t have the mass he needs to be intimidating and the little critter that comes out of him is rather goofy (and for an unexplained reason he transform back into Jason when he invades the corpse of Erin Gray). The movie does have a lot of homages to other horror films (other than the obvious Nightmare on Elm Street reference at the end). There is an appearance by the crate from Creepshow and the dagger and Necronomicon from The Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn.
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday isn’t any fun and it should be. The horror isn’t horrific, and it is old and tired. The movie was the first entry for New Line Cinema and was meant to be the last film. The movie set up Freddy vs. Jason which was released in 2003, but due to problems making that movie, Jason X was released before it in 2002.
Related Links:
Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter (1984)
