Last year I began the self-appointed task of filling in one of my personal cinematic blind spots, the Friday the 13th franchise. While it hasn’t necessarily been a consistently entertaining ride thus far, at least they’ve been tolerable. Parts one through seven I watched over a four or five week stretch back in April and early May 2020, but when it came to start Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, I was stopped dead in my tracks. This movie was so hard to watch I wouldn’t finish it until almost nine months later.
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan follows the lead of the previous installment in that it’s another stand-alone sequel that doesn’t rely on any of the previous films other than to establish Jason as the antagonist. Contrary to what the title suggests, the majority of the film takes place on a student cruise to New York City and very little of the film actually takes place in the city proper. The main protagonist this time is Rennie, an aquaphobic high school senior who is having reoccurring hallucinations of a young Jason Voorhees. Luckily for her, she is about to come face-to-face with this man of her dreams because he’s hitching a ride on her boat and planning to make mincemeat of her classmates.
The biggest reason it took me so long to return to watching this series is because of how exhaustingly drawn-out the first half of this movie is. Beyond a brief prologue that sets events in motion, the next twenty plus minutes are all poorly-paced place-setting and introductions to the cast of characters, many of which you just know aren’t going to live to see the end of the film. Even once things get going, there’s nothing new to see. It’s the same thing they’ve been getting away with every movie so far, only this time without any recurring characters and a new nautical theme.
I am fairly sure this is the worst Friday the 13th movie I’ve seen so far and, with only a handful more to go, it’s likely in the running for the worst of the whole bunch. There are hardly any new ideas here and the small changes that are made are superficial and for the worse. Incidentally, due to poor performance in 1989, Jason Takes Manhattan would be the last film in the franchise distributed by Paramount Pictures before the rights were sold off to New Line Cinema (the 2009 reboot was later co-distributed by Warner Bros. and Paramount after New Line merged with the former). My only hope is that this change in ownership could be the spark that kindles some new ideas for the series.
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Current Ranking of Friday the 13th films:
1. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
2. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
3. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
4. Friday the 13th Part III
5. Friday the 13th Part 2
6. Friday the 13th (1980)
7. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
8. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan