The fifth installment of the Friday the 13th franchise is subtitled A New Beginning probably because the previous one was intended to be The Final Chapter. Strangely enough, Part 5 acts as both a soft reboot to the franchise as well as a continuation of what people refer to as the “Tommy Jarvis arc” of films that center on the character first introduced in The Final Chapter as a child played by Corey Feldman. Jason Voorhees, who was finally killed at the end of the previous film is unsurprisingly back and is now tormenting an adult (teenaged?) Tommy (John Shepherd) who is now staying at some sort of halfway house for troubled youths. Those that have seen any of these movies that I’m not really paraphrasing much when stating such a concise description of the plot.
After viewing Part IV, I made note that this might be one of the only franchises I know of that seemingly get better as they go on. As a wise man once said: you either die a hero, or your live long enough to see yourself become the villain. In this case, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning is certainly what seems to be a turning point for the worse as many of the things I’ve liked about the series to this point have started to sour. That’s not to say there are not things to like here, but overall I feel like it’s a serious misstep in the series’ chronology.
A New Beginning might have to be one of the sleaziest horror movies I’ve ever seen while simultaneously having some of the weakest death scenes. Many of the killings either cut away too quickly or almost entirely crop the violence off-screen with absurd close-up shots. Those that we do get a good look of are generic throat slashes and boring abdomen stabs followed by immediate death. And for each neutered kill we get a gratuitous nude scene. Women are just walking around topless for no discernable reason other than the fact that the director previously worked mostly in porn and couldn’t let old habits die hard.
The little credit I will give the film is that the finale provides a decent twist that I actually didn’t see coming. It does a serviceable job at explaining why the movie exists when the franchise should’ve ended with Tommy burying a machete in Jason’s face. And while Tommy does little of consequence throughout the majority of the run-time, the ending gives his character somewhere to go from here, as we all know it does.
5
Current Ranking of Friday the 13th films:
1. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
2. Friday the 13th Part III
3. Friday the 13th Part 2
4. Friday the 13th (1980)
5. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning