Following a brief prologue where an FBI sting operation culminates in him being obliterated with a coordinated artillery strike, Jason is once again dead, reduced to only his still-beating heart. Through some sort of magic nonsense, the coroner examining his remains is enticed into eating Jason’s heart, thus taking his soul into his body. This begins the bonkers body-swap massacre that is The Final Friday.
While Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday may not be what I consider one of the definitive Friday the 13th movies, I think it might be one of the more interesting and entertaining chapters. As Jason is rampaging across Crystal Lake, trying on its residents like murderous skin suits, bounty hunter Creighton Duke (Steven Williams) teams up with Jason’s long-lost niece Jessica (Kari Keegan) and her boyfriend Steve (John D. LeMay) to put an end to this Voorhees curse. Through some lengthy and ridiculous exposition, Duke explains that only Jason’s own flesh-and-blood can put a stop to him, but the same lineage also holds the key to his ultimate rebirth. What we’ve got here is a good old-fashioned lore dump and retroactive amendment to the entire continuity of the franchise! Yee haw, here we go!
All of the fumbling of series-wide story aside, I actually think Jason Goes to Hell is a pretty solid entry into the franchise for what it’s worth. It has some of the most inventive and visually striking deaths of the entire series, even if they’re missing that hockey-masked charm. An unrated cut of the film adds back in some of the blood and guts excised by the MPAA, including an extended take of an expendable camper being impaled through the back by a signpost and ripped upward, in half.
And while the series hasn’t exactly churned out many memorable characters in the past, this one is chock-full of eccentric goofballs that give the cast Jason Lives a run for its money. One of the film’s highlights for me is an absolutely insane interaction between Duke and Steve that occurs in a jail cell. In exchange for information about Jason, Steve lets Duke break his fingers one-by-one. The scene played so over-the-top by a crazy-eyed Williams that it actually matches the tone of the ridiculous exposition that he’s spewing about Jason’s body-hopping spirit of vengeance. I really appreciate that he committed so hard to the insanity.
Much like after A New Beginning shook up the franchise following Jason’s first death in The Final Chapter, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday was clearly an attempt to spice up something that was starting to go stale. However, unlike with A New Beginning, I feel this time they actually succeeded in making an original and refreshing stab at the Friday the 13th mythos. In a way they had to tear down all that came before in order to build a new vision free of a decade of baggage. All it took for the franchise to live again was for Jason Voorhees to die… again.
7
Current Ranking of Friday the 13th films:
1. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
2. Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
3. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
4. Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
5. Friday the 13th Part III
6. Friday the 13th Part 2
7. Friday the 13th (1980)
8. Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
9. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan