Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

The second film touted to be the "Final" Friday the 13th movie, and the second one to lie.

Being honest, right out of the gate, I don't particularly like Jason Goes to Hell, and not only because of the negative sense-memory I have after playing a drinking game to it with straight Jack Daniels. But at least it tried some different things. Different tone, different look, different direction, different... Production company? It's still really not good, but it does sort of break up the marathon a bit by being something that no other Friday the 13th quite is.

Final rating:★★ - Had some things that appeal to me, but a poor finished product.

Great intro & first act, but kinda distasteful and convoluted with a cartoony last act

Released in 1993, "Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday," aka Part IX, is the oddest entry in the series, along with the next one. But this isn't much of a surprise since three of the previous four installments were departures from the typical Friday formula -- Part V, VII (which features a Carrie-like character) and especially VIII (which switches the setting from Crystal Lake to a cruise ship and the big city).

The prologue shows Jason back at Crystal Lake. How'd he get back there after the events in Part VIII? The ending of that movie didn't show Jason completely destroyed, so we must assume that he made it out of the sewers of Manhattan and simply gravitated back to his familiar stomping grounds, which is only about 75 miles away. Anyway, the opening is excellent and highlighted by the most stunning female in the entire series, Julie Michaels as Agent Marcus (which is saying a lot in light of the series having the best line of women of ANY movie franchise).

Jason’s corpse winds up in the morgue in Youngstown, Ohio, and the film takes an interesting twist reminiscent of the 80's cult film "The Hidden." Other bizarre additions to the Jason Voohees mythos include a magic blade, a strange "Jason-Finder General" character and the disclosure of the only way the infernal monster can be killed and resurrected. I don't mind these revelations as the series was hackneyed after 8 films in 10 years from 1980-89, albeit still entertaining. Besides, there are enough typical Friday-isms to please fans of the series, for instance the entire camp sequence and the prologue, not to mention the return of an iconic character in the finale.

Some fans object to the main revelation on the grounds that Jason is supposedly a misunderstood man-child and this movie changes that. Actually the only films fitting this model are Parts II, XI and the 2009 remake. Parts I, V, VI, VII, and VIII...

Decent watch, might watch again, but can't recommend outside a Bad Movie Night or a Friday the 13th Marathon.

It's both refreshing and sad to see them try to re-invent Jason. As a fan of "Fallen" I like the idea of the villain transferring from person to person, but they twist the concept a bit more than I would have wanted at points.

Adding a "chosen one" trope to this doesn't do much for me. Having a nearly unkillable villain alone should be intriguing enough, adding extra rules to it doesn't feel good.

I'd like to see a Marvel style reboot where the government has to try to contain the heart, and they figure out the minimum safe distance, creating a facility around it with animals going nuts, and someone breaks in to find out what it is and is possessed.

It's not a great movie, and it's probably a bad "Friday the 13th" movie, but I enjoyed it for what it is.