This is also an easy early on fun pick to the franchise. Part 3 was pretty good, for sure, and this one feels perhaps like a bit more of a slower development, focused more on character than that one was. What we have is a family living by the lake, with Corey Feldman as Tommy Jarvis, living with his mom and older sister. They have an empty house next to theirs, which a group of teens rent out, coming to the lake on vacation just like they always do.
Jason had been killed off in Friday 3, getting a machete to the head and then hung. Well, he hops right out of his bed in the hospital and kills a bunch of the hospital staff, then heads out to the lake. A thought that occurred to me then and now is, could this possibly not be Crystal Lake? Obviously all the bodies were taken by ambulance to the hospital, and maybe therefore Jason just went to the closest body of water he could find, and this isn't Crystal Lake? I think it's likely.
The body count is a lot higher as well. Just the fact we have a beginning at the hospital where he starts killing gives Jason automatically another like 5-6 bodies. Then he randomly kills a few people on the way to the lake, then he gets to the lake and the bodies start piling up. It's got a fair bit of good deaths, and I was interested in how much more aggressive and angry this Jason seems, he runs quite a bit, unusual for a horror film, and he seems very angry at times. Pretty nifty.
Of course, they wanted to kill of Jason. They called it the Final Chapter, and they were going to kill off Jason. Spoilers. They decided to do it, though, in an odd way. They have Tommy Jarvis and his older sister fighting against Jason, trying to escape him. Tommy gets inspired by a picture of child Jason and shaves his head to look like kid Jason, pretends to be kid Jason, and dupes real Jason into getting confused. Then they attack Jason with the machete. Jason's head gets impaled eventually by Tommy. Jason's finger twitches and Tommy chops at Jason mercilessly, much to his sister's horror. It's heavily implied Tommy will become a killer as the movie ends and he gives us an odd look. So, they decided to end Friday the 13th by having a new killer? Seems a bit weird.
Another thing to mention is that Crispin Glover stars as Jimmy Mortimer, one of the teens at the house across from Tommy. It's like 8 people, a bunch of sexually active pot smoking idiots, but then there's Jimmy, who almost single-handedly gives the movie an entire different spin. His character is a delightfully weird, wonky outsider, attractive and nice, but super socially awkward, and makes one wonder, if they can write a character like this so perfectly, why can't movies do that now? Part of the answer is the actor. Crispin Glover helped to grow his character, came up with Jimmy's trademark dance, and sewed a whole new life into the character. Jimmy is awesome.
This one is good. Effects are great, and there's some genuinely cringing death scenes that are awesome, such as the final death scene of Jason, and some of the teens deaths. Also, this one takes some turns. It kills off a virgin girl character, it kills off a major character off-screen, has some interesting play with challenging the "slasher norms" in these ways. So, I give it a 4.5 on the 80's slasher scale.
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