HALLOWEEN 2K18: A Review of "Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning"

Freddy Krueger has entered the show and made quite a dynamic and spooky entrance, at that. Now you're Jason Voorhees. The ball is in your court. You have the notoriety and a couple more years of experience under your belt, but you've decided to simply retire your franchise because four movies in five years was a tad overkill. So you're out of the game and now, some burnt-faced schmuck in a red and green sweater is stealing your limelight by killing people in their sleep. What do you do? Well, simply unretire your franchise after no more than a year's rest! Yes, after the cinematic lie that was Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Jason decided to answer Freddy's arrival with another sequel of his own. Here is Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning, a movie that teaches us that continuity doesn't have to matter if you're going to lie to your audience the whole time in the whole movie throughout. Let's dive into this turd and rip it to shreds like it deserves.

Thumbs up if you applauded at Junior's death

A few years after the events of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, the youngest survivor Tommy Jarvis (John Shepard) awakens from a nightmare of him witnessing two grave robbers digging up Jason Voorhees's body. Jason rises from the grave and murders the grave robbers before advancing towards Tommy. Upon arriving at Pinehurst Halfway House, a secluded residential treatment facility, Tommy is introduced to director Pam Roberts (Melanie Kinnaman) and Dr. Matt Letter (Richard Young). In his assigned room, Tommy also meets Reggie (Shavar Ross), a boy whose grandfather, George (Vernon Washington), works as the kitchen cook. Other teens (By that of course we mean this movie's "Killing Gallery") introduced are redhead Robin (Juliette Cummins), gothicViolet (Tiffany Helm), shy Jake (Jerry Pavlon), short-tempered Vic (Mark Venturini), and compulsive eater Joey (Dominick Brascia). The sheriff brings in two more residents, lovers Eddie (John Robert Dixon) and Tina (Debbie Sue Voorhees), after catching them having sex on neighbor Ethel Hubbard's (Carol Locatell) lawn. Ethel Hubbard and her son Junior (Ron Sloan) show up and threaten to have the house closed down if the teens do not stop sneaking onto their property. Why you'd choose to have sex on another person's front fucking lawn as a joke is beyond me.

The funniest damn scene of the 1980s

This movie gets started off hilariously (and I do mean laugh out loud hilariously) when, for no fucking reason whatsoever, Vic kills Joey with an axe after Joey offers him a chocolate bar. Vic, rightfully so, is subsequently arrested. The body is discovered by attending ambulance drivers Roy Burns (Dick Wieand) and Duke (William Caskey Swain). Roy is saddened by the death, as it's later revealed that Joey was his son, but Duke believes that the murder was a harmless prank. Yes, that's right. A harmless prank. That evening, greasers Vinnie (Anthony Barrile) and Pete (Corey Parker) are murdered by an unseen assailant after their car breaks down. The following night, Billy (Bob DeSimone) and his girlfriend Lana (Rebecca Wood) are killed with an axe. Panic begins to ensue, but the mayor refuses to believe the sheriff's claim that somehow Jason Voorhees has returned, because you know, this the 80s. Serial Killers don't just unnecessarily return for more sequels. That's preposterous.

The next day, Tina and Eddie sneak off into the woods to have sex (They're dead). Ethel's farmhand Raymond is killed while spying on the pair. While Eddie leaves to go wash off in the creek, Tina is murdered. Eddie returns to find her dead and is also killed. Meanwhile, Tommy and Pam accompany Reggie to visit Reggie's brother Demon (Miguel A. Núñez Jr.) and his girlfriend, Anita (Jere Fields). While there, Tommy gets into a fight with Junior and runs off. After Reggie and Pam leave, Demon and Anita are murdered. At the Hubbard farm, Ethel and Junior are both killed as well. I'm just having trouble trying to keep track of everyone here.

Look at the twist! Just look at it!

Pam leaves Reggie at the halfway house to look for Tommy. After Reggie falls asleep, the killer enters and murders Jake, Robin, and Violet. Reggie awakens just as Pam returns before they discover the dead bodies in Tommy's room. The killer, revealed to be wearing Jason's hockey mask, bursts into the house and chases them out into the rain after discovering the bodies of Duke, Matt, and George. Pam rushes toward the barn, chased by Jason, but he is struck by a tractor driven by Reggie. They run into the barn and hide as Jason comes to find them. Tommy comes shortly after and believes Jason to be a hallucination until he is attacked. Together, they get Jason to fall out of the loft window, and he is killed upon landing on a harrow below. The killer is revealed to have not been Jason, but was Roy Burns all along. SURPRISE. JASON VOORHEES ISN'T EVEN IN THIS MOVIE. ARE YOU JUST SO HAPPY WITH THAT REVEAL? Goddammit.

Jason stalks not-Corey Feldman

At the hospital, the sheriff tells Pam that Joey was Roy's son. After seeing him slaughtered, Roy lost his sanity and adopted Jason's identity to kill everyone at the house, apparently blaming them all for Joey's death...even though Vic was the only one to blame and hilariously, the only one to not die. Roy really fucked this up, didn't he? On top of that, how was the nurse able to gauge Roy's motive here just by staring at his body? What is she psychic? I would say that's too far-fetched, but oh... just you wait. Anywho, Tommy, after waking up from a nightmare, has another hallucination of Jason, but he faces his fears which makes Jason's hallucination disappear. He hears Pam approaching and throws his bed through the window to appear that he has escaped. When Pam rushes in, Tommy appears from behind the door and seemingly attacks her, wearing Roy's hockey mask and wielding a kitchen knife. What a... twist?

Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning is where you can tell the idea behind the "excess of Friday the 13th" was getting out of hand. It was pretty clear this movie was made without a decent story, compelling characters or even semi-interesting kills in place, but they knew they had to get one out so as to stay relevant. Boy. The 1980s were a bitch to motion pictures and original, competently, well-thought-out movie productions. It's just all around dumb, dumb, dumb. It's entertaining with how unrealistic and over-acted it is, but don't expect any intelligence beyond that. So there you have it, Jason retaliates with a shit-bomb, so kind of a "glancing blow" of a comeback there. Don't worry though, Freddy's about to counter with a shit-bomb of his own...