HALLOWEEN 2K18: A Review of "Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday"

...and that's when Jason realized that the FBI was one step ahead of his eight mass murder sprees.

Really? Again? They're trying this gimmick again? Didn't they learn anything from the first time they tried this shtick? Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter tried to drive a knife, or shall I say a "machete", into the heart of the franchise early on, but it was revived to compete with A Nightmare on Elm Street at the box office. Now we're trying to end it again. It's interesting to note that this was the longest span of time between Friday the 13th movies since the series started. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan was 1989, and this one, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday was 1993. Four years. We're well into the 90s now, full steam ahead and it's pretty apparent these movies were completely out of steam, creatively. But you ain't seen nothing yet. This is Friday the 13th Part IX, but actually released as Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.

"You guys should'a seen me. I diddly'd Jason
right in his doodly!"

At Camp Crystal Lake, an undercover government agent lures Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) into a trap set by the FBI, and armed men blow him to bits. Woah, what? Stop. Start over again. So all this time, Jason was thought of as a myth and a legend and every one of his murder sprees was considered nothing more than "hearsay" or "legend", but now the FBI buys into everything? Get fucked. Anywho, his remains are sent to a morgue, where a coroner becomes possessed by Jason's spirit after eating Jason's putrid heart... just, completely out of the blue. Seriously, everything's going cool then he just decides to chomp into Jason's heart. What in the fucking fuck is happening right now? Well, we're given no time to ponder as Jason, now in the coroner's body, escapes the morgue.

Hug me, I'm completely useless.

Meanwhile, at Crystal Lake, he finds three partying teens and kills them. Jason attacks two police officers, killing one and possessing the other. He posses them by passing this weird "worm creature" along from body to body. It's fucked up. It's like in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers when they tried to give Michael Myers a reason and it ended up being really fucking stupid. Meanwhile, bounty hunter Creighton Duke (Steven Williams) discovers only members of Jason's bloodline can truly kill him, and he will return to his normal and near-invincible state if he possesses a member of his family. The only living relatives of Jason are his half-sister Diana Kimble (Erin Gray), her daughter Jessica (Kari Keegan), and Stephanie (Brooke Scher), the infant daughter of Jessica and Steven Freeman (John D. LeMay). That's right, there are other Voorhees family members, whom even after eight other movies, we were never told about. Sure, makes perfect sense. Whatever. At this point into the 90s, who even gives a shit anymore?

Even with one eye and a mangled face, Jason
is perfectly capable of an "oh shit" face.

Anywho, Jason makes his way to Diana's house. Steven bursts in and attacks Jason. Diana is killed and Jason escapes. Steven is arrested for Diana's murder and meets Duke, who reveals Jessica's relation to Jason. Determined to get to Jessica before Jason does, Steven escapes from jail. Jessica is dating tabloid TV reporter Robert Campbell (Steven Culp). Steven goes to the Voorhees house to find evidence to convince Jessica but falls through rotten boards. Robert enters the upstairs room and receives a phone call which reveals that he is attempting to "spice up" his show's ratings by putting emphasis on Jason's return from death, having stolen Diana's body from the morgue for this reason. Jason bursts in and transfers his heart into Robert, while the body he left melts, rather gruesomely I might add. Jason leaves with Steven in pursuit. Jason attempts to be reborn through Jessica but is disrupted by Steven, who hits him and takes Jessica into his car. Steven stalls Jason by running him over, even though we all know never ever works. When he tries to explain the situation to Jessica, she disbelieves him and throws him out of the car. Seems pretty rude of her to just disregard this guy's warnings.

The worm is to this as the white horse was to
Rob Zombie's Halloween II

Jason arrives at the police station and kills most of the officers... again, rather gruesomely. He nearly possesses Jessica before Steven stops him; Jessica realizes Steven is right. In the chaos, Duke makes his escape. Jessica and Steven make their way to the diner to grab the baby. Jason arrives but is attacked by the owners of the shop. He kills the owners... proving their attacks were absolutely useless but also completely in vain. Waitress Vicki (Allison Smith) shoots him with a shotgun then impales him with an iron rod. He then impales her on the same rod before crushing her head, killing her. Jason is presumably killed, despite surviving multiple wounds and walking away from them like nothing's happened, and Jessica and Steven discover a note from Duke, telling them that he has the baby and demands that Jessica meet him at the Voorhees house alone. So... at what point did this turn into a Halloween movie? Seriously? Jason wandering around, stalking family members while everyone else gets in his way? This "Duke" guy, the closes thing we get to a "Doctor Loomis" character? Not only was Friday the 13th out of ideas, they were doing the Halloween mythology all over again.

Jessica meets Duke at the Voorhees house and is given a mystical dagger... no, you read that right... which she can use to permanently kill Jason. How many "permanent kills" we've been promised is beyond me. Honestly, this is probably the first one, but it just feels like it's been promised a million times before. A police officer enters the diner where Robert, possessed, transfers his heart into him. Duke falls through the floor, and Jessica is confronted by Landis (Billy "Green" Bush) and Randy (Kipp Marcus). Landis is killed accidentally with the dagger, and Jessica drops the dagger. Way to go, numb nuts. Randy, possessed, attempts to be reborn through Stephanie, but Steven arrives and severs his neck with a machete. How many times Steven's saved Stephanie's ass from "almost kind sorta being possessed", is again, beyond me. Jason's heart, which has grown into a demonic infant... again, you read that right... crawls out of Randy's neck to Diana's dead body in the basement. Steven and Jessica pull Duke out of the basement as Jason discovers Diana's body and slithers up her vagina, allowing him to be reborn... AGAIN. YOU READ THAT RIGHT.

The funniest fucking guy in the whole movie.

While Steven and Jessica attempt to retrieve the dagger, Duke distracts Jason and is incapacitated with a bear hug. Aww, but hugs are nice, though. Jason turns his attention to Jessica, and Steven tackles Jason, who both fight outside while Jessica retrieves the dagger. That's like eight times Steven's saved her worthless ass. Jason badly brutalizes Steven and when he is about to kill him, Jessica stabs Jason in the chest, releasing the souls Jason accumulated over time. Demonic hands burst out of the ground and pull Jason into Hell. Steven and Jessica reconcile and walk off into the sunrise with their baby. Later a dog unearths Jason's mask while digging in the dirt. Freddy Krueger's gloved hand bursts out of the dirt and pulls Jason's mask into the ground as well... setting up ten years of "talk, talk, talk" about a crossover movie but no "walk, walk, walk" from any studio at all. Still, a pretty "what the fuck" ending at the time.

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is the equivalent of giving your drunk uncle the mic at a stand-up club and telling him to rattle off a plot for a Friday the 13th movie on the fly in two minutes. None of it is coherent. All the story elements feel half-assed and strung together on a whim and a hunch. The characters suck, Jessica's worthless, Duke's an overacting batch of hilarity, and to top it all off, Jason just looks hideous in this one. I mean, funny hideous, but still hideous. In the past we've gotten living Jason, hockey mask Jason, bag-head Jason, zombie Jason, zombier Jason, perpetually wet Jason and now we got "What in the fuck ever we want" Jason. I so, so wish this was the last Friday, as the movie's title implied. But for the SECOND time in this franchise's history, it would prove to itself and to us that you can't keep Jason down... even if it would've been for the good of movie-making decency.