Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

1/2 (out of 4)

For this ninth entry in the long-running series we saw studios changed hands as New Line took over after Paramount had grown tired with the series. New Line's attempt was to bring some new blood into the series but what they ended up doing was delivering the worst film. This time out we start off with Jason (Kane Hodder) chasing a victim through the woods when a SWAT team jumps out and blows him to pieces. The only problem is that his heart is still alive and after a doctor bites into it the soul of Jason enters him. Turns out Jason had a sister so the spirit, jumping from body to body, now tries going after her and her daughter. As you can tell by not having Jason in the movie except for the start and finish, the studio certainly tried doing something new and I can still remember my father taking me to see this with a sold out crowd on opening night. The crowd was certainly pumped up and ready to go but by the twenty-minute mark people were bored out of their minds. At the end of the film people were throwing popcorn at the screen, cussing and everyone walks out mad and cheated. So has time helped this film? Certainly not as it's clearly the worst in the series just because of how stupid the spirit jumping in. Not only does the film have logical plot holes it also has some really bad direction, bad dialogue and, as I said, a really bad story. The only thing that really saves this turkey are some rather good kill scenes as well as the now well-known cameo at the end, which gave fans something to look forward to (even though it didn't happen for over a decade). With this film the characters are all poorly written and for the first time in the series there wasn't a single one I cared for. I found all of them to be very annoying with a leading man who couldn't carry a grocery sack let alone an entire film. The female heroin isn't any more interesting and Hodder really doesn't get to do much with Jason since you see him and then he's gone. Even the ending manages to be the worst in the series. All in all this is just a very bad movie from start to finish.