Friday the 13th Films Ranked: #11 ‘Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday’ (1993)

#11 in my definitive ranking of Friday the 13th Films

Oh, no. If it weren’t for the rather amazing (genuinely great stuff) makeup work, I don’t think there’d be a single thing to recommend in this insane attempt to expand the thin lore of the Friday the 13th franchise. Magic daggers and blood ties? Really? I get the need to inject more into this franchise, more than just another pack of teenagers to mow down in a slightly different setting, but this tale of possession is so ridiculously stupid that it ends up being a step down for a series already in the pits after it dismissed its saving grace that was Jason Lives.

Authorities have set up a trap for Jason (Kane Hodder) which leads to him exploding. I’ll admit, I was kind of on board. That’s a ballsy move to start a Jason movie with, and I was ready to see a movie of Jason going to Hell. That would have been interesting.

That’s not what I got, though. Instead of Jason going to Hell where he’d be tormented by those he’d killed (it wouldn’t have even been that expensive, just a camp site with the tables turned, no need for a lot of special effects), we get a possession story of Jason being some kind of creature that crawls into people’s mouths, takes them over, and gives them his strength and drive to kill teenagers for thin purposes. Oh, and he’s going after his half-sister’s daughter’s baby to possess because he has to posses a member of the Voorhees family in order to become his immortal self once more. Oh, and he can only be killed by a member of the Voorhees family with a magic knife. All of this is explained by Creighton Duke (Steven Williams), a bounty hunter out to get Jason and just happens to know all this lore that no one has known before. Heck, someone has to tell the audience the new rules, I guess.

Yeah, this film very quickly went off the rails. Not like the series was on the rails much.

Anyway, Diana Kimble (Erin Gray) is the half-sister and Jessica (Kari Keegan) is her daughter. Jessica has a former boyfriend Steven (John D. LeMay) with whom she has a baby, and she had a current boyfriend Robert (Steven Culp) who is a television producer and presenter. He’s going to get his big break by taking advantage of the Vorhees connection, somehow.

Not that it really matters. It’s just an excuse for Jason running around in different bodies killing people. Like most of the franchise, the deaths are blunt and straightforward without any real wit or imagination, and the horror elements (what few the series actually has) feel off because the threat is still purely physical but the representation of the threat is far less imposing than Jason’s full state. Granted, they’re not putting the Jason spirit into little girls or anything, but a heavy-set sheriff isn’t the same as Kane Hodder standing over the rest of the cast.

The actual plot is this back and forth with Jason chasing down Diana and then Jessica, trying to posses someone with whom he can live forever, and it’s very paint by numbers with thin characters that don’t matter. I guess there’s something to Steven’s dedication to trying to save Jessica and his child, but it’s small beans since so little time is actually dedicated to it. It’s rote and perfunctory, though there’s a halfway decent scene where Steven has to break his fingers at the hands of Duke in order to get more information, though it makes no sense at all.

I can’t quite bring myself to hate the film, but it’s weird in all the worst ways, thin without impact, and flatly films on top of it all in that late 90s sort of way.

It’s obvious that no one, in particular Adam Marcus the director, had any idea what to do with Jason anymore. They were unwilling to do straightforward Jason movies again, but the twists were so random, out of character, and poorly built that the weirdness ends up just feeling wrong. Seriously, send him to Hell at the beginning, and then give him a journey out of it. He’s was made into a soldier of a lower demon, a higher demon doesn’t like Jason (he doesn’t like his face), and he wants to torment Jason in Hell instead of letting him out. The lesser demon works to get him out, leading him on a journey out of Hell, and he returns to the real world to exact vengeance upon the world, or something. Not that hard to figure out, and not a single magical dagger to be found.

It’s not the worst (I don’t think I’ll ever get as bored with the franchise as I was during Part III), but it’s pretty close. Still, it does have those great, late stage makeup and creature effects that rival the zombie in The Return of the Living Dead. That’s something. It’s also about a minute of screentime.

Originally published here