We should be so lucky.
In a world where women don’t wear bras, people living in isolated communities tell strangers that they don’t lock their doors, and a mother allows her small child to take a drifter up to his bedroom, a bunch of interchangeable assholes, plus Crispin Glover, get murdered one-by-one blah blah blah. Oh who cares. You know the drill.
So, yes, in the true spirit of the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, we get another 90 minutes jam-packed with events of very little consequence to pass the time. There’s no more or less plot here than the first three in this increasingly-tiresome series, but the amusing way in which its human characters interact makes it passable. There’s a dog in the movie, who was probably smarter than everyone else around it.
The film opens with a sizzle reel, although I’d call it more of a “simmer reel”, of the first three, which is pretty unnecessary at this point. I guess it’s cute that the filmmakers believe they’re creating some sort of complex mythology, but it’d work better if Jason remained a mysterious cryptid, which every community has the world over.
It’s fun seeing Sandi Toksvig in her first onscreen appearance as “Tommy Jarvis”, a character who apparently ends up returning to form a loose trilogy, of sorts. Most of the actresses kinda look like Juliette Lewis, which I put down to their unkempt 80s eyebrows. Most of the men kinda look like, I dunno, enter some witty putdown here. It’s sad they killed off Glover’s character, but I’m gonna go ahead and assume he wasn’t written to be as likeable as Glover, what with his natural sympathetic warmth, made him. Actually, the film loses a lot of steam once he’s dispatched, but the creative energy of all these movies seem to drop off a cliff about halfway through.
Director Joseph Zito actually puts some effort in for a while, including a complex crane-shot involving actors, ambulances, and a helicopter. That moment is actually funny in itself, for how quickly the emergency services abandon a mass murder scene. One character even complains: “All dead. Some emergency!”. A good point, but maybe somebody should stay and look for evidence or something. No? Okay, I’ll shut up.
My final thoughts are that, for what it is, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, is strangely ambitious and creative, but, what with its characters’ obscure motivations and overall lack of charm, there’s nothing really to care about. Movies should either entertain, inform, or both. This has barely any of the first thing to keep it afloat.
Wait, that wasn’t Sandi Toksvig?! Well, I’ll be a son of a gun.
Right, onto V.
Oh the deepest of sighs.
Do stay in touch, darlings.
Toodles!
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