The opening line of this review was going to be: “We should be so lucky”, but then I realised I’d already begun one of these Friday the 13th critiques in the exact same way. You know, the other instalment with the word “final” in the title.
The film only gets dumber from there.
Whereas I found Jason Takes Manhattan to be oddly relaxing, due to its cosy setting, Jason Goes to Hell is merely sleepy. It has a made-for-TV melodrama quality to it, which is truly bizarre. I’m wondering whether the director was going for a stark, brutalist look to the mise en scene, mimicking the style of Paul Verhoeven (who was the biggest thing in the world at the time). This director also seems to have his actors perform with an aggressive forthrightness, which is also indicative of Verhoeven’s style. Regardless of intent, the director of Jason Goes to Hell fails.
At everything.
There were numerous times during my viewing of this film that I sighed and muttered: “Hurry up!” at the screen, which is never a good sign. There’s very little urgency to the goings on, which is why it felt like a second-rate melodrama. And “second-rate” is being very generous indeed. As with the previous film, this one could have been tightened up in the editing bay. Moments that should be creepy, scary, or exciting, simply feel dull. I even had to fight to keep my attention going during the climactic fight, which is shot so drearily that I just couldn’t see what was going on. Should I blame my nyctalopia or the filmmaking? Somebody with better eyesight should probably decide.
The acting’s all over the place here, with some performers hamming it up too much, while others are clearly just cashing a paycheque. A bounty hunter character seems to have special knowledge of Jason’s history and weaknesses, although it’s not clear how he came about this information. Our hero, of sorts, stands idle while another character is murdered in front of him. He could have helped, but the film wanted the death sequence, so who gives a shit about logic, right? There’s a baffling scene in which one character breaks another character’s fingers through the bars of a jail cell, but the motivation for this violent behaviour isn’t clear either. There is a BDSM quality to this moment though, which I quite enjoyed. I’m not usually into that kind of thing, but, by this point, my brain was desperate to latch onto anything vaguely entertaining.
I believe that’s called “scraping the barrel”.
So, yes, Jason Goes to Hell encapsulates the summit of our worst fears, in that it is neither so-bad-it’s-good nor so-good-it’s-good. Instead, it’s just rather pathetic and tedious. Not the worst thing in the world, but certainly no lost masterpiece either. At least it doesn’t list its one canine performer in the end credits before the majority of human actors, as Jason Takes Manhattan does. That error, at least I hope it was an error, represents a rather shocking level of disrespect that should not be repeated.
I’ll be calling it a day with Jason X, so stay tuned for that one soon, darlings.
Toodles!
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