10/15: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

And, just like that, I'm behind again. My movie from yesterday:

10/15

It's been a few years (since 2013 I believe) since I've done a Friday the 13th film. In general I try to do at least one classic slasher every year, usually from the big three of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhies, and Freddy Krueger. Guess, for this year, Jason is up. So today's film was the fourth in the Friday the 13th franchise, the laughably titled The Final Chapter. Just like Jason himself, the Friday the 13th movies, for better or worse, couldn't die in the 80s.

There's really no use in explaining the plot here; like most slashers, it's an exercise in futility. Basically a bunch of kids go to the woods, have sex, be stupid, get murdered in a myriad of creative ways, etc. Rinse and repeat. I read on several lists that The Final Chapter is widely considered to be the best of the Friday movies, which I guess shows just show low the bar is for the franchise. I've always felt that Jason is the generic stepchild of the Freddys and Michaels of the world, and The Final Chapter is a poster child for why.

I don't know, maybe I'm just jaded from too many slashers, but everything here feels just so predictable and tired. It could also be that, as an earlier slasher, The Final Chapter helped create some of these tropes, so I guess it deserves some degree of props for that. Then there's Jason himself. Where Michael is a cold, calculating force and Freddy is nightmare-stalking pedophile, Jason just feels so generic. He's just a big, deformed dude who's talented at stabbing people, and the only thing that makes him interesting (his backstory of being a neglected, deformed child) is largely ignored. Maybe this is why future films give him such a supernatural bent.

Overall, The Final Chapter is fun enough as an 80s slasher relic but by today's standards just feels worn out. It does have Corey Feldman as a young Tommy Jarvis (Jason's future nemesis), a weird mask-making kid, going it for it though. He's the final kid, which is kind of a cool, if mild, subversion of slasher tropes.

Oh, and Crispin Glover playing a normie. Which is weird, because Crispin Glover is anything but a normie. Evidence below.

Infinitely scarier than The Final Chapter.

6.5/10