The Friday the 13th series has had its share of ups and downs over the years. It’s had some great movies as well as some terrible ones. It’s had some strange movies and some relatively straight-forward ones. It’s had some remarkably original movies and some nakedly derivative ones But after a full decade of involvement with the series, a recent string of box office disappointments lead to Paramount selling their franchise holdings to New Line Cinema, who notably owned the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.
The intention was always to make a crossover between the two powerhouse franchises, something that was in the works since before The New Blood (1988) (which is why that film eventually became a de facto Freddy vs Carrie movie when the crossover idea eventually fell through). The plan was to set the crossover up in Jason Goes to Hell (1993) (for some reason New Line failed to acquire the rights to the series’ name, just all of its characters, concepts and settings), which they went about in the most needlessly convoluted manner possible.
After being lured out into the open by the US army and blown up within the film’s opening minutes, what remains of Jason Vorhees is sent to a coroner’s office to be thoroughly looked over. Unfortunately, when said coroner eats Jason’s still-beating heart (no, really), he becomes possessed by Jason’s disembodied spirit (no, really). He then escapes, periodically swapping between different bodies in order to be reborn into a new, suitable herculean body, which he can only do through a direct blood relative (no, really). Unfortunately for him, only a direct blood relative can kill him permanently (no, really), leading him to a final, all-in-the-family showdown: one in which he will either be resurrected or destroyed for all time.
Yes, that is the actual, factual plot of this movie: easily the most batshit insane storyline ever devised in a franchise that has routinely switched up the killer’s identity, brought him back as a zombie, had him fight Jean Grey and transported him to toxic waste-laden New York City. At no point does the film actually feel like a Friday the 13th movie, and feels closer to being an off-brand Invasion of the Body Snatcher’s for the majority of the film. It introduces off-the-wall mythology without any setup that is never touched upon in later movies, introduces and kills off vital-feeling characters without proper development (even by the absurdly low bar set by slasher films in general) and awkwardly oscillates between being comedic and horrific without seeming to mean to.
When it comes right down to it, Jason Goes to Hell feels like the bastard child of both the best and worst of the series, specifically between Jason Lives (1986) and A New Beginning (1985). It doubles down on all of the supernatural elements introduced in Jason Lives — particularly that fact that he’s an easily resurrected zombie imbued with preternatural strength and durability — and keeps swapping out who the flesh-and-blood killer is like A New Beginning dialed up to eleven. It’s sometimes comedic like Jason Lives, but is just as often as straight-faced and serious as A New Beginning was. And the confused combination of these disparate elements simply does not work.
Beyond its tentative connections to the Friday the 13th movies until now and its well-blended elements taken from throughout the series, there is actually more to recommend here than most of the film’s critics would likely admit to. Although working on a notably smaller budget than even the scaled-back financing of Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), its narrower ambitions mean that that money goes much further than its now-infamous predecessor. The sets are well-staged and varied. The gore effects are genuinely impressive, oftentimes playing out like a radically scaled back take on The Thing (1982) or The Fly (1986). The kills are far more viscerally satisfying than they had been for the series as of late and the characters are actually a really fun mix of personalities that at times feel reminiscent from the victims of the first four movies (even if most of their backstories are left on the cutting room floor and the movie has little of interest for them to do before they get brutally dispatched).
But while it was fun to watch Freddy Krueger’s bladed hand shoot out from the ground and pull Jason’s hockey mask into the depths with him — directly setting up the events of Freddy vs Jason (2003), where Krueger tricks Jason into coming back to life to kill more hapless teens for him — it’s a pointless little Easter egg that didn’t need the full film of setup just so that it could tease a movie that would take another decade to get made. If anything, the film’s utterly bonkers plot feels more in place for a new Nightmare on Elm Street sequel than a Friday the 13th one (especially when you consider the plot of 1985’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, which saw the supernatural slasher reborn by means of a teen that he had been possessing and terrorizing throughout the movie).
Although, on the merits, it is a better and more interesting movie than the previous two franchise entries, that’s more due to the franchise’s rapidly descending quality and increasing divorce from reality. Jason Goes to Hell is a bad movie and, worse yet, doesn’t fit into the franchise it’s supposedly a part of (like the majority of latter-day Hellraiser (1987) sequels). It’s nothing that anybody, especially fans of the franchise, need to force themselves to see.
Rating: 2/5
