It’s probably fitting that there’s a title change because
for the most part this is nothing like a F13 movie, taking a massive departure.
It does a similar thing to Part V, in that Jason isn’t the one doing the kills
for most of the movie. But whereas that film simply had a Jason impostor, JGTH
takes things in a much weirder direction. It’s still a slasher, but it could
honestly be a different movie. It’s a bit hard to determine whether JGTH acknowledges
any of the previous movies at all. Jason’s obviously undead, but whether he
went to Manhattan or not is up for debate. This is another one of those movies promising the death of Jason. Considering he'd already died in Part IV and been melted in acid in Part VIII it doesn't really mean much.
JGTH is a baffling mess. It’s all over the place; a rushed,
cobbled together mash-up of ideas and plot holes that feels made up on the spot,
as though they knew they had to make a movie but had no plan and just went with
whatever new idea came first. It’s a baffling sequel, not seeming to know,
understand or care what the F13 fans like, and instead just going in a strange
direction. It’s barely a F13 movie at all really. Funnily enough, it was
produced by the director of the very first Friday the 13th movie,
Sean S. Cunningham. He had nothing to do with the last seven F13 movies, but
this mess is what he came back for?
Jason Voorhees, stalking a girl at Crystal Lake, is ambushed
by the heavily armed FBI and killed, his entire body blown to pieces. A coroner
examining the remains at the morgue finds that Jason’s heart is still beating
and is compelled to eat it, absorbing Jason’s evil spirit (shown as a worm
monster). With Jason’s unholy essence within him and decaying the body from
within, he begins a murderous, body-hopping rampage as he slashes his way
across the country, switching to fresh bodies as he tracks down blood relatives
of the Voorhees family. Jason can only be resurrected if his essence is passed
into a relative, thus those possessed by Jason’s evil hunt down his sister
Diana, his niece Jessica and her child Stephanie. Bounty hunter and Jason
Voorhees expert Creighton Duke knows this, and tracks down Diana and Jessica to
warn them and try to use them to stop Jason; only a Voorhees can kill Jason for
good by destroying his heart with a magical transforming dagger. Meanwhile,
Jessica’s ex-boyfriend/Stephanie’s father Steven is arrested for murder after
one of Jason’s hosts kills Diana, and after meeting Duke he’s determined to
save Jessica and his daughter.
Jason is looking pretty monstrous here. By this stage, in
the brief moments you see him at the very beginning and very end of the movie,
Jason’s mask has fused to his face and he looks like he’s been abusing
steroids. He’s got a particular swollenness about him. Of course there’s really
not much Jason in this movie at all. He’s on screen for less than ten minutes
all up. The explosion at the beginning is pretty cool. The FBI shoot him up
with bullets, then suddenly there are explosions (I think they’re meant to be
grenades?). Almost everything explodes apart from his head. When the coroner is
investigating his heart he notes that it’s twice the size and malformed, and
doesn’t pump blood. Then it starts beating and he can’t help but eat the thing.
Suddenly there’s freaking mythos to Jason Voorhees. As Creighton Duke says: In a Voorhees was he
born, through a Voorhees may he be reborn and only by the hands of a Voorhees
will he die. Jason can only be killed by a blood relative, and only if he’s
stabbed with a mystical dagger (that Creighton Duke just so happens to have). I
really don’t know why the magic dagger was necessary but apparently it is. It
all feels like something for a completely different movie. Jason’s demonic
essence thing is piss weak though, a scurrying little worm monster puppet. There
are a few call-backs to other horror movies with some props and callouts. The Necronomicon
from ‘The Evil Dead’ shows up. The exact same one (it might even be the same
prop or maybe a replica since the drawings are the same). At one point there’s
a crate marked ‘Arctic Expedition, Carpenter’, a reference to ‘The Thing’. I’m
not sure why these are here actually.
The characters, much like the loose plot, are very loose,
with uncertain personalities. Steven, our hero, is ok I guess, though his
character is a bit unclear. He’s determined to save Jessica and his daughter,
but he’s also a bit of an idiot, since almost everything he does makes him look
like a crazy murderer (knocking out cops, kidnapping people, running around
with a gun). Jessica only really becomes our heroine towards the very end, with
most of the focus being on Steven. She’s not particularly likeable either,
spending most of the movie yelling at Steven (makes sense since she thinks he
killed her mother, but doesn’t stop it being annoying). When she stops doing
that then she’s refusing to help stop Jason, even when he’s stalking her and
Creighton Duke makes it abundantly clear that she’s the only one who can stop
him. Diana is an idiot because she seems to know that Jason is coming for her
and that Creighton Duke is right, but she doesn’t cooperate with him and she
ignores his warnings. Instead she seems to think being in denial and doing
nothing is the best thing to do, so it isn’t long before she gets killed. Then
apparently her body is just lying around in the basement of the house because
that’s where Jason’s demon worm thing finds it in the end.
Creighton Duke is a bit of a wacky character that seems
completely out of place. Besides his bounty hunter persona and cowboy hat, the
dude also has some ridiculous lines. When asked by a reporter what Jason makes
him think of, he replies: “a little girl in a pink dress pushing a hotdog
through a donut”. What the hell does that even mean? Also I find Duke’s
credentials a bit suspect; he’s a Jason Voorhees expert but hasn’t actually
ever come against him. He also seems way too prepared with his hands on
supernatural items. He’s also a bit of a dick, refusing to tell anybody how to
defeat Jason and doing everything he can to antagonise people (he ends up
getting arrested for being an asshole).
He demands five hundred thousand dollars to kill Jason, and only gives
Steven information about Jason if he lets him break his fingers for some reason
(which Steven, that idiot, lets him do).The rest of the cast are just there to
get killed. They mostly act like idiots though (the police force is really
inept).
Despite the body-swapping central gimmick they never bother
trying to bring any doubt as to who is possessed. One would think they could go
for some tense paranoia but they just don’t since you always know who the host
is and it’s always obvious (if it’s a guy covered with blood killing everybody
then it’s the host). This in particular feels like missed potential.
In the end, after a body-hopping massacre of pretty much
everybody in town, Jason’s revives when his demon worm spirit gets to Diana’s
corpse (which apparently the cops left in the basement of her house). It’s a
bit of a cheat (and one of several plot holes) considering they’d spent the
entire film saying Jason needed a living blood relative, only to pull this shit
right at the end. It’s also gross because it seems that the parasite enters
from the vagina (it does a POV of the thing heading right between her legs). I
do find it completely hilarious that when he does finally resurrect, his hockey
mask and clothes resurrect as well somehow. The entire transformation happens
off screen, but it does bring to question of how exactly it was meant to work
(are the clothes and hockey mask part of his ‘evil essence’?). Also, since he
possessed the corpse of his half-sister, does that mean he’s a girl now?
The gore effects are pretty gruesome. Jason exploding is cool,
and the make-up and props work for the various corpses is awesomely gruesome. A
lot of the kills are pretty violent as well, with a lot of blood and brain matter splattered around. The coolest stuff would have to be
the Jason hosts -they continue to decay and take damage, eventually melting
down into decaying, gooey messes, meaning he has to constantly switch bodies.
He does this though passing the parasite from host to host via an open mouth
kiss. This is less impressive, as the actors (usually two dudes) seemingly pass a rubbery slug prop between their lips. It's gross.
The ending is the most memorable part – Jason, finally
defeated (with the mystical dagger thrust in his heart), is dragged down to hell. Giant rocky hands burst out of the ground
and drag him into the earth until only his mask remains. Then, as a final
stinger, the clawed hand of Freddy Kruger bursts out of the ground and grabs
the skull and pulls it down, with Freddy laughing maniacally. It’s what sets up
and eventually led to Freddy vs Jason (something that wouldn't happen until well over a decade later).
Jason Goes To Hell is a bafflingly bad movie. I have no idea
what the thought process was behind the making of it, or if there even was a
thought process. It feels like they got the F13 franchise and didn’t know what
to do with it so they just filmed whatever came to mind and left it at that. It
almost feels as though they didn’t want to make a F13 movie at all, what with
the way they basically sideline Jason for the movie. It’s such a weird entry in
the series, yet also so straightforward and familiar (body-hopping aside, it’s
just about a guy who wanders around killing people). It's baffling as to why it was made at all actually. The movie did badly with everybody, so
much so that it would be a decade before another F13 movie would be made. And
that’s where things get astronomical.
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