| Plot: As two teens are having sex, a wire on their boat shakes loose and goes to the bottom of Crystal Lake, effectively jolting everybody's favorite hulking killer Jason Voorhees back to life. After Jason dispenses formalities with the kiddies, he then hops onto another boat that happens to be taking a senior class of students to New York City where Jason can continue his killings. Finally Jason will be able to take British Columbia, er, I mean New York. Review: This is considered to be the worst Friday the 13th in the series, though there are a few other contenders for that title. I'm not going to go as far as saying it's the absolute worst, but I didn't particularly dig this entry either. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, the 13th movies are by no means a "thinking man's" film (hell, I could've probably reviewed them all at once if I really wanted), it's about seeing Jason in that hockey mask killing unlikable teenagers in creative ways. There was always some kind of different story in each of them, but it essentially boiled down to watching Jason kill anyway. There are a few gems in the series, but sometimes the series gets too stupid for its own good, enter Jason Takes Manhattan. Here's what bugged the living hell out of me and a lot of other people--Jason is only in New York for the very last bit, maybe 20 minutes at the most. That's right on the edge of being false advertisement. Secondly, only one or two shots were actually filmed in New York City and the rest of the NYC footage was shot in British Columbia. Couldn't they just pony-up the cash to film all of the NYC scenes on location? Is that too much to ask from the makers of part 8? It should've been called "Jason Takes a Lengthy Boat Trip To Canada." So about a third of the movie takes place on the boat which can be taken two ways. You can either take it as a way to give fear and claustrophia to the movie...or you can take it as a way to cop-out of the title. I share the latter view. What's the point of trying to make the atmosphere more claustrophic if we know Jason is still going to hack everybody up regardless? They had an idea, they should've at least ran with it. Let's be honest here, we've been rooting for Jason to kill every airhead that crosses his path for quite some time and Part 8 is no exception. There's the usual smearing of teens here: rocker, jock, geek, bimbo, they're all here and they're all pretty much toast. Even one of the swabbies tells them so--"This ship is doomed! DOOMED!" Hmm, I wonder if this voyage is doomed and somehow Jason is a part of that? Of course, nobody believes the swabby until he ends up impaled on a few rods, but at this point he doesn't feel much like gloating. Critiquing the performances is pointless since no one watching the movie will give a flying fuck about them. Hell, it's hard enough remembering the names of their characters, let alone their real names. Basically, if you've seen the performances from parts 6 and 7 then you know what kind of acting you're in for. Speaking of teens getting slaughtered, there are only two memorable kills in the whole movie. The highlights being one kid getting a hot sauna rock shoved in his chest and the boxer getting his head knocked off (I'm practically drowning in the irony here). Jason might've looked calm, but he was REALLY feeling those punches from the boxer, honest! The rest of the kills were pretty bloodless such as someone getting stabbed or choked, but at least they're violently done courtesy of Kane Hodder. And what can I say? Kane Hodder is still the Jason we know and love. He's pissed, he towers above everyone else, and he's violent. So you'll at least get your Jason fix for the day. Adding to the non-existent storyline is a subplot involving one of the teens seeing a psychic image of Jason as a child, which ends being a pointless plot device. It added absolutely nothing to the movie other than showing us a few shots of his ugly mug. Another minus was the whole teleportation trick Jason could do, which removed almost any aspect of suspense from the movie. We know Jason's going to kill everyone except the lead boy and gal, but why try to hammer home that fact even harder? As for the NYC scenes, they were fun enough with Jason being confused about his surroundings, chasing the teens through a subway, dealing with street punks, and of course admiring a billboard with a hockey mask on it, but it really wasn't enough to make up for all that tedium and build-up we had to endure for slightly over an hour. So many possibilities weren't looked into. I'm not asking for Jason to chase a teen onto the Statue of Liberty, but it's a setting with so much material for the writers to work with and they tapped into maybe a quarter of that potential. Aside from the last part of the movie, Jason Takes Manhattan is a pretty by-the-numbers Friday the 13th. Is it the worst in the series? In my opinion, no, but there's not much to recommend anyway. This is a fans-only affair, so if you're a Jason-aholic and just need to see him slash one more time, then there's probably nothing I can say to stop you from watching this entry. Everybody else I say to just pass on this despite it's colorful title. Besides, this one's a bit too MTV-ish even for me. Just stick with parts 6 and 7. |
| Rating: *1/2 |
| Review by Jim |
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