Even with success on your hands, you can’t keep doing the same thing interminably. After seven films worth of infamous masked slasher antics, the authorities and Jason had to up their game, but as proven countless times before, death isn’t the end. In 1993, he tried some tricks from his contemporary, Freddy, for his supposedly final outing. In Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday.

I guess crossing state lines means the F.B.I. can finally intervene and stop Jason, which they do with impressive firepower and tactics. After this skirmish, the corpse of Jason is taken back for observation, Yet, through a bizarre act of cannibalism, his spirit lives on, infecting person to person, leading them to carry on Jason’s campaign of death. Killing the unkillable remains a pressing concern for the public, as the secret could lie in the hands of a peculiar bounty hunter, and in the bloodline of the person you’d least expect.

Legal liabilities and other red tape prevent the film from being a proper Friday the 13th in name, and in a lot of its content, it feels different enough to warrant this distinction. There’s supposed to be a comic about how Jason got back to Camp Crystal Lake and how the F.B.I. got involved. While that feels like an optional backstory, compared to what made it to the screen. The new cowboy/bounty hunter, Creighton Duke, feels like he leapt off of the comics, and ends up being one of the most memorable characters of the franchise. Outside of Creighton, there’s a sense of humour, probably due to us being in the 90s and shifting attitudes. From the Network/Nightcrawler-esque parody of action news reports to the new promiscuous teens that are destined to meet their end. The results bring The Final Friday in contrast to the oh-so-80s aesthetic that audiences last got to see Jason in.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that the words Final and Friday have been in the same sentence within the film titles in this series. Possession is the new ace up its sleeve. Maybe it’s fitting that New Line, who made fellow teen tormentor, Freddy Kruger, tried the same trick before. It does mean that we as an audience get fewer opportunities to see the newly redesigned masked killer and the years of death and decay of his face. On the other hand, it makes the unvanquishable Jason even more of a threat. The new plot addition about Jason’s extended family being the only ones able to stop him feels evermore fitting, as it is the family that started this mess all those years ago.

New Line certainly helped the decade-old franchise embrace the grunge of the 90s. While I found Jason’s Manhattan journey a tough act to follow, Jason Goes To Hell manages to sing to the rafters. Displaying a franchise pulling off a supposed conclusion, and a delightful Easter egg showing off, what could have been and what soon will be. Sure, it may be different, imaginative, and a new way to look at things, but I never pictured hell to be so pleasant.

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