At Crystal Lake, a group of horny 20-somethings arrive to stay for a weekend of partying. Next door, live the Jarvis family, including tech whiz Tommy (Corey Feldman) and his older sister Trish (Kimberly Beck).
The stage is set for Jason's inevitable arrival. But this time, can he be stopped?
I have watched a couple of the Friday the 13th movies, and read a couple of books about the franchise as a whole. I would not consider myself a fan, but as you do in the Information Age, for some reason I have accumulated a ridiculous knowledge of the long-running series.
One of the interesting things about F13 is how long it took for the franchise to figure itself out. Part One famously does not feature Jason; Part Two features Jason wearing a sack over his head; and it's not till midway through Part 3 that he finally gets the famous hockey mask. Usually by the time you get to the fourth film in a franchise, you would expect them to be running out of steam, but with F13 it feels like the opposite.
I have never really been able to get into the F13 movies. I watched the first ad second one, but nothing about them made me want to stick around. If I had started with The Final Chapter, I might have been more willing to give it a shot.
From a technical and screenwriting POV, this movie is much better than the movies I had already seen. The movie feels far more atmospheric, and director Frank Zito actually bothers to come up with some suspense.
From the beginning, we know that Jason is coming back. Zito uses the old cliche of horny hospital staff as a trigger for his resurrection. There is something really perverse about these characters making out next to a dead body, but the image of people making out in the foreground while Jason's body lies on the gurney behind them feels like a commentary on the basic formula of this series.
Jason quickly re-animates, butchers the creepy couple and it's off to the races. I have to say, I was really impressed by Ted White's performance as Jason. There is an economy to the way he moves, and the viciousness of his attacks, that I really appreciated - and by appreciated, I mean I was legitimately scared of him. I went back to check out Jason's previous appearances, and there is nothing similar to the brute force of White's performance.
The script for The Final Chapter won't win any Oscars, but it is clear and simple. Jason is on the loose, people are on his turf doing sexy things, and therefore he will kill them. There is a sense of dread to the movie that I really enjoyed - it is possibly the result of familiarity with these movies, but the movie does have a nice sense of pace.
It also helps that Barney Cohen's script spends a lot of time with all the characters, so we get a decent sense of most of their personalities. One of the teens/20-somethings (it's hard to tell how old they are, since they all look 37) is played by a young Crispin Glover. Before the movie begins, Jimmy (Glover) has been dumped by his girlfriend. He's feeling depressed, and this is not helped by his friend Ted (Lawrence Monoson), who belittles him.
Zito apparently allowed the cast to improvise, and there is a real sense of a rapport between Glover and Monoson. The other actors are fine, but the looseness of the pair's dynamic is a major asset that gives the movie one of its better subplots.
Taken as a movie, The Final Chapter is no masterpiece. But as an exemplar of a formula product, it does the business, displaying an understanding of the basic building blocks of these movies, and finding ways to deploy them in ways that are satisfying.
The kids are not nameless victims, but given their own mini-narratives and character games that make them more than bodies.
Zito's direction shows some style - for the most part he keeps Jason off-screen, showing him at the edge of frame or as a silhouette. And while the deaths are violent, Zito finds artful ways to make them interesting (staging an impaling as shadow play against the exterior of the party house, with the bloody result on revealed as the body/missile hits the wall).
A fun movie on its own terms, although its relative strengths only highlighted why Slashers are not generally my cup of tea. While it is not a deep character study, I actually found myself liking the characters, and ended up hating the scenes when they died. This is what you sign up for with these movies, and I guess I am not the intended audience. I prefer my gore delivered with some irony, or as the garnish to a villain's demise - not some poor schmucks on holiday.
If you are in the mood for a fun ride, or just interested in seeing what this franchise is about, The Final Chapter is worth checking out.
Related
The kids are not nameless victims, but given their own mini-narratives and character games that make them more than bodies.
Zito's direction shows some style - for the most part he keeps Jason off-screen, showing him at the edge of frame or as a silhouette. And while the deaths are violent, Zito finds artful ways to make them interesting (staging an impaling as shadow play against the exterior of the party house, with the bloody result on revealed as the body/missile hits the wall).
A fun movie on its own terms, although its relative strengths only highlighted why Slashers are not generally my cup of tea. While it is not a deep character study, I actually found myself liking the characters, and ended up hating the scenes when they died. This is what you sign up for with these movies, and I guess I am not the intended audience. I prefer my gore delivered with some irony, or as the garnish to a villain's demise - not some poor schmucks on holiday.
If you are in the mood for a fun ride, or just interested in seeing what this franchise is about, The Final Chapter is worth checking out.
Related
No comments:
Post a Comment