Right from the beginning, Jason Takes Manhattan feels like a break from formula - not a major issue with this franchise. One of the joys of long-running series like this is that elements which are assumed to be standbys can come and go.
Jason Takes Manhattan starts in Time Square. Nothing explodes, no title shooting at the screen: just blood-red font.
And in place of the familiar Harry Manfredini score, we get a rock song ("The Darkest Side of the Night" by Metropolis) and an unseen radio DJ who utters some vaguely doom-laden words about the big city.
While they probably would have changed plans if the movie had broken out, the film feels like an attempt at closing the book on the series.
The film’s beginning and ending reinforce this sense of closure, taking Jason back to his first appearance as a child spectre haunting the depths of Crystal Lake.
We start with a re-statement of Jason’s origin through more oral story-telling (which allows the filmmakers to fudge any issues of continuity), as some guy on a boat tries to romance his girlfriend. Why anyone would find Jason’s origin a good preamble to sex is anyone’s guess.
And the film ends with Jason restored (through the magic of toxic waste-infused water) to childhood. Even his facial difference is gone - in this film’s version of events, it is a result of underwater damage rather than some kind of impairment.
One could argue that Rennie being an aspiring writer is itself a callback to the series’ first final girl (and Jason’s first victim) Alice (Adrienne King), who was an artist.
Beyond these ideas, as a series capper, Jason Takes Manhattan is a bit of a damp squib.
However, on its own terms, as a Friday the 13th film? It is good.
A case of hype overwhelming a movie before its release, Friday the 13th Part VIII - Jason Takes Manhattan is better than its reputation would suggest.
Off the bat, it is easily one of the best looking films in the series - particularly the scenes onboard the ship.
In fact, I think the film is better when it is on the boat. Jason’s motives for killing are always tied to the location - people have stumbled into his domain, and they will pay the penalty. There is also an inbuilt tension when you are dealing with a group of characters trapped in a single location.
By this point, tension was not a strength of the series, but putting Jason in a city deflates.
Once all the characters are wandering around Vancouver back alleys, the film loses tension.
The script is a bit by-the-numbers, with stock, underwritten characters and relationships.
The acting is unspectacular - Jensen Daggett and Scott Reeves (as her boyfriend Sean) are a little anonymous as the main characters, but they do not have that much to work with.
But compared with the previous instalment, Jason Takes Manhattan is a modest return to form.
While unexceptional in certain respects, the film feels like a tease for something more - when characters are wandering through the bowels of the ship, the film feels more atmospheric and claustrophobic in a way that recalls the earlier instalments.
But there is another path the film could have taken - every couple of minutes, the film flirts with going more over-the-top: fledgling hair metal star JJ (Saffron Henderson) jamming in the engine room; Jason confronted by a street gang in Times Square; the boxing match on the roof with sports star Julius (V. C. Dupree)...
The film seems to flirt with being more cartoonish, but it is always reined back.
It is not as straight-up a horror experience as Part 2 or 4, it lacks the imagination and dramatic construction of Part 6, and it is not as weird as Parts 3 or 5. But as a slasher set on a boat, with a climax in the big city, Jason Takes Manhattan is solid.
The series would continue in fits and starts, but Manhattan would be the end of the franchise’s golden run.
It may not ever be my favourite slasher franchise, but as a collective experience, the Paramount run of Friday the 13th is a unique snapshot of low-budget big studio genre filmmaking that may never be replicated.
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