Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

In the previous, the eighth film of the "Friday the 13th" franchise, they finally departed from a long-ago shabby template and created something new, but in this desperate attempt to save the franchise they went too far and made a movie so unconvincing that it's even duller than its predecessors. In the ninth, "Jason Goes to Hell", they managed to find the right balance. The story returns to the Crystal Lake, but instead of the continuous streaming of pointless massacre that does not lead anywhere, this time the film actually has a complete meaningful plot. There is a prologue, there are an introduction and familiarization with the characters (the previous films completely left out the characterization, because characters were mostly dying after only a few minutes on the screen), complication, culmination, dissolution and epilogue. Although the story is fairly straightforward and linear, this movie has many elements of a thriller, and Jason is becoming a much more complex supernatural being than the gigantic zombie we are used to, which makes "The Final Friday" much more interesting than the empty slashers that precede it. There's, unfortunately, less nudity than before, although the girls are top-class, the killings are more in the style of action movies than horror, and the film introduces some new interesting details. The movie somewhat reminded me of the series "Supernatural", mostly because of Jason's demonic nature, magic dagger, blood magic, and for a brief moment you will also see the legendary "Necronomicon". They have gone so far as to depart from the template that they even gave the movie kind of happy-end, although, of course, in the last scene, they left the door ajar for a possible sequel. This made me confused a little, because the next film is "Jason X", not "Freddy vs Jason". Well, I guess it will clear up to me tomorrow. The strongest impression on me has left the prologue, the scene before the opening credits, partly because of well-made unexpected twist and partly because of the beautiful nudity of Julie Michaels.6,5/10

Does Jason really go to Hell? You will if you watch this film. It begins with the death of Jason Voorhees in dramatic fashion. He is taken to the morgue for an autopsy, or what is left of him is, when, surprise, surprise, he is resurrected inhabiting initially the body of the pathologist then stealing the bodies of those he murders at will.A bounty hunter appears, and he knows how to kill Jason permanently; he can only be dispatched by one of his two living relatives. As one of them is a babe in arms, it's her mother who gets the job, reluctant though she is.Is this the final Friday? If you know anything about this absurd franchise, you won't even ask that question. If you like special effects you might find something of interest in this film, but there is no soundtrack worthy of the name, and although there is plenty of action, much of it takes place in the dark or semi-dark.

'Friday the 13th' may have been panned by critics when first released but since then it is one of the most famous and influential horror films, the franchise containing one of horror's most iconic villains. The film is popular enough to become a franchise and spawn several sequels of varying quality and generally inferior to the one that started it all off. 'Jason Goes to Hell' for me is one of the worst of the 'Friday the 13th' films, a strong contender even for the worst. Is it irredeemably awful? No, not quite, don't think any of the 'Friday the 13th' films are. Then again this is coming from somebody who tries to see the good in bad films etc. and even tries to say where good to great films etc. could be improved on, not somebody who hates on everything or declare every film seen a classic. Sadly though, despite not caring hugely for the previous two instalments, 'Jason Goes to Hell' is indicative of the series has gone to hell. Are there good things here in 'Jason Goes to Hell'? Yes there are. The highlights are the tense opening scene and the slicing in half death (very strange but both disturbing and not easy to forget). Kane Hodder does a lot with little and is suitably creepily intimidating. There are instances too where the film is also inventively shot. On the other hand, while a good deal of 'Friday the 13th' films are silly, the silliness here is overkill that it becomes insultingly ridiculous. It is certainly the most bizarre film in the series, and not in a good way, and it completely gets in the way of scares or suspense. 'Jason Goes to Hell' overdoes just as much on the weirdness as it does with silliness. A lot fails to make sense, with too many parts confusing the story, and things that beg for an explanation are left unexplained, anything explanations are like the previous films didn't happen because so much doesn't fit.Hodder aside, the acting is really poor, even for the 'Friday the 13th' films where acting rarely was a strength. Likewise with the dialogue, which is 'Friday the 13th' at its most taking-simplicity-to-extremes, stilted, cheesiest and lacking in taste. Nothing is truly scary here, apart from the opening and one memorable death and suspense is nil. The kills are generally neither creative or shocking (going for more quantity, with a very large body count, than quality where gore feels too much and gratuitous. The pacing is far too hectic, the film never stops moving and everything here feels incredibly rushed, and this hurts the atmosphere and the storytelling. 'Jason Goes to Hell' is also the first film in the series where the music score is a drawback and not a redeeming feature, not only does the music sound cheap here it also is so discordant with what's going on and like it was written for a different film.Concluding, not a good film and indicative of a severe decline of a variable series of films. 3/10 Bethany Cox

This movie is the ninth sequel to "Friday the 13th", almost at the end, to our delight. Absolutely predictable, boring and sometimes better than a sleeping pill, it's a movie that I regret not having gone straight to Hell before going through the theaters. I'm being ironic, but the truth is that the movie is so bad that it allows my irony, as well as being not very different from the films that preceded it.