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Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter More at IMDbPro »

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The most star-studded one so far!, 10 February 2004

Author: Michael DeZubiria (miked32@hotmail.com) from Luoyang, China

The above statement is relative, of course, but whenever I watch old movies like these, I always watch for actors who later went on to more visible careers. I guess it would be more accurate to call this the most star-studded Friday since part 1, since Kevin Bacon's later career probably overshadows all of the semi-famous actors in this movie combined. There are some interesting connections, however. Watch for Judie Aronson, for example, who later became hugely famous for her role as Hilly in Weird Science (in which she plays the girlfriend of Robert Rusler, who you might remember getting slashed up by Freddy in Nightmare on Elm Street 2), Corey Feldman also has a pretty significant part in this film, although he looks about half the size as he did in The Goonies, which was released the year after this movie. And of course, my favorite, Crispin Glover, who later went on to costar in the massive Back to the Future trilogy, as well as the only interesting role in either of the Charlie's Angels movies. I loved his role in this movie because it fits his later iconography so well (maybe it even caused it) – he's kind of the geeky guy who gets shunned by the girls and, in one of the greatest scenes in the movie, demonstrates the reason for that when he dances. WOW.

At this point in the series it begins to become increasingly clear that each movie is something of a rehash of the same plot and ideas (not that you would expect anything hugely different from a series like this), especially because the movie starts off with ten minutes or so of review from the last movies, as one of the characters from Part 2 tells a story around a campfire to the latest group of Jason fodder about what happened in the last three movies. Basically you see all of the grisly murders as this guy describes them, reminding returning fans of what happened in the last three movies and informing people who jumped right to the final chapter of what Jason's all about. Sort of catches you all up without even having to watch the other three movies.

It's an interesting setup this time, with a lot of kids renting out a cabin next door to a family who lives there permanently (Feldman plays the young son in this family, fascinated by the promiscuous antics of the new college kids next door). The basic message of each film having a lot of teenagers making out and getting naked and subsequently getting killed seems to take on a little bit more meaning in this movie as little Tommy (Feldman) gawks intently and wide-eyed at a girl undressing in the other house until his mother comes in and closes the curtains. Even though it's still pretty muted by the abundant killing and gore, it seems that the teens who have sex and go skinny dipping and whatnot are getting killed not only because Jason originally drowned because the people who were supposed to be watching him were making out at the time, but also because of the effect that their carelessness could have on kids like Tommy. Could it be that the Friday the 13th movies actually have a positive message?

It seems even more apparent that that might be the case when you examine the target audience. I wasn't watching movies like this when they originally were released (since I was 5 years old at the time), but they're clearly geared toward teenagers much like the ones in the movies, out to have a good time with all their friends on a Friday night, and what better way than for everyone to go to a scary movie so the girls get scared and cling onto the guys? That's a pretty big goal for just about every teenage guy, to get girls to cling to him, and while I doubt the movies had much of an effect in getting them to say `You know, maybe we should wait until we're married' or something, it's still a pretty cleverly subtle message.

On a aesthetic level, the film has made a huge jump from part 3. I think that for the rest of the series, there is never again as sudden and significant an improvement on the actual film quality, which seems to have been shot on genuine film, while the earlier films look like they were recorded almost with videotape on a home movie camera. The quality of the picture is much better, and there is even an extension on Jason's personality, even though I think in the end it works against the effect of the movie as a whole.

In this installment, Jason does a lot of things to reveal his murders and scare his future victims at the same time. One of the bodies is nailed to a doorway (leading to the gut wrenching necessity of it later being ripped off), throws a girl through a window like a baseball, plants a body in a closet so that it will tip out when one of the kids opens it, etc. It's actually pretty amusing to picture Jason doing this, and the fact that he actually breaks into a run in this movie increases the level of campiness almost to the breaking point.

There's plenty of unnecessary nudity to keep the guys happy (even some male nudity thrown in there for the girls) and lots of brutal killings in keeping with what the movies are all about. I was actually pretty impressed with this installment, but mostly for things like that actual aesthetic quality of the film itself, the performances from so many actors that I recognized from later movies, the difference in the way that Jason acted (even though the actor playing Jason, Ted White, had his name removed from the film because he wasn't proud of his performance), and the fact that the movie actually had some originality thrown in for good measure rather than just having a lot of teens go up to the lake to be rebellious and end up getting killed. The addition of a neighboring family with a young son (who ended up playing such a significant role that he stays on even for a couple more movies) was a nice touch, and while the killings were pretty much going through the motions, the movie marks a turn away from the rather rigid plotline seen in various forms the first three movies. Not a classic, and certainly not the final chapter, but this is one of the more entertaining and clever of the Friday the 13th movies.

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