Boy am I going to have a tricky time talking about Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday! Released in 1993, this was the first Friday the 13th movie I actually saw when it was released on VHS. I remember getting my dad to rent it for me and being blown away by the cover in the video store, I was so excited to see this movie and I am pretty thankful now that my parents did not pay much attention to the stuff I was watching!
How to Download Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday was released on August 13, 1993. You can download or stream the film from a digital platform. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and make your choice.
The Movie Review
The reason I told you that story is that I have some major nostalgia goggles for this movie! I know that it is not one of the better movies in the franchise, but I have always had a soft spot for it. There is so much dumb stuff here that it is impossible to ignore, but I am going to try and focus on the good stuff first.
Memorable Opening Scene
To start with Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday has one of the best opening scenes of any Friday the 13th movie. We see Jason stalking a hot chick, who just so happens to be an FBI agent who is leading a trap that sees Jason blown to hell! I loved this scene the first time I saw it and to this day it is one of the most memorable scenes from the entire franchise for me.
Supernatural Elements and Possession
But, if Jason gets blown up in the opening 10 minutes, how the heck do we have a movie? Well, this movie tried to add a bunch of supernatural elements to the Friday the 13th story. Jason’s heart is at the coroner’s and the autopsy guy decides to eat the heart and that causes him to be possessed by the spirit of Jason….. I am not making that up, that is legit what happens.
Bizarre Plot Twists
Jason then leaps from body to body, killing as he goes. Turns out that all this time Jason had some family in the form of a sister and she has a daughter and Jason needs the body of a blood relative to come back to life in his super Jason form…. It gets even weirder than this folks!
Unexplained Lore
It also turns out that the only way Jason can be killed is with a magical dagger and he has to be stabbed by a blood relative. This is the ninth movie in the franchise so why the heck was all this new lore all of a sudden added? Oh, there is more weird stuff, there is this bounty hunter guy who somehow knows all of this stuff and pretty much all of Jason’s history, but it is never fully explained who he is and how he knows all of this!
Poking Fun and Fanbase Reactions
There is a super weird scene where one of the bodies that Jason has possessed gets a weird growth that causes Jason to somehow spring to life, fully clothed, fully formed, and even with his hockey mask! I would say for about ¾ of the movie, we do not actually see Jason doing his thing and that is a huge problem with the movie. It tries to poke fun at the Friday the 13th series and it just kind of pissed off the fanbase.
Setting Up Freddy vs. Jason
Now, I want to go back to 1993 when I saw this for the first time. It is common knowledge that this movie was supposed to set up Freddy vs Jason. The end scene where we see Jason’s mask and Freddy’s glove come up from the ground to grab it blew my mind! At the time it may have been the most amazing scene that I had ever seen and I was so excited for Jason and Freddy to be in a movie together, which would take like a decade to actually happen.
Conclusion
I will not pretend that Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday is a great movie, but it is a movie that I have a lot of nostalgia for. I can watch this and have fun at just how ridiculous the whole thing is. Plus, it does have some stuff that I like such as the opening scene and the final scene, it is just the other 70 minutes of the movie that I can take or leave! To be fair, I do prefer this over Part VIII, but I am not sure that is exactly a great endorsement.
