Steezy's Movie Reviews #6 - Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

• (c) Paramount Pictures
• Directed by Joseph Zito
• Written by Barney Cohen
• Rating: Rated R
• Genre: Horror, Thriller, Slasher

Who is in the movie?

The main focus of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is our cast of character which includes:

• Trish Jarvis (Kimberly Beck) - Tommy's older sister. She will be the main character in our film.

• Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman) - Trish's little brother. He enjoys making Halloween masks and practicing make-up effects. He also seems to be pretty handy for a boy his age.

• Rob Dier (E. Erich Anderson) - A camper coming to Crystal Lake on a bear hunting trip. He meets Trish and Tommy and befriends them.

• Paul (Alan Hayes) - Samantha's boyfriend.

• Samantha (Judie Aronson) - Paul's girlfriend.

• Sara (Barbara Howard) - Samantha's friend. It is made clear that Sara is a virgin and is nervous about doing anything because she's so inexperienced.

• Doug (Peter Barton) - The pretty boy in the group. He seems to have his eyes set on Sara to be his girlfriend.

• Jimmy (Crispin Glover) - The socially awkward loser in the group. He doesn't have very good luck with the ladies and is apparently gaining a reputation for being bad in bed.

• Ted (Lawrence Monoson) - The jokester in the group who doesn't take things seriously. He is Jimmy's friend and likes to give him a hard time.

• Tina (Camilla More) - Terri's twin sister. She develops on crush with Paul, despite him having a girlfriend.

• Terri (Carey More) - Tina's twin sister. Jimmy takes a liking to her and attempts to get with her to try to get out of his rut.

• Jason Voorhees (Ted White) - The antagonist going around killing any unsuspecting teens around Crystal Lake.

What is the movie about?

The film opens up with a quick recap of the events from the first three films, explaining the urban legend of Jason Voorhees and a montage of the killings around Crystal Lake so far.

We cut to the night of Friday the 13th Part 3. Police are investigating the murder scene around Higgins Haven and clearing out the victims' bodies. Jason Voorhees' body is found in the barn on the property and taken to the local morgue.

The coroner and a nurse sneak away to the cold storage area to be alone together. While watching the news report of the Higgins Haven murders, they are interrupted by Jason's hand flopping off of the gurney. The nurse storms off in frustration and the coroner sticks Jason into storage before returning to the television to watch ladies in a workout program. This is abruptly cut short when it is revealed Jason Voorhees is still alive and quickly kills the coroner. Then he finds the nurse and makes quick work of her too.

Then we cut to the next day where Trish Jarvis and her mother on a jog back home. We meet Trish's little brother, Tommy, wearing an alien mask and playing video games. We learn Tommy likes to make masks. Some teens have rented a cabin on Crystal Lake next door to them.

We switch to the aforementioned teens driving to the cabin. Our group this time around includes Paul, his girlfriend Samantha, her friend Sara, Doug the pretty boy, Ted the jokester (not the same jokester Ted from the first film ironically), and Jimmy the socially awkward loser. Ted and Jimmy are talking about Jimmy's lack of love life and how his failure with women. The group stops to check the map because it turns out they're lost. They just happened to stop near a cemetery and we see a brief glimpse of Pamela Voorhees' tombstone. When the group continues forward, they pass by a hitchhiker on the road who has the unfortunate displeasure of being Jason's next victim.

He's on his way back to Crystal Lake.

Later that night, the group arrives next door while the Jarvis family is getting ready for dinner. Trish and Tommy go introduce themselves before the group goes inside to get settled in.

The next day, the group of teens go for a walk through the woods and meet twin sisters, Tina and Terri. They decide to join the twins to go to the lake and go skinny dipping. Ted and Jimmy have their eyes on the girls, thinking this might be an opportunity to meet someone new and get Jimmy out of his funk. Trish and Tommy end up going to the lake and spot the group skinny dipping. Deciding against going skinny dipping, the group invite Trish to come to a party they'll be throwing later that night.

On their way back home, Trish and Tommy's car break down. Tommy gets out and tries to figure out what is wrong with the engine. A man named Rob who is camping in the woods comes across the two and decides to help the two out with their car troubles. When they get the car trouble, Trish gives Rob a ride back to their house. Rob tells them he's hunting bears in the woods and asks if there are anybody else living in the area. Trish tells him about the teens vacationing next door. Tommy takes Rob up to his room to show him all of his masks and puppets.

Later that night, the group of teens return back to their house to party. Jimmy asks one of the Terri to dance (and it is a GLORIOUS dance indeed). Paul decides to switch the music to something a little slower for everyone to slow dance to.

Trish sees Rob off to return to the woods to continue his mission of bear hunting.

More partying shenanigans. Tina and Paul seem to be flirting with each other, which makes Samantha angry and jealous. She decides to storm off from the group and go for a swim in the lake. Samantha finds a raft on the water and climbs into it. She thinks that Paul is out there watching her, but it turns out to be Jason. She is killed.

Paul finally decides to go looking for Samantha. He spots Samantha's body on the raft and goes into the lake to join her. When he realizes that she's dead, Paul tries to get away. Jason doesn't let him get very far.

Rob hears Pauls screams and heads into the woods with a machete. He hears a noise behind him and spots someone near his campsite. When he returns to his tent, he finds that the rifle he brought with him has been snapped in half.

When Terri decides that she's ready to leave the party, she tries to retrieve her sister from upstairs. Tina doesn't want to leave because she's busy being with Jimmy at the moment. She tells Terri to go on without her. When Terri tries to leave, Jason arrives and kills her.

It has started raining pretty hard outside. Trish's mother comes home to find the power is out at their house. She walks around calling for Trish, Tommy, and their dog Gordon, but she gets no answer. It seems no one is home. Trish's mother decides to go outside and call for Gordon some more because he usually finds his way outside and could be around the house. She hears a noise that startles her and turns around.

Trish and Tommy return home from a trip to town shortly after and find the power is still out at their house. They wander around the house in the dark and can't seem to find their mother. She tells Tommy to stay put and fix the lights while she goes outside to try to find their mother.

Trish finds Rob's campsite and climbs into his tent to get out of the rain for a minute. He doesn't seem to be around at the moment. There's silence and a shadow appears behind Trish from outside of the tent. Someone stabs through the tent with a machete and scares Trish.

It is Rob. He's angry and distressed, clearly worried that whoever broke his rifle has returned.

While this is happening, Jason has returned to the teens' party and continues his killing spree...

When does this movie take place?

It is still 1984. The events of the film take place a couple days after the events of Part 3.

Where does this movie take place?

The film takes place mostly at the Jarvis Family Home and the house next door on Crystal Lake.

SPOILERS AHEAD
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Why is this happening?

Jason Voorhees survived his wounds from Friday the 13th Part 3 and he's back to continue his murderous rampage. This film kind of solidifies the idea that Jason doesn't take too kindly to teens coming to Crystal Lake with the intentions of partying and general teen shenanigans. Or anyone he comes across, to be honest. Jason doesn't seem to discriminate in his killings, but something about teens partying sort of sets off his murder radar and they've got to go.

Back at Rob's tent, he reveals to Trish that he isn't actually here to hunt bears. No. He is the brother of Sandra from Friday the 13th Part 2 and he's hunting Jason Voorhees. He wants revenge for the death of his sister. He's heard that Jason's body has gone missing from the hospital and two people have already gone missing. Rob believes Jason is still alive.

Trish is distressed because she's left Tommy alone in the house. The rest of the film goes as you may expect. They go to get Tommy. Jason's handiwork is discovered and it's time to attempt to survive the night.

I won't spoil much more about how the movie ends. The final confrontation is an interesting one and it's one of the more memorable moments in the franchise.
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How was the movie?

The Friday the 13th formula has been set in stone by now. Jason Voorhees is our permanent killer and he's back at Crystal Lake to kill him some horny teenagers.

The only real issue I have with the film is that Jason seems to have developed the ability to teleport here. Not really. They don't show him having any supernatural abilities other than an inability to die. I just mean that Jason bounces back and forth from the Jarvis Family home and the vacationing teens next door repeatedly throughout the night. He doesn't stay in one place and kill one group before the other. He keeps going back and forth between locations. I know the Jarvis' house and the teens are nextdoor to each other, but there's only so much disbelief I can suspend when it comes to how the events involving Jason play out.

For example, there's one moment in particular where Jason kills the character Paul down by the lake and the character Rob hears the death scream from his campsite. When Rob grabs a machete and heads into the woods to investigate. He immediately turns around because he hears a noise in his tent. He goes back and finds his rifle broken in half. The film keeps doing this thing where Jason is in two places at the same time and it becomes pretty nonsensical when you try to figure out the timeline of events.

Another is when Jason is at the teens' house and has killed a couple of them. We cut to Rob and Trish back at their house to check on Tommy. They try to make a phone call, but we see Jason outside in the rain ripping out their phone line. This happens immediately after he is at the teens' house killing them. There's just a real inconsistency in the film with how Jason is getting around. Maybe you can chalk it up to having too many characters in the film. They must've wanted to up the body count considering this was being labeled as the final chapter in the Friday the 13th saga.

We get a couple early performances from Corey Feldman and Crispin Glover here. That's something interesting. Crispin Glover gets to be added to the body count of Jason Voorhees as a partying teenager. If you haven't seen his dance moves in this movie, you've got to check them out. It's pure gold. Corey Feldman is a kid in this movie and provides some real suspense in having a child in danger. The one thing Friday the 13th hasn't had up to this point are kids in a summer camp being in danger. This sort of fulfills that idea a little. His character has an interest in movie effects and that's pretty neat too. Sort of reminds me of Shelley's character from the previous film.

Is the film any good? Yeah. It's good. It's enjoyable. If you can ignore the inconsistency of where Jason is, I think it's a good watch. The title might imply that this is the last time we'll see Jason Voorhees, but, of course, we all should know better than that when it comes to movie monsters. Evil never dies.