Why Jason Goes to Hell Is the Best Choice to Celebrate 2022’s Only Friday the 13th

Why Jason Goes to Hell Is the Best Choice to Celebrate 2022’s Only Friday the 13th

With body-swapping killers, explosive action set pieces and demonic rituals, Jason Goes to Hell is the best film to revisit this Friday the 13th.

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Why Jason Goes to Hell Is the Best Choice to Celebrate 2022’s Only Friday the 13th

This Friday is the only one in 2022 to fall on the 13th, making May the perfect month to celebrate one of the most iconic horror franchises of all time: Friday the 13th. Other than those with the time to go through all 12 films in the series in a single day, many will have to make the difficult decision to find the right one to watch this Friday. And while the 1980 original Friday the 13th or the fan-favorite Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives will probably get the most views, some underrated gems of the series deserve attention, and none more so than 1993’s Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.

Set after the events of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, this ninth entry initially appears to be following the well-trodden ground of the previous films, as a young woman arrives at a cabin in the woods and immediately decides to take a shower for no good reason before getting attacked by Jason. But this setup quickly gets turned on its head as audiences learn that the woman is an FBI agent, and this trap — essentially the plot of every Friday the 13th film before this — gets Jason shot a hundred times and blown to little pieces, all in the first ten minutes of the movie. After the coroner eats Jason’s still-beating heart during the autopsy, he absorbs Jason’s evil powers and starts a killing spree that allows the spirit of Jason to move between hosts, much like a disembodied Voldemort or a creature from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

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Why Jason Goes to Hell Is the Best Choice to Celebrate 2022’s Only Friday the 13th

What follows in Jason Goes to Hell easily becomes the most surprising and unique film in the franchise, leaving behind so many of the series’ tropes and replacing them with genre elements that have never before been a part of Friday the 13th. With body-swapping killers, cursed knives, demonic pacts, diner shoot-outs and a slimy little creature, Jason Goes to Hell finally did something different, providing more than just teenagers getting together at Crystal Lake to get slaughtered by Jason.

Especially after the opening scene of meta-horror, where it’s almost as though the characters know they are in a Friday the 13th movie, Jason Goes to Hell truly thrives in all those spaces that previous films shied away from, feeling more akin to sci-fi, possession and action-horror films of the time, like Alien, The Terminator, The Evil Dead and The Thing. And even with the direct acknowledgment of these inspirations — as seen by the crate labeled “Arctic Expedition – Julia Carpenter” in the Voorhees mansion’s basement — Jason Goes to Hell never feels like a rip-off, somehow maintaining the spirit of the series, much in the same way Jason hops between each of his hosts.

This is what makes Jason Goes to Hell such a great moment in the franchise, as it tries out new ideas while also diving into the Voorhees family lore more deeply than the rest of the series. While other Friday the 13th films have stuck pretty closely to the mother/son relationship established in the original, not much has grown from that other than a mild excuse for Jason’s rampaging. The ninth film offers so much more than before, introducing not just Jason’s half-sister Diana, her daughter Jessica and her granddaughter Stephanie, but also complicated mythology to the Voorhees family, complete with rituals for how to embody and destroy Jason.

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For many, and certainly film critics from that era, these plot points might come off as overly complex and confusing, but for those willing to meet Jason Goes to Hell where it is, this storyline surrounding the Voorhees family is a wonderfully fun celebration of what Friday the 13th is all about. The fact that this movie works so well, even though Kane Hodder’s Jason is barely in the movie due to all the body-swapping, shows that there can be more to a Friday the 13th movie than a machete and a hockey mask.

Jason Goes to Hell looks fantastic, with some of the best gore effects and action set pieces of the franchise, and introduces a delightful cast of characters, including cowboy/bounty hunter Creighton Duke, a diner full of oddballs and a very badass Jessica. This is what everyone should want from the ninth film in a series: not something that repeats the past but instead shows audiences elements of the world they love that they didn’t know they needed.

Link Source : https://www.cbr.com/jason-goes-to-hell-best-friday-the-13th-celebration-film/

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