The movie over all was alright. I am not often a fan of the hidden monster horror trope, where we don't get to see what is killing these kids, (one of the reasons I love Freddy Krueger so much, that guy is always working the camera) but I understand its use here, having Momma Vorhees surprise us with who the killer really is, and gives additional context to some of what is going on (like how Steve recognised her before he died). It seemed to me like a pretty basic slasher film. One scene however caused me a great deal of discomfort (besides the extremely long sex scene with Marcie and Jack). The scene where a snake gets into one of the cabins has a real snake be chopped up with a machete. They bought a live, presumably trained snake, used it for a scene, and then chopped it up and filmed it dying. I have started to enjoy the practical effects of horror movies, but this was beyond wrong, and felt I needed to bring it up for this first post. Snakes may be scary, but they can feel too, and to think about that snake being killed as a joke on the set makes me very angry.

So spoiler alert, the horror movie is about Jason's mom, not about Jason himself. It isn't even really clear if the attack at the end was real, but lets assume it is. In this case, we still have very little to go on for ranking this Jason, and he will be referred to as "Proto-Jason". We know Proto-Jason died when he was just a kid, and that he couldn't swim well, however now he seems to be a very skilled swimmer, quickly emerging from the lake, and attacking Alice. He is strong, but does not seem super-humanly strong in this instance. He is lacking his iconic hockey mask, and is instead looking like a hot dog that someone roasted very amateurishly on the fire.

(Proto-)Jason (Part 1)

The movie begins with Alice, still scarred by her time at Camp Blood, having nightmares about what happened. I had thought she would again be the protagonist, but is killed very quickly. This seems odd as Jason seems to live around his lake, while she presumably went very far away but whatever.

We are introduced to the new camp counsellors, once again sexualized heavily. Jason goes through killing many of these counsellors, before chasing Ginny into the woods, and eventually his cabin. Here she finds his shrine to his mother, and thinking quickly, pretends to be her reincarnated. This distracts Jason for a moment, however his daze is broken before Ginny can land the final blow. He blocks her hit, cutting her leg badly. In the nick of time Paul tackles Jason, and they wrestle for a moment before Ginny drives the machete deep into Jason's shoulder, defeating him.

They remove the sack and shudder, before returning to the cabin. Once more though Jason attacks, sack removed to show a deformed head and diving through the window grabbing Ginny. Despite this, Ginny awakes brought into an ambulance, alive. It seems that Jason might have difficulties killing blond women as they remind him of his mother.

Jason Vorhees (Part 2) (A.K.A Sack Head Jason)

Part 3 has Jason attacking a now random group of kids looking for some fun on a completely different lake. He seems no longer tied to Ralph's "Death Curse", and is instead hunting for sport. The story really has no substance, with Jason now simply killing for killings sake, and yet with the iconic look, I found myself enjoying this movie just as much as the last. Maybe it was that the nudity wasn't so in your face and served no purpose, but I fear I am becoming a fan of graphic horror violence and the worst part is I don't even mind.

While Jason remains vulnerable to bodily harm, he is immune to certain kinds of force. For example, he cannot be hung. It seems the impact of the fall dazed him for a moment, but it didn't deal any lasting damage, just as attacks to his hands and legs served to stun him momentarily, but not enough to keep him down. By the end of the film, an axe planted deep into his skull seems to knock him out for good, but as we know, we are only 3/10ths of the way through Jason's original story.

Jason Vorhees (Part 3)

In the fourth instalment, The Final Chapter, (a flat out lie of a title as we are less than half way through the original series) Jason finds yet another group of kids to murder in a cottage. This time, Jason returns to deal some semi-aquatic kills (which I find to be important, as without his semi-aquatic nature Jason is just a zombie murderer) however the movie delves back into way over done nudity and characters you do not really care about, which is at least better than Annie from the first movie who I just flat out hated. In The Final Chapter, Jason seems to be stagnating, with nothing new to offer. We do see that Jason has once again become further deformed, but it isn't enough to warrant a whole new ranking.

They really had to go and ruin the whole series for me with this one. Jason is dead. Like for real. Jason never appears in the reality of this movie. Roy, a paramedic, decides to kill everybody because his son got chopped up at the very beginning. And I would be okay with this, if it didn't give Roy super powers. It gave be Freddy's Revenge vibes from the very beginning, so I knew this movie would toy with my emotions, and it did.

Freddy's Revenge was primarily garbage because it got rid of Freddy's basic premise, that he attacks in dreams, and he is never actually physically there. A New Beginning is primarily garbage because all of the super-human abilities that have been given to Jason, who is an undead monster man, now just also happen to work for Roy. Roy gets plowed over by a construction machine, and he gets up and keeps going. Roy Kool-Aid Mans through a door, the door literally explodes, but he is just a normal guy. Roy takes a chainsaw to the arm, and knife to the leg, and continues to go on. If instead the movie played it the way the original Friday the 13th did, with all the murders being acceptable by human standards, then okay. So be it. I would still be disappointed, but I would not be this annoyed.

This movie basically said "Hey you know how Jason is a super-human killing machine? Yeah just joking, anybody can do that stuff." No. Not anybody can cause a door to explode when they walk toward it. Not anybody can climb on an arm that is barely hanging on because it was cut by a chainsaw. A New Beginning is the Freddy's Revenge of the original Friday the 13th movies. Not only do they both share the premise of a new person taking over as the killer, but they also both ruin what makes the original killer cool. Skip A New Beginning just like you would skip Freddy's Revenge.

So this one I had a much more positive time with. Jason is actually back, not some guy dressed up like him, and the story actually exists. Jason as always just wants to murder people, but he is alive because of Tommy's known mental problems because of the Jason attack at a young age, and him wanting them to stop. In this attempt however, he brings Jason back to life, and must put him back down.

Tommy, while certainly not a favourite of mine, does have a story. It seems that the series continues to stay true to all past instalments, continuing one ever expanding story, however it does retcon the Tommy going crazy ending of Part 5 (who could blame them). Jason is again a very prominent on screen presence, and has various frightening scenes without even needing to show extreme violence, such as when he is stalking the final counsellor, or when he marches into the lake.

This one may prove to be my favourite Friday the 13th so far. Jason is slightly powered up which means new ideas need to be developed to stop him, and there is absolutely no onscreen nudity. What a triumph. Sex is instead played for laughs in this movie, as it seems comedy is embraced somewhat here. While there are still serious and scary scenes, Megan's character provides a lot of entertainment in the later parts of the movie, as in the beginning her extreme infatuation with Tommy was a little off-putting, but she makes up for it in the end.

Jason Vorhees (Part 6) (A.K.A Jason Reborn)

The New Blood went a little wild. Tina, the protagonist is a telekinetic superhuman whose powers are brought on by extreme emotional reactions. She wakes up Jason when trying to reanimate her father, who she accidentally killed with her powers. Jason then goes about killing people as Jason does, and is eventually stopped by Tina, now able to control her powers, and actually reanimate her dead dad who then chains Jason back to the bottom of the lake.

It is a weird one. I did not expect psychic powers to be part of the Jason series but why not right? I had a good time with this one even if it was lacking a little from the last. They lose the comedy and bring back some nudity which feels like a step in the wrong direction personally but what do I know about that. What I do know is that Jason is looking finer than ever.

Jason Vorhees (Part 7) (A.K.A Waterlogged Jason)

John Shepard

Jason Takes Manhattan puts Jason in some new scenarios which I enjoyed a lot, it has him remain pretty consistent to what we have learned about Jason which I also enjoyed a lot, however it also decided to end the Jason story in a very rushed, and confusing manner, which I did not enjoy at all.

Jason Takes Manhattan takes place mostly on a cruise ship, and the tight halls and pretty unique layout provide for some interesting Jason attacks. Then, Jason pursues the remaining students and teachers that escaped the ship (they literally killed like 6 characters off screen because the ship flooded) into Manhattan, killing only the necessary blockades between him and the remaining ship goers for some reason, and eventually gets a toxic waste barrel dumped on his head, making his face very soggy, he has a random flashback to his time as a child being drowned, vomits up some water, and becomes a child again, dying in the process.

I have no problem with the idea of ending Jason's story. In fact, I believe it could have happened quite a few movies earlier. However in this movie, they really seem to decide this is Jason's final movie very late in the story. Nothing alerts you to the idea Jason is going to die for real at the end here, and the manner in which it occurs makes almost no sense. Jason is not a child anymore. He stopped being a child a long time ago, and I think the idea of him transforming back into a child really makes no sense. His body has undergone very physical changes that make sense, so why decide beneath it all is a smooth skinned child? Secondly, why does this rushing water remind him of drowning as a child more than any other body of water he has been in since? He has been in the lake he drowned in multiple times and never had this flashback. He has been trapped at the bottom of that exact river twice since his drowning, and the flashback never occurs. He has been in the ocean, no flashback. Why is this sewer water the trigger? It makes no sense. The final problem is that this isn't the last movie. It is the last movie created in association with Paramount Pictures, as the next movie is made in association with Newline Cinema, the same company that was a part of all of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, but the next movie is called Part 9. I can agree this is the time for Jason to die, but he doesn't, and it shouldn't have been like this in the first place.

Despite my annoyances, this is not worse than A New Beginning. Jason is still the Jason we have come to know in the series, and seems to be practically the same Jason as seen in the last film, and does not require a new ranking.

Not taking itself too seriously, Jason X reboots Jason as having killed 200 plus people during his time, but eventually captured and held within the Crystal Lake Laboratories. He escapes, but is cryogenically frozen by one of the scientists. Here Jason, and the scientist, remain for 450 years before being picked up by some future space explorers.

While the scientist is woken from her slumber, Jason just thaws out and gets to his killing. He utilises a future machete for a while before being reunited with his original, and is then blown to pieces by the crew's android Kay-Em. Unfortunately Jason's remains landed right atop a med-bed, and he is cybernetically enhanced to become Uber Jason, as titled by the end credits. Now Jason is completely immune to the future weaponry, and can survive the vacuum of space with no additional gear. This is by far the strongest Jason has been.

While the movie showcases no incredible acting or story, it seems self aware, and has a lot of fun with it, rather than being super serious. The film is more comedic than the majority of the Fridays, and I think thrives because of it. While Jason Goes To Hell failed in its attempt to revamp Jason, focusing on redoing the character, Jason X succeeds by changing very little about Jason himself, instead looking to give the character a new environment to hunt his prey. Finally, while "Jason X" Could be an attempt at saying this is Part 10, it could also just be a cool name as X is a character used often for futuristic things.

Uber Jason (Part X)