Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993)

 "Planning on smoking dope, having pre-marital sex and getting slaughtered?"

So it's the '90s, as the fashions and the cars clearly indicate. I turned sixteen in 1993, and can attest that this way of dressing was once considered normal. This feels odd, of course, because this is the decade's only Friday the 13th film. And the first one not to feel like a regular instalment- despite the sequel-stealing final scene, this film has a blatant self-consciousness that it may be the last one that no previous instalment has had.

It isn't, of course. Nor is it the promised exploration of Jason's backstory, which is superficial indeed. It's a B movie. Yet, in the context of this franchise which, in an inversion of the usual pattern, started as nothing special and took until the sixth instalment to get good, this is fairly decent in context. It has no stars, no actors I recognise whatsoever, nor does it have anthing other than B movie performances, yet it pretty much manages to be entertaining enough.

It makes token attempts to be self-referential, most notably the opening sequence with a trap for Jason, but ultimately relies on the conceit of Jason (only briefly a returning Jason Hodder) jumping from body to body. It also relies on both melodrama and the intriguing, behatted, moderately charismatic, if cliched, character of Creighton Duke, as much as it relies on the usual jump scares.

It works. It's not a bad film. But I wouldn't use higher praise than that.