horrorfan_1986

The Story

While two recent Crystal Lake High graduates have a little fun on a boat on Crystal Lake, their anchor inadvertently rips some electrical cord which just happens to be laying on the body of Jason. The rip creates an underwater electric storm and Jason is alive again. Two quick kills later, Jason has enough of Crystal Lake and floats down a connecting river.

Down that said river in the morning are the rest of Crystal Lake High graduates boarding the cruise ship for the senior trip. It's there we meet Rennie, the assumed heroine of the movie. Very little is known about her early on. What we do know is that her parents are dead (?), she has some sort of issue with water, her uncle is a hard ass teacher/principal/something and she has a mother/daughter relationship with her literature (I assume?) teacher, Miss Colleen. Perhaps it's her fear of water or it's the fact that a deckhand is telling her that they're all doooommmeed in his best Crazy Ralph impersonation. All Rennie cares about though is being with her boyfriend, Sean. Sean is having his own daddy issues though. Right before the ship casts off, they get an extra passenger who creeps on from the water. Ch ch ch ch...ha ha ha ha.

Jason doesn't waste much time before killing off his first victim on the boat, a rocker girl who is about as cliche as it gets. We're introduced to some other the other main students which they all give off the 'I'm going to die real soon' vibe. One by one, Jason begins killing the less important characters until he kills the captain of the ship, Sean's father. Once Sean finds the body, all of the students instantly knows who's behind it. Once Jason cuts the communications wires, the surviving students and teachers realizes they're only hope for survival is escaping by lifeboat and hoping to reach land.

We're left with Rennie, Sean, Miss Colleen, Julius and Rennie's uncle - Charles McCulloch. After seemingly hours rowing into the fog, they spot Lady Liberty - the Statue of Liberty. Their rejoice doesn't last too long when they're mugged by two thugs within minutes. Welcome to New York~! Rennie is taken away by the thugs to do some evil deeds. The four remaining Crystal Lakers decides to split up to find police to help Rennie. Meanwhile, Rennie is taken down a dark alley and is injected with some green-colored syringe drugs. What the drug could be? I have no idea. Perhaps it's green toxic waste that turned four turtles into giant ninja turtles. Either way, Rennie looks to be in bad shape and just moments away from being raped. While the one thug leaves to try and grab some money to score more drugs, the other is stopped and attacked. As it turns out, while Jason may be a homicidal killer, he's a homicidal killer who doesn't like the idea of women being raped. The other thug returns and is quickly killed. Once the Lakers reunite, minus Julius who was left with quite the headache from Jason (See below for best kill), Rennie hits Jason with a police car. Thus, Jason is killed. However, the hit causes the car to catch on fire and poor Miss Colleen didn't make it out alive.

Now, this is the major part of revelation. All throughout the movie, Rennie has been having delusions of young Jason's drowning. As Miss Colleen is burning to death, Rennie realizes why she had such a fear of water. When she was a young girl, Charles McCulloch and her were on a small boat on Crystal Lake. To get her to learn how to swim, he threw her overboard. That's when young Jason grabbed her ankle and tried to pull her down underwater. If it wasn't for Uncle Charles, she would of drowned. Both Rennie and Sean are extremely angry with Charles. The pair runs off as Jason comes back alive and kills Charles off. The film breaks down into a giant chase around New York. They're in Times Square, a subway (Where Jason dies again by electrocution for a few minutes), a diner (Where Jason attacks a big guy who tried to stop him. That big man happens to be Ken Kirzinger...remember that name) and finally, the sewers. Before a sewer worker is killed, he tells the pair that every night at midnight, the sewers fills with toxic waste. Holy shit, that was the drugs that turned the turtles into ninja turtles.
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Rennie happens to find a bucket of toxic waste and throws it in Jason's face. That's enough to keep Jason busy until the large amounts of toxic waste floods the sewers. Not only does this toxic waste kill Jason, but it reverts him back to the young boy he was at the time of his drowning. With that, Jason is finally killed for good (Just like the other dozen times.)

The Characters

Rennie - With her parents killed in a car accident, Rennie was forced to live with her uncle. It was through her uncle she first encountered Jason as a young boy in the lake. In an assumed relationship with Sean, Rennie is our heroine.

Sean - While his father dreams of him becoming a captain of ships like himself, Sean dreams of other things. Sean's future causes a rift between the father and son. Being in a relationship with Rennie allows Sean to survive the film.

Charles McCulloch - The uncle of Rennie, Charles is the hard ass teacher/principal at Crystal Lake High. While he is too uptight, he does seem to care greatly for his niece.

Miss Colleen - Once Rennie's parents died, Miss Colleen becomes the stable mother figure Rennie needed. A literature teacher, Miss Colleen pushes Rennie to follow her passion into becoming a writer.

Julius - Token black guy. Julius is an amateur boxer who seems to be the only real threat to Jason.

Tamara - Rich, bitchy stereotype that's a near ripoff of Melissa from the last movie. Tamara has a thing for Julius and tries to blackmail Charles McCulloch in exchange of not handing in her end of the year project. Central character on the boat, non existent in New York.

Jason Voorhees - Jason seemingly no longer has a motive to his kills.

The Verdict

Jason vs telekinesis turned out not to be the thing to get the series back on track. With Paramount's already dislike of the series increasing with the series making less money, Rob Hedden is brought aboard to write and direct the seventh sequel. The first thing Hedden did after signing on was ask if the film had to take place at Crystal Lake. Hedden believed if there was one thing that could make the series more exciting it was bringing Jason to New York City. Which is the perfect topic to begin with the verdict.

One of the biggest criticisms the film has is how so little of it takes place in New York. To be fair to Hedden, he had originally written a lot more scenes in New York. However, due to the series not bringing in enough money, Paramount wasn't willing to have the bill go up any higher. Thus, we have most of the movie on the boat. However, to be fair, the scenes in New York didn't really make any sense. My major criticism isn't that the film takes place on a boat, but rather they changed Jason's whole motivation. From Part 2, Jason came back to kill any counselor since he related them all back to Alice as people who killed his mother. They of course changed that with Part 3 to anyone at Crystal Lake. That was fine since it's still in the general realm of why he kills the people. However, for this movie, why would Jason leave Crystal Lake to go to the harbor? With the exception of going after Alice, Jason had never left Crystal Lake. Why does he care about killing these students? Furthermore, why is Jason so determined to kill these students that he doesn't go after anyone else in New York (As long as they stayed out of his way of killing the Lakers)? Since when does Jason just walk past people? One could say he wants to kill the students since they're from Crystal Lake. However, they (I assume) don't live in the woods. Why wouldn't Jason just go into town to kill off all of the townies? Making slashers is an extremely simple job. You have a motivation and you build the movie up around that. However, this movie somehow forgets all about that. For as thin of a motive as he had before, he has nothing now. He's just some random killer who for whatever reason has his sights on Rennie. It doesn't make sense and it's mind boggling.

Another thing that doesn't make any sense is Rennie. In the entire history of these films, no one had been haunted by young Jason. Alice had the experience at the end of part 1, but it served as more of an omen of things to come. Looking deeper into this, the entire story line of Rennie almost drowning at the hands of young Jason doesn't make sense either. It's yet another example of the Friday series not being about a real time line. Jason died in 1957. He made his first appearance as full grown around 1980 (Since the first film came out then and Alice's death occurred a few months later). I assume once Jason started doing some deeds as a full grown monster, young Jason was no longer in the lake. So let's do a little match shall we?

1980 - Jason is no longer in Crystal Lake
1985 - Jason kills in Parts 2-4
1990 - Amount of time (Approx) from part 4 to Tommy grown up in part 5
1991-1992 - Time between part 5 and 6. Approx as well.
1993-2000 - Unknown amount of time between Jason being sent to the bottom of the lake to Tina bringing him back to life
1994-2001 - Time between part 7 and 8 (Could be much longer)

Assuming Rennie was 18 when she graduated, that would make her roughly 4 years old at the most at the time in 1980 (The last possible time young Jason could have grabbed her.) From the flashback, she looked somewhere between 7-10. In theory, the almost drowning scene would of had to happen between 1990-1993. Which makes it impossible that she met with young Jason. While I appreciate that Hedden tried to give Rennie a back story with Jason, much like with Chris in part 3, it doesn't make much sense. It's giving a character a back story just for the sake of having a back story. Instead of helping the story have more substance, it just makes it more confusing. It doesn't help matters that they waited such a long time to reveal it. Much like with Tina in the last movie, the heroine is hindered by being forced to act messed up.

Speaking of the past with Rennie and young Jason, the character of Charles McCulloch is so poorly written. He's supposed to be this horrible character that we hate. Yet he comes off as a strict, yet fair guy. Was throwing Rennie into the lake such a bad thing? It's kind of a dick move, but it's something a ton of parents have done in the past. Instead of going along with Tamara when she's seducing him, he pushes her away. Especially after Dr. Crews, McCulloch is just not bad enough to hate.

In yet another poorly written move, Hedden ruined any chance of the audience wanting to cheer on Rennie and Sean. The moment Hedden had Jason save (Whether purposely or not) Rennie from the thugs wanting to rape her, he instantly gave viewers a reason to like Jason. What was the point of that entire scene? Especially when you're taking away his motivation for killing, why would you give him a new sympathetic trait? A trait that is actually admirable while killing for his mother was just understandable in some sick minded way. Jason became the hero of the film. With a revolving door of teenagers, Jason (Besides Tommy Jarvis) is the only character we actually get to know well. So not only does he have an advantage over everyone else, but he's also doing the more fun things (The killings) and now prevents rape.

The ending was just mind blowing in how little it made sense. Why would toxic waste turn Jason into his former self? It's a moment where it's not that it's poorly written (Which it is), but it doesn't make sense in any way imaginable. It may of been possible in part 2, but by 6 movies with Jason (Remember to not count part 5), you can't really change the rules.

The single worst thing about this movie is that nothing made sense. On top of that, they didn't even try to explain it. It's as if Hedden had a few ideas for the movie, yet he never completely followed through with any of them. So instead we have three or so random stories going on at the same time.

Besides getting a little credit for trying something different (Even if it made no sense) the only other thing I can really praise is one thing. This one thing though is fantastic. While trying to hype the movie, Hedden made this trailer that remains one of the better horror trailers ever:



The Extras

Death Count:19
(Plus the guy Wayne accidentally shoots, Miss Colleen and any other student who died on the boat we didn't see.)

Boob Count: 1
(Only one and it's from the side as well. Disappointing.)

Best Kill: Julius
(And only good kill)

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Grade: 2
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