I've seen enough horror movies to know any weirdo wearing a mask is never friendly
The sixth Friday the 13th offers a massive course correction from Part 5. Whereas Part 5 embraced a cocaine ethos that saw diminishing returns on throwing more of everything at the audience – more characters, more deaths, more nudity, more misguided ways to twist the formula – Part 6 offers a much more coherent pitch: Friday the 13th but as an Evil Dead-inspired horror comedy with a very slight meta-narrative bent.
Much of that focus and coherency derives from a fresh new voice for the franchise: journeyman Tom McLoughlin serves as the director and lone writer, meaning he controlled the entire vision of this outing. It’s the first time the series has even a hint of auteurism to it, as if the film comes from the mind of a creative trying to tell a specific story rather than a committee calculation on how to get butts in the seat.
The film opens with an absolutely terrific 15 minutes that might be the high point of the series to this point: Tommy Jarvis (recast as Thom Mathews), still haunted by the trauma of his encounter with Jason back in Part 4, breaks into a cemetery, digs up Jason’s coffin, and pries it open to Jason’s decaying, maggoty corpse. In a fit of rage he stabs the corpse with a crowbar, only for it to get struck by lightning and Jason to rise like Frankenstein. It’s a brilliant, grimy pastiche of Gothic horror. The subsequent kill scenes are shot almost expressionistically in a creepy rainstorm, Jason’s figure looming in mist and darkness like he’s a Universal horror creature.
The rest of the movie plays out alternating between goofy scenes of teen camp counselors – this time with actual child campers to look after; egads! – and some of the series most novel kill scenes yet. There’s a particular corker in an RV that ends with a fire-lit Jason staring in the distance that’s just a blast.
Jason Lives has a meta-slasher humor to its edge in which Tommy and his friend (the surprisingly non-final girl-ish Megan played by Jennifer Cooke) try to “think like Jason” — i.e. deconstruct how a slasher villain would operate. They want to prove to the police chief (Megan’s dad, played by David Kagen) that Jason is alive, that it’s not just another copycat killer stabbing people.
Another “meta” twist: The final takedown of Jason occurs with Tommy luring Jason into the water to relive the iconic zombie jump scare of Part 1, but with a hellish tint. This self-referentialism and commentary on genre tropes make Part 6 a bit of a proto-Scream.
Notice in my mention of the film’s humor that I haven’t described any of it as “funny.” It’s not aggressively anti-laughs the way the comic relief of Part 5 is, but Part 6 thrives more on its light, funny-ish tone than any of the actual comedic content. As with the best Friday the 13ths, the biggest laughs come from outrageous murders rather than the other shenanigans or punchlines: The body print in a wall as Jason murders someone in a closed room, is terrific, e.g., while the slapstick paintball fight is a tad too goofy.
Part 6 breaks some of the cardinal rules of slashers that I don’t especially care about. Namely, there are some characters who are obviously not dying (outside of the final girl), most especially the child campers: The film gets a lot of mileage out of having Jason cross paths with kids, but this is obviously just a tease. This is not the type of movie to murder an innocent child. If you want your slashers to be nasty and dangerous, Jason Lives will probably piss you off.
That’s not me, though. I like this one. Overall, it’s one of the more satisfying entries in the series to this point in its run. It’s got a goofy bent to it that feels well-developed, and it’s very well-shot. And it just feels more idiosyncratic and personal than the previous entries, a much-needed tonic after the flavorless Part 5.
- Review Series: Friday the 13th
Is It Good?
Good (5/8)
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2 replies on “Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)”
First of all, it’s Friday the 13th Par-tay VI, and I wouldn’t par-tay with Jason if he were the last slasher villain on Earth.
Anyway, 6 is where it starts spinning wheels a bit, and while I like 6 and 7, the tires are starting to get a little noticeably bald (and they’re patching the actual holes with wackadoodle supernatural nonsense, which REALLY comes into its own next time). This is probably the prettiest photography of the bunch, though, lots of cool blue shadowy nights, as I recall. (Pretty photography isn’t everything, I think 2 still has the meanest, keenest look.)
> First of all, it’s Friday the 13th Par-tay VI, and I wouldn’t par-tay with Jason if he were the last slasher villain on Earth.
😅 Don’t worry, a copy editor was fired for that blunder.
But I see you’re a fellow man of culture. Love a good Simpsons shitpost.