Dr. Crews was a bit of a douche bag, wasn’t he? I mean, he wanted to exploit Tina’s powers, he gets her mother killed. I was quite happy when he died. But that was pretty exciting. Tina did a pretty good job fighting Jason. I mean, not before a dozen people were killed. But it was exciting to see him get set on fire, electrocuted, fall into a basement, have a roof collapse on him. All of this does nothing of course because JASON IS A ZOMBIE AND NEEDS TO BE SHOT IN THE HEAD. Despite of this, Tina does what she meant to do at the beginning of the oddly titled sequel and uses her powers to raise her dad from the lake, who pulls Jason back under, which again, according to some book Tommy read in part VI, is the only way to kill him (as long as there are no blondes walking around firing off telekinesis all willy nilly). Then our heroes wake up in the morning and are carted off by an ambulance. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t fathom that Jason can come back after all of that. No, sir. Trapped by the lake. He has been subdued twice by that lake (oddly enough after he was dead, and not when he was alive). What could possibly happen next?
Jason Takes Manhattan opens a year after the New Blood (1994). Jim and Suzi are part of the graduating class of Lakeview High. They are taking a boat out for a nice romantic romp on Camp Blood itself. It amazes me, the pull that Crystal Lake has on visitors. The boat’s anchor snags a power line, which happens to be right near Jason. Once again, Jason is brought back to “life” via electricity. While this is happening, Jim tells Suzi the “legend” of Jason. Now, I don’t mean to keep harping on this, but I don’t care how many years have gone by, this story cannot be a legend to anyone. Even if you don’t believe it’s Jason, there are too many dead people (that have been reported on the news!) for anyone to logically think it is a good idea to go within 100 fucking miles of this place. I mean, how do you refute that? “Jason isn’t real!” “Yeah but what about all those dead people?” “Uh, the plague? Yeah, we won’t get that, we’re safe.” Regardless, Jim and Suzi want to fornicate on a boat, so I guess this was their only choice. Unfortunately for them, they die. The next morning, the rest of the seniors (about a handful) and 2 teachers board the Lazarus, a creepy old ship, for a class trip to New York. Having incredible foresight, or serendipitous laziness, Jason is still under the lake and climbs aboard the Lazarus. One of the students, Rennie, seems to be having hallucinations of a drowning boy who tries to “kill” her. Jason picks off everyone but 3 students (Rennie being one of them) and the 2 teachers. They manage to get in to a rowboat and make it to New York City. Jason, who loves to toy with people, pops out of the water, seconds after they dock, having walked the whole way underwater (zombie!). Then, a hilarious fish out of water (but in New York, no one will notice!) comedy ensues! No, but seriously, a pretty lame and insulting Jason film wanders to a close on the streets of New York.
This is a terrible film. It pains me to say that, because Kane Hodder’s Jason is so angry and vengeful. Though you can not see his eyes, you can read the hate in his face. It makes him seem less supernatural (zombie!) and more like a real live psychopath. He even chooses not to kill a small gang of street kids, because he would rather chase down Rennie. He is really great in this chapter.
At this point, the franchise’s biggest problem, is the ever weakening connection each sequel has to the overall story. For example, when Jason was “dead” we continued with Tommy, who had a direct connection to the storyline. But suddenly that was abandoned and have some largely uninteresting (and conveniently never before mentioned) story lines with characters that really don’t have a connection with Jason at all (comparatively). Rennie’s connection is really weak. Why even bother making that part of it anymore? On top of that, there seems to be a “new” element where the same old formula is used, in an effort to be different. This one is in New York, part VII was about telekinesis, part 5 had a different killer. This is understandable, in the sense that the viewer may get bored seeing the exact same thing over and over again, but where was this logic during the first 4 films?
These films are feeling less and less like Jason films. They just seem like random slasher films with an F13 story line shoehorned in. Perhaps the 90′s will be kinder to the Jason legacy.
Favorite kill: One punch. Head flies off, lands in a dumpster.
Comments
Post a Comment