After seven films in the woods, one in Manhattan, and eight with Paramount Pictures, Jason finally goes somewhere he’s never been before. Jason goes to Hell and New Line Cinema.

Jason Goes to Hell The Final Friday is a wild entry and a stark departure from the forest-lurking killer we’ve seen in the past eight entries. After part 8, Paramount sold the rights of Jason over to New Line, but not the Friday the 13th name. New Line was an obvious choice as it had a strong lineage of exploitative horror franchises under their belt. The Friday the 13th series would feel right at home and four years after the last installment they brought Jason back for the Final Friday.

Ending the Supernatural Trilogy

Parts 7 through Jason Goes to Hell all focus on some type of supernatural element. Part 7 features a telekinetic teen who fights Jason, and Jason Takes Manhattan is littered with supernatural flashbacks. Jason Goes to Hell has by far the most supernatural elements and is easily one of the strangest films in the franchise. Looking back at the series as a whole it’s difficult to imagine how the series went from a grief-stricken mother murdering camp counselors to this spirit-jumping slasher flick.

Jason Goes to Hell begins with the titular killer getting blown to smithereens by FBI agents. Parts of Jason are then taken to the local morgue, where a coroner is coaxed by Jason’s spirit to eat his heart. The Jason’s Heart Happy Meal special results in the coroner being possessed by Jason and going on a murderous rampage. This coroner isn’t the only victim of Jason’s soul-jumping shenanigans. He also possesses various police officers and a sleazy TV host.

New Era Created by New Line

Jason Goes to Hell has one of the silliest premises of the entire series but it works well enough for this franchise. All of the previous installments were released in the 80’s and this was the first and only film to release in the 90’s. Looking at Jason Goes to Hell, it’s instantly recognizable as a 90s movie. The 80s were filled with exploitation and slow-burning slashers but by the 90s this trend had become trite. We were still three years away from Scream redefining the slasher genre but at this point, slasher movies were considered low brow high exploitation trash.

Jason Goes to Hell fits right in with the trend and was a perfect fit for a revamp by New Line Cinema. New Line had made a name for themselves with over-the-top campy horror. This was the studio behind Evil Dead, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Critters. They would later distribute The Final Destination series and The Conjuring films. New Line knew horror and they knew what the Friday the 13th Franchise was. It wasn’t high-grade cinema, it was exploitation. So they took that framework and created one of the gnarliest exploitative films in the entire franchise.

New Body, Same Jason

Jason Goes to Hell is less of a slasher and more of a body horror flick. There are several gross-out sequences of Jason being dismembered, coroners eating hearts, and strange black goo being shot into characters’ mouths. Throughout the 80s the Friday the 13th franchise always seemed to struggle with the MPAA. Many of the movies were highly edited with some of the series’ most gruesome kills being shot from weird angles with the gore hidden. in Jason Goes to Hell, all bets were off. It may have been a new decade or a new distributor but Jason Goes to Hell was the bloodiest grosses film in the series to date.

Aside from the copious amounts of gore, New Line also added some flavor from their original franchises. At one point a character thumbs through the Evil Dead’s book of the dead and the final scene in the movie promises a long-awaited meetup between two iconic horror villains. Jason had finally entered the New Line Cinematic Universe, even if Jason himself is hardly present in the film.

Soft Reboot

The Friday the 13th series has had numerous starts and stops. Even this film subtitled “The Final Friday” was meant to be an end to the saga. With so many films definitively killing Jason, each resurrection almost feels like a soft reboot. None though feel more like a reboot than Jason Goes to Hell.

Jason Goes to Hell all but ignores the series’ previous entry that left Jason mutilated in a New York City sewer. Here Jason is alive and well tormenting gorgeous naked undercover FBI agents at Camp Crystal Lake. This makes little sense in the canon of the series and could have easily been written to incorporate Jason Takes Manhattan’s ending. For this story to begin, it needs Jason dismembered and his heart brought into an autopsy room. Jason was disintegrated in Acid in the last film and it would have been so easy to write his heart into an autopsy room with this ending in mind. But Jason Goes to Hell isn’t concerned with continuity or telling a compelling story. Jason Goes to Hell is only concerned with a bloody gory entertaining film. And the best way to do that is with a cold open of Jason exploding.

Jason Goes to Hell Before Returning

The Final Friday definitively kills Jason. Much like he was definitively killed in Part 3, and Part 4, and again in Part 8. There is no cohesion, no continuity expert. The Friday the 13th series is and should be about a masked killer taking out teens and nothing else. Jason Goes to Hell delivers in many ways but falls flat in other aspects. The B plot that introduces his sister and niece is incomprehensible and provides no value to the film or series.

Jason Goes to Hell is a weird strange departure for the franchise. For a film series with such modest beginnings, it’s truly bonkers to see how a franchise could become so unhinged. In a world of reboots and reevaluations, we may never see a franchise like this again. A movie series with nine films released in the span of 13 years with each entry getting crazier and crazier. Jason Goes to Hell is an absolutely unhinged movie that could never be made again today. For better and for worse.