Friday the 13th Part 8 Jason Takes Manhattan is the last film in the series to come from Paramount Pictures before the series headed to New Line Cinema. Part 8 lives up to its promise of putting Jason in the Big Apple, but offers little else in terms of quality or story.

Jason Takes Manhattan is a weird and strange entry in the franchise but one that laid the groundwork for where the series would go next. The Friday the 13th series was always a bit campy but Part 8 takes it to a whole other level. After Jason faced off with a telekinetic teen in the last film, Paramount did their best to up the stakes. Their solution was to take Jason out of the woods and into the city.

The Supernatural Trilogy

The previous entry in the series, Friday the 13th The New Blood, begins what I like to think of as the supernatural trilogy. Part 7 was an excellent entry in the series that gives Jason a formidable foe. Part 8 Jason Takes Manhattan doesn’t build off of this and instead relies on common tropes done better in previous entries.

The film begins with Jason at the bottom of Crystal Lake, right where he left him at the end of the seventh film. He is resurrected in the most lazily written way possible. By an anchor and random underwater cables. Jason then begins his seventh killing spree aboard two different boats before finally landing in New York City.

Weak Characters With a Weaker Plot

Friday the 13th has never been a series known for its compelling characters or subtle plot points. But Jason Takes Manhattan takes it to a whole new level. Jason boards a party boat named the SS Lazarus, yes really, filled with high school seniors. He then begins his methodical murder spree taking out every horned-up and drugged-out teen he comes across.

The biggest flaw with Part 8’s story is the writer’s attempt to shoehorn in a connection between the final girl and Jason’s past. Jensen Daggett plays Rennie Wickham, the conservatively dressed final girl in this installment, and she is given a larger back story than most final girls in the series. Rennie is afraid of swimming and throughout the film has visions and flashbacks of Jason as a boy. It’s revealed later in a truly unhinged scene that her uncle who is also her legal guardian tried to drown her in Crystal Lake when she was young. The film presents this as a semi-repressed memory though it’s not entirely clear what her uncle’s intentions were or why he is her legal guardian.

A Motley Crew of Unsuspecting Victims

The film pulls out every 80’s movie trope for the cast of characters inhabiting the SS Lazarus. There is the rocker chick who’s murdered by her guitar, the cocaine-snorting floozy who’s killed by a mirror, and even a boxer who gets his head punched off by Jason. None of these characters are interesting or compelling. They are quickly introduced with their signature item and then later killed with said item. It’s not Christopher Nolan level storytelling, but it is a hell of a lot of fun.

Jason Takes Manhattan isn’t concerned with its victims and that’s a good thing. In the series eight entry, we all know the film’s formula. We’ll meet a group of teens, they’ll behave badly and then be killed by Jason. There is no reason to dive deep into these characters’ stories and give them goals or arcs when they only exist as a body count for Jason. It makes for a much more entertaining film when we can easily recognize each character by their gimmick and then see them killed by it.

Jason Takes Manhattan

For a film with Manhattan in the title, Jason spends shockingly little time in the city. But when he does finally arrive it’s a treat. The majority of the film takes place on the Lazarus with Jason killing off Street Fighter characters posing as high school grads. His time in the city proves to be the most humorous and well-remembered of the film.

Jason begins by killing a pair of goons trying to drug and rape our final girl. This was Manhattan in the 80’s after all and New York City still had a grimy criminal aesthetic. The film captures this aesthetic surprisingly well and there is some truly great camera work done in the film. The scene of Jason scaring a group of hardened teens and even the spinning camera capturing a girl’s final moments on a dance floor are all great shots that elevate the film.

The Legacy and Future of Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th Part 8 Jason Takes Manhattan is the last film to come from Paramount but it paved the road for the subsequent New Line films. The movie isn’t the highest quality of the series, but it knows what it’s doing. Friday the 13th is no longer trying to be a horror franchise. The series had become so much more than that.

Once the series went to New Line it would drop the Friday the 13th moniker and begin naming their films after the titular killer. The series would also go absolutely off the rails. It’s strange to say but even as bonkers as this film was, Jason prowling through a subway car and getting electrocuted by anchors, is nothing compared to the next two entries. Jason Takes Manhattan is a bad movie but it’s bad in the best way. It’s pure camp, utter silliness, and satisfying gore. It’s a fitting farewell to Paramount Pictures and a strong beginning for a new era of Jason flicks.