Jason Goes To Hell - The Final Friday - Did someone say ‘The Hidden?’

Yes, this is the first Friday 13th/Jason film to be handled by New Line Cinema after Paramount got bored of the franchise due to disappointing Box Office returns and sold it to them. Fair play to New Line Cinema – at least they attempted to try something different (well, sort of). After all, the ‘masked killer stalking oversexed teens’ routine was getting a little stale now (or eight films ago, depending on how harshly you judge the franchise).

However, what New Line Cinema thought was different turned out to basically be the plot to an earlier New Line Cinema release called The Hidden. In The Hidden, an alien jumped from body to body while going on a murderous rampage through the city. Here, in Jason 9 (or whatever they called it) you have a monster-slug (which is apparently supposed to be whatever Jason ‘truly’ is) jumping from body to body while going on a murderous rampage through a city.

Yes, people noted the similarities. But, the worst part of all was that The Hidden is a million times better than Jason 9. We don’t really see Jason properly until the final ten minutes and before that we’ve had one ‘average human Jason’ after another doing the killing.

It’s not bad, but it’s not as great as it wishes it could be. It tried to breathe new life into the franchise and didn’t really succeed. It’s not bad if you don’t mind a horror film like that and have an hour and a half to spare, but it’s no classic – definitely one of the more ‘forgotten’ Friday 13th offerings.

5/10 a hard trek, a bit like unicycling to Mordor and back