Review of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) by Ian B — 17 Feb 2009

And here's where things really start going down the toilet. The gimmick of taking Jason out of Crystal Lake could've been a good thing, if only the title wasn't so damn misleading! Sure, Jason takes Manhattan....for about ten minutes at the end of the film (half of which are actually the back-alleys of Vancouver). The rest of the film takes place on a cruise ship carrying a group of graduates from some school in the Crystal Lake area. The premise actually isn't as bad is it sounds, it's all in the horrible execution that really sends this movie to the bottom of the Friday the 13th pile.

Looking back at it now, Jason Takes Manhattan is one of those "so bad it's good" kinda movies. Things are just so ridiculous, cheesy and utterly confusing that you can't help but laugh at it all. Jason's resurrection is lame, the kills (while inventive) are bloodless, Jason now looks completely normal as a small boy in flashbacks, and he somehow seems to have developed the power of teleportation. While he always seemed to catch up to his victims while walking before, this time around it's a laugh riot. He can make it to the top and bottom of ten-story buildings in the snap of a finger and seems to know his way around New York better than its residents. Another laughable goof is the fact that the main girl in the movie supposedly saw Jason as a child in Crystal Lake when she nearly drown....yet Jason was a boy in the 50's and she's just graduating high school? I know the continuity in Friday the 13th movies has never been very good, but it's REALLY fucked up in this one. I guess it would help if the people making these movies would actually watch the entries that came before.

The few positives I can say about the movie are that Kane Hodder once again gives a great and menacing performance as Jason. You really can tell his Jason apart from all the other stuntmen who've played the character. Jensen Dagget is one of the better female leads in the series and the five minutes Jason spends actually in New York are really quite fun. That's probably why it's such a piss-off that we only get to see him in these surroundings for mere minutes (especially since it's the title of the goddamn movie!). If you couldn't afford to shoot the entire movie in New York, then why bother with the gimmick in the first place?

By the time part eight rolls around in a series, we've obviously seen it all before. It's nice that they actually tried to mix things up a little by taking Jason out of his familiar surroundings, it's just too bad the execution is a complete failure. The movie might have been called Jason Takes Manhattan....but I took a nap.