Twitter Plot Summary: More Jason mayhem which picks up from the previous film. More people die, yada yada yada.
Five Point Summary:
1. Corey Feldman! For 2 minutes, anyway.
2. Random death. But then, he deserved it.
3. People start dying…
4. Only a couple of them left. Heh.
5. Final showdown in a… barn?
It is indeed a new beginning for the Friday The 13th franchise in this fifth instalment – it doesn’t start with a montage recap of the previous film(s) but does feature a returning Corey Feldman as Tommy, who dreams about Jason Voorhees coming back from the dead. Again. It soon transpires that several years have passed since Jason’s last killing spree, and Tommy’s since grown up but is now a resident in a home for people with mental health issues. That’s an understandable turn of events given the trauma he experienced as a child. This time jump has clearly done the franchise some favours, allowing for a new take on the slasher template (although not by much) and also permitting a transition into Freddie Krueger territory by upping the comedy undertones and taking a much needed step away from the 30 plus deaths that occurred in and around Crystal Lake in the first four films.
In fairness they have tried to do something a bit different with the story, so it’s not the same old stuff that we’ve seen repeated four times previously. There is of course the expectation for Jason to go on a killing spree, and that does come to fruition – now though it’s not just teenagers caught in various stages of undress who are on the receiving end of his violence, now it’s everyone who is unlucky enough to get in his way, no matter their age or their interest in carnal activities.
There’s nothing new about Jason’s method of dispatching his victims, more often than not keeping it simple and just stabbing folks in the gut, or going old school and stabbing them through their mattress from below – which does raise the question as to how Jason manages to fit under there without being seen. He’s not a small chap after all. The effects work is competent but lacks the “awesome” factor that Tom Savini brought to the previous entry.
It wouldn’t be a Friday The 13th movie without yet more gratuitous female nudity, and A New Beginning delivers on this once again. It also delivers great big bucket loads of cliche screaming and propagates the helpless, shrieking woman stereotype despite the series’ previous (admittedly minor) progress in this area. Eventually, after everyone else has bit the dust, we’re reduced to a couple of survivors – seemingly picked out of a hat at random when the script was written – and it’s up to them to bring Jason’s rampage to a close. By that point we’ve already experienced a vast number of classic 80s stereotypes given a crew lines of dialogue each before quickly being murdered by Mr Voorhees.
If you were expecting a logical conclusion to all the mayhem, then you won’t get one. The resolution is yet another one of those moments picked out of a hat by the writers and has only a tenuous link to logic. But then that should be expected from the franchise by now. Leave your brain at the door, watch a couple of moderately entertaining death scenes, then move on.
Score: 1.5/5
