Review: ‘Friday the 13th, Jason Takes Manhattan’ a Return to Just Enough Form to Stagger the Franchise Along


By “Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives,” the franchise was meta-aware enough for a hundred lifetimes. Jason Voorhees, the Crystal Lake killer was a well-known horror legend, and the filmmakers—and actors—started to just have fun with him. But one thing the “Friday the 13th” series had going for it is its devotion to source: the series never produced a grade ‘A’ film, but rarely sank lower than average, despite its lambasting at the hands of critics like Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper. Soapbox alert: I’ll never understand the critical attacks on slasher films like these as ‘smut,’ especially as horror crept into the torture porn, depravity-soaked grotesqueness of the ‘00s, but I digress. “Jason Takes Manhattan,” the franchise’s eighth romp, changed things up and utilized the prowess of stuntman Kane Hodder just enough to make it an enjoyable entry. 

There’s nothing new here, except its location, of course: Jason is resurrected by an anchor dragging an electrical cable near his body, boards a cruise ship leaving Crystal Lake heading to New York City, and wreaks havoc. And by havoc, I of course mean murder by a variety of implements. The film starts with the killing of two luckless teens aboard a small boat on Crystal Lake: there’s no mistaking Jason’s ferocity and undead nature. His clothes tattered, his grotesque and decayed skin exposed, his tell-tale hockey mask the last remnant of the Jason that was. 

Director Rob Hedden, who has 20 writing credits to his name (many of them horror) solely wrote “Jason Takes Manhattan.” You have to give him credit for that. Honestly, the film should please most “Friday the 13th” fans, despite some detractors, but every installment has its fans, so any individual one is hit of miss. If by some chance you haven’t seen the film (it was released in 1989), you can skip over this spoiler and my only true beef with the movie: Jason “takes” Manhattan is a very poor misnomer; perhaps 4-5 people are killed in New York City. I would have preferred the undead brute to have a sightseeing carnage tour in Central Park, but I guess you can’t always get what you want. Most of the killing takes place on the ship; if you can live with that, you’ll probably enjoy this movie. 

“Jason Takes Manhattan” starts to leave the awesome, innocent ‘80s behind, and in places feels more ‘90s than ‘80s indeed. We have a gaggle of characters, such as a captain’s son with big shoes to fill (Scott Reeves), a spoiled rich girl (Sharlene Martin), Rennie, the film’s heroine (pun intended; more on that later), a school chaperone/surrogate father to Rennie who is mal-intentioned to say the least (Peter Mark Richman), and we even get Alex Diakun, credited solely as ‘Deck Hand’—this film’s answer to Crazy Ralph. Rounding out the cast are a few others, most notably and infamous V.C. Dupree as Julius, who holds one of the most crowd-pleasing deaths of the entire series, bar none. 

The positives of the film include elements not expected for an eighth iteration of a flogged franchise, such as overall solid acting and a better atmosphere than we’ve seen since over the last two films. We see such things as foggy, rain-soaked boat decks, some below decks, dimly-lighted sequences, and the film’s climax—when most aboard the ship realize something is going horribly wrong—that is cast amidst a severe lightening storm that adds a vintage “Friday the 13th” feel to the movie. Bryan England does the production’s cinematography; and while we’re not talking Oscar-level work here, he does the film’s creepier scenes justice. 

Additionally, Jason actor Kane Hodder, who made his first appearance in the previous “Part VII,” has gotten his feet wet and clearly enjoys playing Jason. His deep, ominous breathing, as well as his monstrous staring fits make him more of a menace than some of the others in the series. Jason’s kills in the film are eclectic and varied as always, including impalement, guitar pistol-whips, electrocution, a sauna rock, decapitation, and the use of a heroin needle (see, I told you we’d come back to it!) 

The movie suffers some from a) utter redundancy of a plot that has been long overdone, b) clichéd characters, and c) the franchise’s devolvement from scary stalk-fest to a meta-aware, by-the-numbers pick ‘em off. Additionally, the scenes in Manhattan are truly lame. Most of the city scenes were actually filmed in Vancouver due to expense, and the only thing Jason really does is amble around, kill a few people, and the end of the film—head-scratching and completely nonsensical—takes away from the atmosphere set up in the movie’s earlier stretches. I feel the cornfield scene in “Freddy vs. Jason,” featuring Jason wiping out hordes of teens with reckless abandon, is what audiences wish “Jason Takes Manhattan” could have been. But it is what it is. 

All-in-all, “Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan” is a later installment of a horror franchise some feel had gone on for far too long, but for others can never be done enough. It has some creepy scenes, some head-scratching ones, but is still as Jason as ever. If you’re looking to bask in all things slasher this Halloween, you could do a lot worse.