Halloween Marathon: Friday the 13th Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Moving right along, I’m starting to think this franchise is going to go downhill when I saw the name: Jason Takes Manhattan.  There is going to be a lot of ever weirder and harder to believe stuff than telekinetic powers and rising from the dead. Anyways, I really have nothing else to say about this so lets check it out 😉

Director: Rob Hedden

Cast: Jensen Daggett, Tiffany Paulsen, Todd Caldecott, Kane Hodder, Barbara Bingham, Peter Mark Richman, Kelly Hu

A small cruise ship carrying a graduating class leaves for Manhattan for their grad trip.  Jason ends up hanging on and boarding this ship unknowingly.  While one of the girls, Rennie that decided to go.  Rennie is raised by her uncle and has a profound fear of water because she believes that some little kid tried to drown her (or she saw drown) when she was young. Jason slowly goes after them one by one.  Question is: who will survive this?

Okay, confession time.  I was nodding off halfway through this one and then only caught glimpses of the ending portion.  I have a general idea of what happens but the first half wasn’t good enough to make me want to redo this.

Because of that confession, maybe some facts aren’t complete.  Thats okay because there are no spoilers.  Except Jason Takes Manhattan is false because by the time I was nodding off, they were just getting on a boat (I guess this is kind of a spoiler) and escaping the cruise ship.  Relentless as Jason is, of course, he follows them and they, by some odd chance, land in Manhattan.  This one has SO MANY plot holes.  The acting, especially with Uncle Charles, was just an unexplicable amount of bad.  I think I rolled my eyes so much and laughed at the movie and that probably was why I was so tired.

Jason is played by the same dude, a pretty menacing man called Kane Hodder.  The only continuity of this is here.  BUT, somehow sitting in the bottom of the lake after the last one, instead of rotting more, (if thats possible anymore for him), he acquired gloves.  Thats just the start of it not making any sense whatsoever.  Let me point out that I usually get sold on plot holes easily but seriously, this one was just so out there.  I mean, apparently humans are flammable.  Not exactly sure thats possible unless our veins are pumped with gasoline suddenly.  Some teen gets thrown on the electric board and he went on fire immediately.  This director apparently likes fire going off for no logical reason.  And then, the kid I mentioned up there that drowned or tried to drown Rennie was apparently Jason but he’s not disfigured anymore.  Question marks are floating around my head.  And the “final kill” for Jason is kind of laughable. I mean, the effects are really even worse than the previous ones and those are older.  I think my boyfriend had it spot-on: low budget.

So far, its sounding pretty negative.  In the heart of finding something redeemable, the picture up there on the right should be someone you recognize.  At least, I did.  Thats Kelly Hu, in a much younger role in a really meh movie but if you don’t recognize her, she is also in one of the shows I am currently obsessed with.  ARROW 🙂 She’s China White *gasp*. Still, she was one of the sillier kills and  not all that logical.  Hey, its the role, not her, right?

Overall, Jason Takes Manhattan was pretty blah. I’m pretty sure I won’t see this again. Definitely my least favorite of the franchise so far.  If its going down in quality in such an exponential pace, I’m a little worried about what’ll happen in the next one.  I really do.  Plot holes, ridiculous acting, illogical effect: this one has it all.  I really hope that it gets better because with that ending, I have no idea how it’ll continue.  Even the ending made no sense….

Time to end this review and move on to the next movie…

Thoughts on Jason Takes Manhattan? Anyone like this? If you do, please enlighten me on what made you like it?