Saturday Sequel Presents: Friday the 13th part 4

By Paul Anthony

Welcome to this week’s edition of Sequel Saturday, this doesn’t happen to often, well maybe once or twice a year but we all know what this weekend is! yesterday was Friday the 13th and that means this is Jason’s weekend! Yesterday we read in Classic 13 Justin’s review of Friday the 13th part 3 so today I had to review part 4 which when it first came out and well to this day is called The Final Chapter. Now of course we know that there was plenty of Jason films after this one but much like part 3 where the series was suppose to end this film as well was suppose to end the series. Part 3 did leave a cliffhanger to where had the movie made money, they could do a fourth film. Sure enough they gave us a story that could follow part 3 and that was Jason killing random teenagers near or at the lake in which he was suppose to drown at. The movie was a hit of course, it opened in 1600 screens and made 33 million dollars off of a budget that was only 2.3 million so you knew a fifth film would come even though it was called the Final Chapter.

Let’s start with plot, here we have the film pick up directly where the third film left off. The police show up at the Higgins Haven to clean up the mess that Jason has caused and they find Jason’s body which he appears dead to them, so they send him to the morgue but at that point he wakes up and kills the nurse and coroner and he makes his way back to the area he knows oh so well. With a new film comes new teens who Jason kills off one by one to the point that they are just here to waste time. The main characters really are Trish Jarvis and her brother Tommy, we also meet a guy named Rob who seems random at first but learn Jason killed his sister in the second film and he is bent on killing Jason for good.

However Jason in the end gets the upper hand on Rob and kills him leaving only Trish and Tommy. Tommy comes up with a plan to make himself look like a younger Jason to buy his sister time to kill Jason which it worked to a degree but Tommy then notices that Jason is still moving and that is when he flips and begins to hack at Jason killing him for good. Trish wakes up in the hospital and right away wants to know if Tommy is okay and they reassure her that he is and she even gets to hug him that’s where the movie ends with Tommy having a death look in his eyes. We know this would begin a three movie arc with Tommy going up against Jason.

I believe this was one of a few Jason films that had a story to it that was somewhat decent. Jason character was never suppose to go this long and of course it showed with each film. he is a killing machine but these first four films all made sense in a way, Adding Rob to the mix was a good callback. It gave this film some purpose. The acting was what is was and you couldn’t expect more from a low budget film. Most people would give this film a bad review but I want give a good review based on other slasher genre films so in the end I am giving it a C or a good 70 percent!

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