Retrospective Film Review

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) • 35 Years Later — lame sequel on cruise control

Jason Voorhees is awakened from his watery grave and ends up stalking a ship full of graduating high-school students headed to Manhattan, New York.

Yes, this is the Friday the 13th with the boat. Jason Takes a Cruise, more like. Let’s get it out of our systems before we explore why the eighth entry set in the Big Apple turned out so rotten.

After battling Michael Myers at the box office throughout the 1980s, Jason now faced Freddy Krueger. Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) returned a healthy profit of $19M, but paled in comparison to A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988), which raked in nearly $50M. The down-to-earth backwoods slasher felt the need to step outside its comfort zone to match the new wave of successful films. Jason became a zombie and soon found himself fighting telekinetic teenagers. Generally, fans consider this last attempt to be a failure. Despite that, Jason himself…