Retrospective Film Review

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) • 40 Years Later — the first time Jason was dead for good

After being announced dead and taken to a morgue, Jason Voorhees spontaneously revives, escapes from the hospital, and stalks a group of friends renting a house in the countryside near Crystal Lake.

Freddy’s Dead. Halloween Ends. But hold on, I recently reviewed Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993), which came after this sequel. It seems no horror icon is ever really dead, and none of us truly believe they are. And why would we want them to be? We crave that full stop to retroactively morph into a dot-dot-dot…

Only 21% of film critics, according to Rotten Tomatoes, enjoyed this fourth entry in the Friday the 13th franchise. The rest didn’t recommend seeing the last one, and they certainly wouldn’t want you to see the next one either. But you’re reading a retrospective of a 40-year-old slasher sequel, so I know you adore it already…