Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

Though many characters are dispatched in various gory ways, the film gives them more to do than the have-sex-and-die victims of past entries. Director Adam Marcus and writers Dean Lorey and Jay Huguely give them some personality, and the acting is also generally better than in the previous Fridays. Read full review

After a promising opening, with Jason on a rampage and a cold, peculiar bounty hunter (Steven Williams) on Jason's trail, Jason Goes to Hell switches focus midway to the young couple, and from there things go downhill. Still, the film has its moments. [14 Aug 1993, p.F1]

The scriptwriters try to conjure some history/mythology to validate the plot's twists and turns, but the whole thing ends up more confusing than Days of Our Lives on fast-forward. Read full review

One might have hoped for some semblance of vitality and ingenuity in this, Jason's ninth and final solo killing spree, but it's a retread to its rotten core. [14 Aug 1993, p.C3]

It's as stupid, unimaginative and cheesy as the rest of them. [16 Aug 1993, p.C2]

I admit, I jumped a couple of times in the beginning, but as the movie progressed, it lost its horror and picked up its stupidity. [20 Aug 1993, p.21]

A largely incoherent movie that generates little suspense and relies for the majority of its thrills on close-up gore. Read full review

On the movie's feeble plus side are Richard Gant's acting (as the coroner), Manfredini's music and one funny joke in the last half-minute. On the minus side: ludicrous characters. Garbled nonstop gore. Persistent loud, clanging noises that give you the impression of being trapped inside a malfunctioning radiator. Shadowy lighting that makes you feel as if you're staggering around in the dark. [16 Aug 1993, p.F3]

Not that anyone expected logic, but no one expected the series to so completely abandon much of what was familiar to the audience and become an amalgam of countless other horror-fantasies and pop culture media. [16 Aug 1993, p.24]

Jason goes to hell, and not a moment too soon. His descent has been far too long in coming, as the exhausted, witless Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday demonstrates. Read full review

While the Nightmare on Elm Street movies possess a sick yet clever surrealism, and the first Halloween was at least well crafted, the Friday the 13th series has always been the cut-rate horror franchise, offering barely functional sex-and-slash pitched straight at the moron brigade. Jason Goes to Hell varies the formula a bit, with ideas swiped from The Terminator, The Hidden, and Alien, but after nine installments the impalements and dismemberments all look the same. So go to hell already, Jason — and take Sean Cunningham, the ”brains” behind this dreck, with you. Read full review