Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)

(On Cable TV, October 2019) It’s been decades since I last saw the first Friday the 13th film trilogy and considering my distaste of slasher film, I probably could have gone on the rest of my life without seeing the other film in the series. But this is October and the cable channels are cranking up their horror movie schedule and I figure that this may be as good a time as any to record the rest of the series and make it an endurance contest. First up is the fourth entry The Final Chapter (which was a lie, considering that it was succeeded by no fewer than eight other movies). Made at a time when the slasher craze was fully defined and getting familiar, this Final Chapter is very much in-line with the previous instalments: Here, once again, we have teenagers (some locals and some out-of-towners looking for a cottage vacation) having sex and getting killed by the killer’s nigh-omnipotent craziness. It’s all surprisingly boring despite the deaths accumulating at a fast pace. There isn’t all that much nudity, the deaths are gory without being as disgusting as they would become in later instalments (well, by my jaded 2019’s blood-soaked standards, anyway) and only the presence of a younger boy helps distinguish the film from the usual template. Trying to review these movies is a challenge when there’s so little to say. I won’t bring myself to comment on the quality of the on-screen slashing, and there isn’t much to the rest of the film to comment once you’re bored with those interludes. (Some of the stunts are good, though—there’s a length slow motion falling-though-the-windows-and-then-to-the-ground shot that’s spectacular in its own right.) The 1980s flavour is there but it’s not going to cause any nostalgia along the way. Whatever special marketing hook this film may have had as “a final chapter” has been thoroughly nullified by the endless follow-ups. As a Friday the 13th film, The Final Chapter is pretty much what this series is about—meaning that it ties in a piece with the first three films in the series (indeed picking up moments after the third) but that it certainly won’t make any new fans of the franchise by that point. You already know if you’re going to like it.