Friday the 13th: A New Beginning



Plot Synopsis: 

Years after the events of The Final Chapter, Tommy Jarvis ends up in a halfway home. Before too long, a killer begins murdering people in the area. But, with Jason dead, the question remains: Is this killer the ghost of Jason Voorhees or a copycat? 

Spoiler Warning:

Before I go on, I will be going into spoilers for this movie. 

Negatives:

For this movie, I think it's actually going to be easier if I start with the things I didn't like, and work my way back from there. For starters, this movie's final killer reveal does not work. When you really break it down, I don't think it makes any sense at all. The whole point of this movie was to set up Tommy Jarvis as Jason's replacement going forward. The question I have is this: Why didn't they just make Tommy the killer from the get-go? Now, I do have more to say about Tommy Jarvis in another section. Why even have Roy at all?? He literally does nothing to stand out as a character. His whole motivation was the murder of his son whom he hadn't seen since he was a baby. As a result, Roy tried to kill everybody except the person who killed his son. This is one of the movies where the kills feel the most neutered. Now, the director came from a porn background. Instead, he chose to amp up the nudity.  

Mixed Aspects:

I think my biggest issue with this movie is one I have more with hindsight than anything else. When you look at this franchise as a whole, A New Beginning is just pointless. You could honestly skip this movie and miss absolutely nothing. The reason I have it in the mixed section is because that isn't necessarily this movie's fault. It's also not going to bother people the way it bugs me. Moving on from that, I have mixed feelings towards Tommy Jarvis in this movie. I actually like actor John Shepherd's performance. I also kind of like the way he's haunted by Jason. That said, what they build up with Tommy is never really followed through on. I should also say that the acting is a mixed bag for me. I already said I thought John Shepherd was good as Tommy Jarvis. Adding on to that, I don't think Melanie Kinnaman is all that bad as Pam, and a couple of small supporting players are kind of fun too (namely Miguel A. Nunez Jr. and Carol Locatell). Everyone else feels like they are just in the movie. They aren't the worst actors, but they can't necessarily elevate their scenes either. 

Positives: 

I mentioned that I thought the kills were mostly neutered. However, a couple of them still felt decently effective. While I don't like the final killer reveal, I do think the aspect of the unknown killer actually works decently up to that point. In a way, I think it's (slightly) better handled than in the original. In fact, it's almost a reversal simply because of how great Betsy Palmer was in the first film. 

Final Thoughts:

As I'm sure you can probably gather, I'm not the biggest fan of this movie. I think there was an idea for a better movie here, but the final product lacked any solid follow-through. If you're marathoning the franchise, this one is a pretty easy skip.

My Rating:

🩸🩸 

Comments

  1. BeckyDecember 13, 2021 at 5:22 AM

    Ooh, I've never actually seen this particular entry in the series. I may have to rewatch the all sometime in the new year.

    ReplyDelete

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