How can you like a movie with just so much wrong with it? Then again, it’s a Friday the 13th movie, so how can you NOT like it?
Two Teens are on a boat in the middle of Camp Crystal Lake. They are getting undressed. They are about to have sex. What’s next, just comes naturally. The guy decides he needs to tell his girl a story about a bunch of murders that happened in the very lake they are floating in. After the story, he then proceeds to scare his girlfriend by pretending to be the killer and stabbing her with a retractable knife. He then apologizes for his bad joke and they start going at it, only to be interrupted by the REAL killer [Jason Voorhees] and murdered to death.
Somewhere else, a group of different high school kids boards a party cruise(?) to celebrate graduating. Little do they know that Jason has somehow snuck onboard with them and begins to systematically pick them off one by one. Somehow this cruise ends up far off the coast of New York. A couple kids and a couple adults manage to escape the bloodshed on the cruise and take a rowboat to Manhattan Island. They thought they were free from Jason and safe, but they forgot they were in NY in the late 80s.
I have long been a Friday the 13th apologist. I love 95% of the movies legitimately. However… two of them stand out as two of the absolute worst; Goes to Hell and this one. There is just so SO much wrong with this movie plot-wise that it is laughable. To start with how does Jason manage to swim from a lake to some harbor that is on the east coast. Then you add in the fact that this is a graduation cruise that is on what looks like an old fishing ship but the students (or at least one) still has to turn in her biology project. The main girl “Rennie” keeps having visions of Jason as a kid and somehow her dog hallucinates this as well. It’s just a mess of a movie. It all reaks of someone having a cool idea for a scene but absolutely ZERO idea how to get the characters into said scene.
In spite of it being called “Jason Takes Manhattan” the majority of the film is located on the ship, named the “Lazarus” just to drive that point home a bit more. While on the ship the kills are just your average run-of-the-mill Jason fodder. When they finally reach New York things get a bit more… creative. I don’t know who it was, but someone involved in this movie definitely had it in for New York City. Sheesh. I mean, I know that NY was bad during the 80s but they really went over the top here. Even the opening credits depict NY as being overrun by gangs, drug users and pushers, and rapists. The one bright spot is the group of punk rock kids, in New York, in the 80s, who are listening to what sounds like a rip-off of DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince.
This October we are getting a Friday the 13th, a Super Blood Moon, and an Eclipse. That’s a lot of weird mojo being put into just one month. Speaking as someone who has seen all of the Friday the 13th movies I won’t go so far as to say that this is the worst Jason movie, as I still think that Jason Goes to Hell still holds that spot, but this one is very close. If someone wanted to watch a Friday the 13th movie on Friday the 13th this year, there are a slew of other choices and recommendations I could make before ever considering this one. Unless you just want to laugh at the utter insanity that happens on the screen.
Happy Friday the 13th everyone. Stay safe out there. Stay away from dark water. Don’t do drugs. And if you absolutely have to go into the sewers at night in New York, remember that they flood with toxic waste every night at midnight. (Literally, something that was talked about in the movie, and presented as fact.)
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