Friday The 13th Part 5: A New Beginning

The kills are more intense and sadistic in this installment, but they also feel somewhat wasteful. The movie itself is **. It begins with an older, teenage Tommy Jarvis, who awakens from persistent nightmares about the return of Jason Voorhees while being sent to the Pinehurst Halfway House. The timeframe appears to be around 1989 or 1990. Once again, not a single film in the original series addresses the fact that these events seem to take place 5-9 years ahead of their release dates. This film fully embraces nudity and the '80s drugs cocaine and marijuana which, along with the violence, makes it surprising that it wasn’t heavily censored. While none of this is offensive to me, we were still feeling the effects of knee-jerk reactions from parent and religious groups at the time, so I could easily see this type of project being targeted. There’s a 1950s aesthetic (with the cars, leather jackets, and lighting) that was popular in mid-'80s film and TV (think Streets of Fire). While this style doesn’t detract, it doesn’t add much to the story either. The victims are mostly annoying, especially the local mother-son duo, Ethel and Junior, who live next door to the halfway house. I was actually relieved when Tommy beats up Junior, but Tommy himself is not very likable here, though he does get a bit more to do in his last official entry. The halfway house director Matt, counselor Pam, and Reggie serve as the heroic "good guys," but they aren’t given much to do other than die, get cornered, and fight the murderous villain. Bodies pile up around town and at the halfway house, with either Jason or Tommy as the prime suspect. The effects are fine (but not better than Savini's work) and on my first watch back in 1985, I thought I knew who the killer was, but I missed some very obvious clues. Rewatching it now, I wonder how I didn’t see it! FTT5 is not the "trash" some people make it out to be. Thankfully, FTT6: Jason Lives is a better film and uses elements from classic Universal monster films to turn Jason into a proper villain.