Due to the lukewarm box office success of Friday the 13th Part 2, the third installment was supposed to bring the series to an end. To go out with a bang, the studio figured they might be able to cash in on the 3D bandwagon. With Steve Miner back in the director's chair, you'd think the movie would follow in the footsteps of its predecessor when it came to style and tone. This does not turn out to be the case, though; strangely enough, Miner has a made a movie that is a true conundrum, and not all of it has to do with the corny 3D inspired shots. As with Part 2, but thankfully without an over abundance of footage, the new movie opens by showing the final showdown between Jason and Ginny. News footage reveals she was taken to the hospital and that's the last we ever hear of her. At first, I figured Jason would be driven on finishing her off, but since she didn't kill his mother, he must have forgotten her quickly. Thanks (or no thanks) to Ginny, it's doubtful Jason will fall for someone pretending to be his mother again, since he clearly saw her severed head while being taunted. The movie's true opening scene involves a bitter couple who own a convenience store. The husband sneaks junk food off the shelves while his bitchy wife complains about his eating habits and the fact he won't help with the laundry. Like the classic scene at the end of Part 2 containing the dog, the new entry features a bunny rabbit whose meant to represent a false sense of security. This time, however, Miner makes it quite apparent no one will be safe by showing two shots of dead rabbits, one of which is roadkill.
That the couple gets it should come as no surprise, even though this opening is definitely not what I was expecting from a Friday the 13th movie. For the first time, the characters are quite cartoonish, and it doesn't stop there. The principal players are just as goofy and don't really look like they belong together. There are six teenagers (or early twenty somethings, take your pick) and two middle aged hippies. These are the horniest young people we've come across so far - even the nice guys seem to be itchy in the pants. In that sense, I guess you could say it makes them more deserving of Jason's wraith than the poor suckers from Part 2. While some of them were painted sympathetically, there's only one character this time we might even want to see survive (and she does).
The setting this time is a cabin the survivor, Chris (Dana Kimmell), lived in as a child. The build up to the kills has a few new elements, each of them centered around Shelly (Larry Zerner), a helpless nerd who gets set up with one of Chris's friends. He's insecure to say the least, trying to gain acceptance by faking his death with a phony hatchet to the head or sneaking up on someone while they're sitting at the boat dock. His real breakthrough comes when he stands up to a trio of bikers by running over one their motorcycles. When this happened, I wondered if Miner wanted us to like Shelly, but due to his annoying behavior, it's hard to tell. If anything, he's unquestionably the most original character to emerge in a Friday the 13th movie so far and the only one who looks like he has a good relationship with an adult (we get a quick glimpse of a photo in his wallet of him with his mother). Ultimately, he turns out to be just as disposable as the rest - the bikers are only in the movie to throw Jason a few more people to slash (and to provide some comic relief - it's amusing when one of them just happens to still be alive at the end).
The performances are the worst the series has offered so far. They were serviceable in the first two movies, so what happened this time? The tone is all over the map. It's as if Miner wanted to take his sense of fun from Part 2 and let it run haywire. If you don't believe me, just listen to the score during the opening credits. Instead of the classic theme, we get some discoesque concoction that sounds like it belongs on a '70s sci-fi program. Speaking of which, everyone in the movie acts like they're from another planet; even Jason, who's not quite as clumsy as he was in the last movie, slumbers around like he's just learned how to walk.
Jason seems to be more in tune with what he is once the movie starts rolling. It's as if the ending to Part 2 made him aware that his mother really is dead and he does not have to kill for her. He's simply doing it because that's the only thing he knows how to do. Critic Alex Jackson suggests it's his way of trying to connect with others, which is an easy idea to accept. When he tries to kill someone and they fight back, why shouldn't he think they're just trying to speak his language? It's no stretch either to say that Jason's sprees could be viewed as a kind of game. Look at the finale when he literally tears a barn apart trying to find Chris. It all plays like a psychotic version of hide and seek, especially since he knows there's no one left after her (it's as if he still doesn't know how to cope with running out of people to kill). The murders are pretty brutal, but any real shock value is sucked away by the attempt to have them work with the 3D gimmick. The biggest groaner is easily a scene where Jason squeezes a guy's head until his eye pops out and shoots straight at the camera. The non 3D murders are the most graphic the series has offered so far, suggesting, and we'll get into this more later, that Jason is either enjoying what he's doing or is treating it like a chore that needs to be marked off a list.
There are two things about the movie that stood out over everything else. One is the physical look of the women. In the past two, they've all been shown in skimpy outfits, tight jeans, or lingerie at some time or another; in Part 3, only one women is ever shown in a bikini and when she does get naked, the bare body shots are so quick you'll probably miss them (not to mention we discover she's pregnant, which could be an automatic mood killer). The other women are dressed in very unflattering clothes. Miner has more or less stripped all the sexual appeal out of the movie, which is fascinating because it makes the female characters more innocent and less deserving of their violent deaths. I also find it fascinating that so many people think Friday the 13th movies are only about camp counsellors getting picked off. From what I can tell, Jason does not discriminate, and has probably killed just as many middle aged folks as he has teens.
The second point I wanted to make was about Jason himself. I mentioned earlier how awkwardly he walks, but even more so, there's something odd about his whole demeanor. In this picture, he looks like nothing more than a big man, meaning that he's still developing. The more he kills, the more he'll evolve until eventually, he'll be a towering force. At this point, he feels pain and is vocal about it, not unlike a kid with a skinned knee. Jason bleeds too, and is himself killed at the end of the picture, at first leading us to believe he is dead. Taking a cue from the original movie, Chris wakes up in a canoe and thinks she sees Jason, unmasked, looking at her from an upstairs window in the cabin. It is at that point, Jason's dead and decrepit mother comes out of the water and grabs her. This could be read as a tacked on attempt to let us know the studio changed their mind about ending the franchise; I'd rather see it as a way of showing that now, Jason and his mother are one and the same.
Friday the 13th Part III is a bit disappointing in the long run. Maybe if Steve Miner had not come back, it wouldn't have felt that way. I just had hoped he'd push Jason's transition a little further than he does. Instead, too much time is wasted on the dopey 3D, a decision that gives the production a sloppy overall feel it probably wouldn't have had otherwise. Due to the 3D, the movie was shot in the scope aspect ratio (it's the only entry in the series that isn't matted), and it hurts the movie on a tension level. It's harder to build an environment of claustrophobia when there's so much open space. I'm relieved the series never used it again. There's plenty to chew on in Friday the 13th Part III; it's not quite as entertaining as Part 2, although it is pretty kick ass to see Jason with his signature hockey mask for the first time.
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Copyright, Hell and Beyond, 2008
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